The Makioka Sisters

Jul 23, 2025 8:39 PM

Author:Junichiro Tanizaki

The Makioka Sisters

Tanizaki's masterpiece is the story of four sisters, and the declining fortunes of a traditional Japanese family. It is a loving and nostalgic recreation of the sumptuous, intricate upper-class life of Osaka immediately before World War Two. With surgical precision, Tanizaki lays bare the sinews of pride, and brings a vanished era to vibrant life.

Reviews

Exquisite craftsmanship

—— Guardian

An exquisite novel about four sisters living though a turbulent decade, during the Forties and Fifties, I'd put it in the 10 greatest books of the 20th century

—— David Mitchell , Daily Express

A complex, detailed and agreeably gossipy book...The author's obvious nostalgia for this vanished world does not prevent him from looking objectively at its darker side and this, together with his artful blend of the exotic and the mundane, creates an absorbing and richly textured story

—— Sunday Times

A subtle, moving novel

—— The Times

A classic novel of a whole country about to turn on the terrible hinge of the war into modernity; its tone is elegiac and bleak

—— Observer

The work of Tanizaki offers to us in the West one of the most valuable keys to understanding the Japanese crisis of identity

—— Independent

An extraordinary book which can truly be said to break new ground

—— New Yorker

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