Books: “The Makioka Sisters” by Junichiro Tanizaki

A saga of an old Osaka family, declining in prestige and fortune, as they try to marry off two of the younger four sisters. Much like a Jane Austen story of scandal, prejudice and happy endings set in Japan.The sisters’ very virtues are used against them in the post Meiji-era society, leaving them decidedly “old fashioned.” The story and the sisters’ lifestyle unfold at a decadently luxurious pace in our twitter-addled time; with one hundred pages left of the five hundred page novel, the status quo is the same; both younger sisters remain unmarried with only time passing.

It remains a beautifully woven tale of the old Osaka life – its dances, its haikus, and always the deciding of what kimono to wear during cherry blossom season.

“In the fields, the poppy was a pretty enough flower, but the single poppy in the alcove was somehow repulsive. You felt as thought you were being ‘sucked up inside it.’”

“A firefly hunt has none of the radiance of a cherry-blossom party. Dark, dreamy, rather – might one say? Perhaps something of the child’s world, the world of the fairy story in it. Something not to be painted. But set to music, the mood of it taken up on piano or koto.”