the Makioka Sisters and Me

I happen to watch a Japanese movie, it’s called the Makioka Sisters. It was released in 1983, I was just 1year old back then. Toho commemorates it’s 50th year with a prestigious master piece. The film is directed by Kon Ichikawa based on the serial novel of the same name by Junichiro Tanizaki, the book is translated by Edward G. Seidensticker. It is said that Edward Seidensticker struggled over the title. It is ‘Sasame Yuki’ in Romaji and 細雪 in kanji, It means very light snow, but translations like “Fine Snow” and “Snow Flurries” do not convey the elegance or layers of meaning in the Japanese title, so the English version is called the Makioka Sisters.

Sachiko is in blue, Yukiko is in white, Koi-san is in orange, that man is Teinosuke.

It is a beautifully made movie with flamboyant costumes. I like the slow moving pace, wide angles and a sense of humour. Stunning imagination, vivid realism and sensual anticipation. It expresses the relationship between the sisters through trivialities. I suppose Yukiko is the leading role in the movie, it starts from people around her struggling to find her a husband, and ends with Yukiko’s settle down. However, some scenes are really confused me, they are rather ambiguous: Teinosuke secretly wants to keep Yukiko in his house, is that just a subtle admiration between the brother-in-law and sister-in-law? Teinosuke looks into Itani’s eye and covers his hand over hers, did the director try to show some implications? The story is not happened in 21st century America, it takes place during the late 1930s (Shōwa era), what on earth is happening; especially at the end Teinosuke observes through the window and burst into tears, it begins to snow outside. Why was he weeping? I understand if Sachiko tears, because after her older sister leaves and her younger sisters start their own families, her house will be filled with quietness, to preserve the intimate relationship of them all cannot be easy. But why Teinosuke, a brother-in-law?

If I see it from Teinosuke’s point of view: he takes care of his sister-in-laws and brings them up like a real brother; he accompanies them to cheery blossom sightseeing; he goes to Yukiko’s miai and wipes out Koi-san’s trouble; he has a conversation to Koi-san’s boyfriend and gives his consent, he actually implements the duty as a father. Even he cannot stand Koi-san’s character, he still shows his sympathy to her. Now they are going to get married and leave his protect. Especially for Yukiko, he admires her in every little detail. I wonder if the film is depicted through Teinosuke's eye that his only love, hope and happiness are gone when Yukiko is going to be a wife of a stranger. He sits alone in a lunch bar and drinks sake, hopes he’s rather drinking poison. I have a strange feeling, after two decades, he becomes doctor Asuma in Shiroi Kyoto, his daughter grows up, his wife is gossipy, he becomes a workaholic. Okay, I went to far.

Because of the mysterious of the the plots, I have to clear out my suspicions from the book. It’s surprised me that it’s rather a big book and I have finished it in a week! I have no idea that why I’m so into it, I haven’t been addicted to a book for a long time. The storyline is quite slow and simple, unlike most of the fictions, there are no strong dramatic conflicts, it eschews the melodrama. Definitely it’s not easy to write a novel without a single villain, no wonder it has been called “the greatest cosmopolitan novel since the Meiji Restoration”. I was immersed in the book, perhaps because of the yellowing pages, thick ink print and the smell brought me back to the old days; or perhaps I’m in the situation of Yukiko’s, the troublesome thirty-third; and perhaps I envy the tranquil happiness of the Makioka family. Yukiko is lucky enough to be a member of such a family; or perhaps my suspicions lead me to the end, then I can give a conclusion: ‘a faithful adaptation of Junichiro Tanizaki’s novel’ is totally a lie. I think the movie distorts the motif of the book completely. 

People around Yukiko has different comments on her. Her eldest sister shows her ruthless stuggle‘I only hope someone will marry her. It hardly matters who any more. Even if it ends in divorce, I hope someone will marry her.’ Her youngest sister doesn’t hid her despise ‘she is really quite hopeless. No better than a sixteen-year-old’. Except her second-eldest sister Sachiko let her have Etsuko (Sachiko’s daughter) to make her forget the loneliness of the wait. Yukiko has no place to go, and she can have Etsuko to keep her happy, ‘let Yukiko and Koi-san do as they like. No one will complain’ Sachiko states. 

Yukiko is special to Teinosuke (Sachiko’s husband) especially: Yukiko was unblemis and had a perfectly clean conscience. Teinosuke gives Yukiko good marks in intelligence, learning, deportment, art ability. And what touched him particularly was that Yukiko was fond of children. His own daughter was actually closer to Yukiko than her own mother. Teinosuke comprehends Yukiko behaviour that ‘a girl too shy to go to the telephone has good points of her own. There are men who would never think of calling her spineless and old fashioned, men who would see something very charming in her shyness, and only a man who sees her good points is qualified to be her husband’. Even Hashidera gives his understanding of Yukiko’s general shyness before men : ‘Yukiko could never really be at home in the modern world. She would therefore always retain something pure and maidenly. What she needed was a husband who would place a proper value on her virtues, someone would see it as his duty to cherish and protect them’. 

Yukiko herself is interesting. She is the most Japanese in appearance and dress, on the other hand she is studying French, and she understands western music for better than Japanese. She reads Rebecca in her spare time; she looks as though she might come down with tuberculosis, however, that she is the strongest in the family. Sometimes when influenza goes through the house, she alone escapes; she is unable to open mouth to strangers, when she has to, she explains herself clearly and firmly; the reserved, quiet Yukiko is fond of going out than one will have guessed; in front of Etsuko, her girlish shows out, one day she sees the rabbit with one ear stood up straight but the other is flopped over, she pushes the ear up with her foot, but when she let go, it flopps over again. Yukiko laughs and says, what a funny ear; when Etsuto has diagnosed Scarlet fever, Yukiko does cooking and the serving and the washing herself, and she goes almost without sleep for the week the fever is at its highest.

Everyone in the book has some shortcomings except Teinosuke, he is perfect in my understanding of a good character and a good husband. His two sister-in-laws preferred his house to he main house, they reckon he is ‘so much less frightening than Tatsuo in the main house’. He is a commercial-school graduate, but he has remarkable literary inclinations and he has tried his hand at poetry. When Teinosuke has left for work and Sachiko is cleaning his study, she notices a sheet of paper on the desk, it’s written by her husband, a verse. She writes several lines beside Teinosuke’s verse, and leaves the paper as she had found it. Teinosuke says nothing when he comes back home that evening, and Sachiko herself quite forgets her poem. The next morning as she starts to clean the study, she finds a new verse penned in after hers. Possibly it is a suggested version. 

I was filled with Teinosuke’s quiet and deep love for his wife, daughter and sister-in-laws. 

When he feels his wife is uncomfortable:

‘wait a minute, what have we here? Come out in the light.

Let me see, let me see.’

Teinosuke pressed his forehead to hers. 

When Sachiko suffers miscarriage, Tenosuke sites up all night, he is with Sachiko as the pain receded.

‘you forgive me?’

‘for what?’

‘for being careless.’

‘oh that. No, as a matter of fact this makes me more hopeful.’

‘but it is such a shame.’

‘say no more about it. We’ll have another chance.’

The first thing Tenosuke asks when he gets up is whether the hemorrhages has stopped. Home from work early in the afternoon, he asks again.

When Tenosuke and Sachiko accompanies Yukiko to her miai right after her miscarriage. He is extremely worried his wife.

‘is it all right?’

‘if it is all right with you. But try not to move around quite so much.’

When he sees Sachiko’s face paler than ever, Mrs Jimba calls her again.

‘let me take it. My wife is not feeling at all well, and perhaps you could talk to me instead.’

When Sachiko cannot overcome her sadness of losing her unborn baby.

Teinosuke dozed off to be awakened by his wife’s tears against his face. With the taste of tears in his mouth, he thought how happy Sachiko had seemed when they went to bed.

When Etsuko’s friend leaving to Germany, the two girls spend their last night at Teinosuke’s hourse. 

‘how long will this go on?’ Teinosuke pulls the covers over his head as the two girls come storming down the hall.

‘father, what’s ‘ghost’ in German?’

‘tell her the German for ‘ghost’’

‘gespenst.’ Tgeinosuke is surprised that he remembers. 

When Teinosuke senses that Kobe sushi was one of the particular pleasures Yukiko came back for, he is always carefully to take her once or twice to the Yohei. He will sit between Sachiko and Yukiko, and make sure that his wife and sister-in-law have sake in their cups.

Spirited Away 

When Koi-san is missing in the flood, Teinosuke goes after her in low shoes and plus-four. Osaka-kobe region was bright and dry and good for walking. Now it has become a torrent that made one think of the Yang-tze or the Yellow River in flood: great waves rolls from Mt. Rokko one after another, breaking and roaring and sending up sheets of foam. When Teinosuke sees this ‘one solid sea’, he thinks he must take a risk, he can’t go back to his wife with empty hands. The novel references a number of contemporary events, the Kobe flood of 1938 is one of them: the rail road stretched ahead like a pier out into the sea, in some places almost under water, in others a twisted ladder of rails and ties, the land beneath having been torn away. Somehow it reminds me of the scene in Miyazaki's masterpiece Spirited Away.

Teinosuke acts nothing more than a good husband to his wife and a good brother to his sister-in-laws. I understand the movie's intention of raising audience's curiosity and attendance, 'Ichikawa is too much of a sensualist to let the movie become languid, or stately.' It goes too far from the book, Sachiko acts like a jealous woman, and Teinosuke is cunning, even Yukiko exposes her sophistication. Anyway, if we push the book aside, the movie itself is good.

I can't stop thinking that why it's called Sasame Yuki. Obviously it refers to Yukiko's character--white, pure, soft, quiet, clean..., but there must be something else, then I've found these from wikipedia: ‘Sasameyuki means lightly falling snow and is also used in classical Japanese poetry. The image suggests falling cherry blossoms in early spring—a number of poets confess to confusing falling cherry blossoms with snow. Falling cherry blossoms are a common symbol of impermanence, a prevalent theme of the novel.’ in addition ‘Sachiko is modeled after Tanizaki's third wife, Matsuko, and Sachiko's sisters correspond to Matsuko's. Sachiko’s husband, Teinosuke, does not resemble Tanizaki, however.’ Possibly Teinosuke is a model that Tanizaki set for himself to reach. LOL. I can imagine how interesting this book will be if it is written in Japanese. Once it has been translated into another language, the story will still be there, but the beautiful words will lost their lives. I can tell how dull it will be if I read Dream of the Red Chamber or Romance of Three Kingdoms in English. In China, even nowadays in most of the places if a girl over thirty is still unmarried, there is no way to find a good match and the pressure is unbearable. You can tell it from Fortress Besieged by Qian Zhongshu. 

I think I understood why it's called Sasame Yuki. Even life is impermanent, we still have rights to enjoy each triviality in life, this is the motif of the book. Talking about 'a symbol of impermanence', I think it's also the subject of most of the Chinese traditional novels: after a prosperity everything goes to an emptiness. However, the Makioka Sisters is warm and posititive. The tone of Tanizaki’s writing is leisurely and meditative.

Jun'ichirō Tanizaki had been to China twice, he mentions Yang-tze, Yellow Rive in the book, and dinning in a Chinese restaurant is always one of the options for the Makioka’s. After Kei-boy is kicked out of the family by his brother, he applies a job in Manchuria, which is located in North of China. In September 1931 Japan invaded Manchuria outright after the Mukden Incident, I know it as the 918 Incident. Japan began to colonize Manchuria. It also mentions the China Incident, I know it as the Lugou Bridge Incident. It happened in 7 July 1937, it’s also called the Incident of July 7. Three days after the Lugou Bridge Incident, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek announced the policy of resistance against Japan. It became an outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War, it lasted eight years till the end of the Second World War. When the Makiok’s enjoys cherry blossom in Kyoto; when Sachiko worries Koi-san’s safety in the flood; and when Teinosuke talks to Yukiko’s prospect husband in miai in a Chinese restaurant, in another place many Chinese people are dying under Japanese bombings. Right after was the most brutal Nanking Massacre . In Japanese propaganda, the invasion of China became a "holy war". Teinosuke talks to their Russian friends that he doesn’t know much about politics, he hopes Japan and China can make friends. And I can imagine that after the nuclear bombings, surrender of Japan and the occupation of Japan by the US, how hard their life will be and how much humiliation they will endure. The hateful war.

Like many kids in China, I grew up with Japanese animations, such as Ikkyu-san, Doraemon, Saint Seiya, etc. Not mention Japan made electrial appliance or automobiles. I’m kind of used to it. However, when I think about Japan, every time there will always be one place, only the one place comes in my mind, which is Sendai (仙台), and there was a teacher called 藤野先生(Teng Ye sensei): handlebar mustache, glasses, sometimes forgetting to wear a tie...he was written in a prose by 鲁迅(Lu Xun) (魯迅) and which has been collected in our school textbook. Since the second Sino-Japanese War and China has tradition of producing war movie for propaganda purposes, mostly good-versus-evil dramas drawn from war against Japan. Sometimes when I saw the typecasted characters and stereotyped storyline, and learned the growing tensions between China and Japan, I remembered 藤野先生, and when I re-read it, my eyes were filled with tears. I have been emotional these days, I wonder if it’s a sign of age.

I just happen to watch another Japanese drama called Teacher’s Island (Shima no Sensei), I shared the feeling of Chihiro and Yoshiomi, I shed tears while watching the whole six episodes. I don’t have a loving family like Yukiko’s and I don’t have an island to heal my wound. This is the new year, I hope I can overcome my unhappiness past and start a new journey.