細雪 上

by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, 谷崎潤一郎, 林永福 (Translator)

蒔岡家姊妹們的四季比其他人更像夢境。春日盛裝，讓粉淚櫻雪墜落於髮鬢與袖口，或在夏夜撲捉流螢，如金色時光消逝在蒼白的指端——傳統之美是同徐徐打開的摺扇，拂來芬芳稀微的風。那些端莊的儀式、姿容與用語，正是對於舊日世界的回眸，如金鷓鴣，在硝煙與沙塵中拖長了反光的尾羽。活在新舊文化交替之處，這種美麗，以及對美麗的堅守，完全是奢侈。還有什麼比瀕臨崩潰的優雅更為燦爛的？《細雪》正是以無窮細節堆積起來的，懸崖貴族平金織錦的長篇畫軸。

西元一九三〇、四〇年代，隨著日本經濟的繁盛，大阪的經商世家在蘆屋地區落土扎根，這群上流世族奉持著傳統開懷擁抱新式文化，過著東西交雜的綺麗生活。大阪船場家的蒔岡姊妹便是帶著傳統優勢，展開她們的豐富人生。二姊幸子於結婚後與丈夫搬至蘆屋，與大姊鶴子丈夫不合的三妹雪子、么妹妙子在本家與二姊蘆屋家交替居住。幸子與丈夫貞之助與女兒悅子，是令人欣羨的模範家庭，同時也是妹妹們的最佳避風港。幸福人妻幸子眼見雪子已過適婚年齡，與丈夫兩人積極為其物色合適對象，而另一方面妙子飛蛾撲火的愛情也讓家人們頭痛，生怕蜚短流長影響雪子的婚姻之路，故事便在雪子一次次的相親中展開……

Genres: Japan, Japanese Literature, Fiction

384 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1948

About the author

Jun'ichirō Tanizaki (谷崎 潤一郎) was a Japanese author, and one of the major writers of modern Japanese literature, 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, 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.

Reviews

[Tocotin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is "The Makioka Sisters" which I read for our Japanese literature book club. It's been a hectic month for me so I didn't have that much time and managed to read only the first volume in June.

It was totally different from any other Tanizaki books I've read: the style, the characters and the themes. It's basically a soap opera written for a magazine and it shows, in a funny way. It's about the lives of four sisters of a wealthy Osaka merchant family, where every sister has a distinctly different personality, quite obviously to provide every type of reader with someone to identify with, so there is the preoccupied and busy housewife Tsuruko blessed with a lot of children, the strong and youthful Sachiko who has just one sickly daughter and wants more, the delicate and sad Yukiko who has no luck with finding a husband, and the modern girl Taeko who loves Western fashion. Tanizaki writes about them in a detail-heavy, gossipy style, and there is some stuff which feels repetitive to me, but he's great at describing characters, and actually I was less interested in the sisters and more in the supporting characters, like the men who wanted to marry Yukiko, or the ladies who visited Sachiko when she was sick. To my surprise I found Yukiko to be my favorite sister. She seems secretive, submissive and supposedly passive, but actually I think she doesn't care if she finds a husband or not, she wants to be left alone, but she realizes it can't be, so she's doing whatever the tradition and the family tells her to, but she doesn't help them in any way and it's quite funny to watch how she makes them run around in circles lol.

I didn't like the ostentatious declarations about some things and behaviors being 'more Japanese' and therefore better than others ("if you don't love sea bream, you're not wholly Japanese"), and all this sentimental flower-watching business; way too forceful for my taste, and hey, where was all the erotic stuff? Tanizaki without his erotic obsessions is just not himself, too sugary, too bland. There were some nasty nationalistic undertones as well (the mention about the Korean ladies in the park - I don't know how it was worded in English, but in Japanese they were just "the ladies from the Peninsula [uh huh] in Korean dresses". Seriously wtf?

BUT THE BIGGEST BAD THING WAS ALL THE KANTO BASHING. TANIZAKI YOU TRAITOR YOU WERE BORN IN NIHONBASHI. WHAT IS WITH THE HEAVY SUCK UP TO THE KAMIGATA PEOPLE? SAYING THEY ARE 'REALLY JAPANESE' AS OPPOSED TO THE TOKYO PEOPLE? SAYING THEIR DIALECT IS 浅ましい WHICH MEANS 'FLAT'? HOW LOW AND DISGUSTING IS THAT?

It's a good book though. Hur hur. Proceeding to read book 2.

[Morris Yen · Rating 4 out of 5]

故事的鋪陳蠻廣的，不過尚未發現特別之處。
期待「下」本。

[HK · Rating 1 out of 5]

翻譯語句不通，錯字連篇，連名字都能寫錯。
如果您需要提升自己學日文的動機，本書是上上之選。

[Janice]

I only see decline and decay. No beauty.Working class people go cherry blossom seeing and catch fireflies too, you know.