ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY
BOOK CLUB & FILM SPECIAL

Sunday, 17 May, 2015

Melange Oasis, Jiashan Market

The Makioka Sisters

Book Club 4:00- 5:30 pm

Film 6:00- 8:00 pm

Entrance Fee: RMB 20 (RAS members) and RMB 50 (non-members) Film free for those who attend Book Club discussion.

If you are unable to make the entrance donation but wish to attend please request exemption when registering for this event.

RSVP: bookevents@royalasiaticsociety.org.cn

Reservations essential as space is limited for this event. Membership applications and renewals are available at this event.

The Book: The Makioka Sisters (Sasameyuki 細雪) By Jinichiro Tanizaki (1946-1948)

Translated from the Japanese by Edward G. Seidensticker, (1957)

(Goodreads)

In Osaka in the years immediately before World War II, four aristocratic sisters try to preserve a way of life that is vanishing. As told by Junichiro Tanizaki, the story of the Makioka sisters forms what is arguably the greatest Japanese novel of the 20th century, a poignant yet unsparing portrait of a family and an entire society sliding into the abyss of modernity.

Tsuruko, the eldest sister, clings obstinately to the prestige of her family name even as her husband prepares to move their household to Tokyo, where the family name means nothing. Sachiko compromises valiantly to secure the future of her younger sisters. The unmarried Yukiko is a hostage to her family’s exacting standards, while the spirited Taeko rebels by flinging herself into scandalous romantic alliances.  Filled with vignettes of upper-class Japanese life and capturing both the decorum and the heartache of its protagonist, The Makioka Sisters is a classic of international literature.

The novel's title, Sasameyuki, means lightly falling snow. The image suggests falling cherry blossoms in early spring. Falling cherry blossoms are a common symbol of impermanence, a prevalent theme of the novel. These nuances do not translate well into English. The translator, Edward Seidensticker, struggled over the title. Translations like “Fine Snow” and “Snow Flurries” do not convey the elegance or layers of meaning in the Japanese title.

Sasameyuki has been translated into at least 14 languages including into English by Edward G. Seidensticker as The Makioka Sisters.

About the author: Jinichiro Tanizaki (Goodreads)

Jun'ichiro Tanizaki (谷崎 潤一郎) (1886-1965) was a Japanese author, one of the major writers of modern Japanese literature, and perhaps the most popular Japanese novelist after Natsume Sōseki.

Some of his works present a rather shocking world of sexuality and destructive erotic obsessions; others, less sensational (The Makioka Sisters for example) subtly portray the dynamics of family life in the context of the rapid changes in 20th-century Japanese society.

Frequently his stories are narrated in the context of a search for cultural identity in which constructions of “the West” and “Japanese tradition” are juxtaposed. The results are complex, ironic, demure, and provocative.

Tanizaki was born in Tokyo. After the Great 1923 Kantō earthquake and fire, which destroyed Tokyo, Tanizaki settled permanently in the Osaka area. Many of the characters and events in The Makioka Sisters are loosely based on real people and events in that area.

About the translator: Edward G. Seidensticker

Edward George Seidensticker (1921 – 2007) was a noted scholar and translator of Japanese literature. He was particularly known for his English version of The Tale of Genji (1976), which is counted among the preferred modern translations. He is also well known for his landmark translations of Yasunari Kawabata, which led to Kawabata's winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1968.

About the film producer/director: Kon Ichikawa (New York Times obituary 02/14/2008)

Kon Ichikawa (1915-2008) is best known in the West for his antiwar films “The Burmese Harp” (1956) and “Fires on the Plain” (1959). His career spanned 60 years during which he directed hugely profitable thrillers, cartoons, black comedies, documentaries and literary adaptations.

Mr. Ichikawa’s career reached what many consider its high point when Americans were streaming to art-cinema houses in the 1950s and ’60s to see movies by emerging masters like Ingmar Bergman. In those years some critics rated Mr. Ichikawa on a level with Akira Kurosawa.

In 2001 the Toronto-based Globe and Mail called him “the last living link between the golden age of Japanese cinema, the spunky New Wave that followed and contemporary Japanese film.”