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家 [Ie]
上巻 pp. 1-422
下巻 pp. 423-897
下巻 pp. 423-897
897 pages, Paperback
First published November 4, 1911
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
October 1, 2013
"'Shota, shall I write about you? I feel like writing about your life.'
'Go ahead. By all means, please write, whether it's about the good or
the bad,'"
Toson, trailblazer for those Japanese naturalists - Katai Tayama appears in this very briefly - writes about the sad decline of two middle class families; his own led by his elder brother, and his elder sister's, led by her husband. We focus on a young writer - a fictional Shimazaki Toson - and his efforts to forge a life of his own, whilst all the time managing the decline of those around him. His nephew, Shota, and his particular hardships form a strong part of the narrative, particularly the second half.
"'You know, I'm beginning to wonder whether it's really a good thing for us to spend our lives helping relatives.'"
Fictional Shimazaki Toson's writing supports most members of the family
through difficult times. It seems that none of the rest of them have the brains to make the price of a packet of tea. Worse, the heads of the families like to lavish cash on expensive geisha. Borrowing to support his siblings and their children and refusing to compromise and accept a lucrative but less creative avenue for his talents, fictional Shimazaki Toson's three young daughters succumb to the hardship. They all die in 1906, one after the other, starting with the youngest. It's really very sad.
"The Koizumi daughters grew like young grass in the midst of the
degeneration and decline that had overtaken the house."
His brothers' daughters thrive (well ... survive, for the most part)
and, while his wife's away, fictional Shimazaki Toson falls quite hard
for one of them. Scandalous! Crisis is averted when his wife returns.
"'This is no life. Everything is just floating.'"
There's a very sad end, which I won't ruin for you. But you can have a
good long cry, which is a bit awkward if it's during the lunch
hour at work.
It's rather a disjointed affair, but feels incredibly sincere and
truthful. Fictional Shimazaki Toson's peccadilloes and the frank
accounts of his relationship with his wife often made me think of old Kenzaburō Ōe. In particular, there's a scene where fictional Shimazaki Toson returns to the village of his ancestors and it felt like fictional Oe Kenzaburo's return to the Ehime village in The Silent Cry.
There's lots here, too, for those interested in Japan at the turn of the last century. Although Toson has kept his story removed from
international and even national affairs - there's only one slight
reference to the Russo-Japanese War - there's lots of interesting stuff
about how people lived their lives. There was (is?) a different tea that you drink for an auspicious departure. It was usual to bring a child's body back from the hospital in a rickshaw. Vendors sold "warm milk" on Tokyo street corners (gag). Muscular young men carried travellers through the surf to board their ferries. Other bits I liked:
Shota's sister has a learning disability and Toyose, Fictional Shimazaki Toson's wife, loses her in Tokyo:
"'If she were lost for good, I was ready to beat the daylights out of
Toyose.'
Toyose turned her back and wiped her tears. "Of course. If Osen hadn't
come home, I was going to kill myself."
"Morihiko had been looking at Otane's [his sister's] profile for some
time. 'How about that!' he exclaimed. 'She's still thinking about sex,
at her age!' he said bluntly, cutting to the truth of the matter. They
all burst out laughing and looked at Otane.
'Yes, I am. Of course I am!' she retorted sulkily in an angry tone."
'Go ahead. By all means, please write, whether it's about the good or
the bad,'"
Toson, trailblazer for those Japanese naturalists - Katai Tayama appears in this very briefly - writes about the sad decline of two middle class families; his own led by his elder brother, and his elder sister's, led by her husband. We focus on a young writer - a fictional Shimazaki Toson - and his efforts to forge a life of his own, whilst all the time managing the decline of those around him. His nephew, Shota, and his particular hardships form a strong part of the narrative, particularly the second half.
"'You know, I'm beginning to wonder whether it's really a good thing for us to spend our lives helping relatives.'"
Fictional Shimazaki Toson's writing supports most members of the family
through difficult times. It seems that none of the rest of them have the brains to make the price of a packet of tea. Worse, the heads of the families like to lavish cash on expensive geisha. Borrowing to support his siblings and their children and refusing to compromise and accept a lucrative but less creative avenue for his talents, fictional Shimazaki Toson's three young daughters succumb to the hardship. They all die in 1906, one after the other, starting with the youngest. It's really very sad.
"The Koizumi daughters grew like young grass in the midst of the
degeneration and decline that had overtaken the house."
His brothers' daughters thrive (well ... survive, for the most part)
and, while his wife's away, fictional Shimazaki Toson falls quite hard
for one of them. Scandalous! Crisis is averted when his wife returns.
"'This is no life. Everything is just floating.'"
There's a very sad end, which I won't ruin for you. But you can have a
good long cry, which is a bit awkward if it's during the lunch
hour at work.
It's rather a disjointed affair, but feels incredibly sincere and
truthful. Fictional Shimazaki Toson's peccadilloes and the frank
accounts of his relationship with his wife often made me think of old Kenzaburō Ōe. In particular, there's a scene where fictional Shimazaki Toson returns to the village of his ancestors and it felt like fictional Oe Kenzaburo's return to the Ehime village in The Silent Cry.
There's lots here, too, for those interested in Japan at the turn of the last century. Although Toson has kept his story removed from
international and even national affairs - there's only one slight
reference to the Russo-Japanese War - there's lots of interesting stuff
about how people lived their lives. There was (is?) a different tea that you drink for an auspicious departure. It was usual to bring a child's body back from the hospital in a rickshaw. Vendors sold "warm milk" on Tokyo street corners (gag). Muscular young men carried travellers through the surf to board their ferries. Other bits I liked:
Shota's sister has a learning disability and Toyose, Fictional Shimazaki Toson's wife, loses her in Tokyo:
"'If she were lost for good, I was ready to beat the daylights out of
Toyose.'
Toyose turned her back and wiped her tears. "Of course. If Osen hadn't
come home, I was going to kill myself."
"Morihiko had been looking at Otane's [his sister's] profile for some
time. 'How about that!' he exclaimed. 'She's still thinking about sex,
at her age!' he said bluntly, cutting to the truth of the matter. They
all burst out laughing and looked at Otane.
'Yes, I am. Of course I am!' she retorted sulkily in an angry tone."
February 23, 2017
It all comes down to money, doesn't it?
November 4, 2025
Binge reviewing my best-read specimens of Japanese literature of all time.
There’s a peculiar stillness to The Family (Ie), as if Tōson wrote it while standing at the edge of history, watching both the old Japan and his own bloodline dissolve into the mist. Published in 1910, it reads like a lament, an elegy, and an act of self-exorcism all at once.
Where The Broken Commandment grappled with public morality, The Family turns inward — into the domestic and the ancestral, tracing how private tragedy mirrors national transformation.
The story revolves around the Koizumi family, whose slow unraveling becomes an emblem for the moral and emotional cost of modernity. The patriarch dies, debts accumulate, children scatter — and what remains is the quiet desolation of those left behind to make sense of their inheritance. At its heart is the tension between the past’s burdens and the individual’s yearning to be free from them.
Tōson’s narrative unfolds with an almost documentary precision. He observes the Koizumis’ decline not with melodrama but with an anthropologist’s compassion — the rituals of mourning, the silent shame of poverty, the shrinking of a household once anchored by tradition. Yet beneath this realism lies something molten: guilt.
That guilt isn’t just filial; it’s authorial. The Family is semi-autobiographical — Tōson was writing out of his own losses and scandals, especially his sense of having failed his parents and siblings. The act of writing becomes, in itself, a kind of purification — an attempt to understand how families fracture under the pressures of pride, secrecy, and change.
His prose is remarkably transparent — lucid, restrained, yet swollen with emotion just beneath the surface. It captures that peculiarly Japanese blend of stoicism and sentimentality, the sense that life’s tragedies are not to be conquered but borne with grace. The Meiji world he portrays is both expanding and collapsing: modernisation promises liberation but delivers alienation.
What lingers most is the book’s sense of inherited melancholy. The family, as an institution, feels less like a refuge than a fate — something one must both love and escape. In the Koizumis’ dissolution, you glimpse Japan’s own metamorphosis: the household (ie) giving way to the self, tradition cracking under the weight of individuality.
Tōson’s genius lies in his refusal to romanticize either. He lets the pain stand as it is — stark, unsmoothed, dignified.
Why should you read this book today?
Because The Family speaks to anyone who has felt both devotion and exhaustion toward their own roots. It’s a novel for an age that’s constantly redefining “home” — where migration, ambition, and emotional distance have turned family into something fluid, even fragile.
In our hypermodern moment, when connection often feels performative, Tōson’s portrait of familial disintegration feels eerily relevant. It reminds us that every generation carries its ghosts, that progress often demands mourning. Reading it today feels like being reminded — gently but firmly — that no technology, no new ideology, can fully sever the invisible threads of ancestry.
What impact did the book have on me?
It broke something open in me. The quiet dignity with which the Koizumis endure their unraveling made me think of my own family — its unspoken debts, its small acts of endurance. I realized how easily love hides beneath silence, and how sorrow often becomes the glue that holds people together.
Tōson didn’t just show me a collapsing family; he showed me the poetry within collapse itself. When I finished the novel, I found myself calling home — not out of guilt, but gratitude. The book left me softer, more aware of the invisible sacrifices that shape every lineage.
Classic. Try it by all means.
There’s a peculiar stillness to The Family (Ie), as if Tōson wrote it while standing at the edge of history, watching both the old Japan and his own bloodline dissolve into the mist. Published in 1910, it reads like a lament, an elegy, and an act of self-exorcism all at once.
Where The Broken Commandment grappled with public morality, The Family turns inward — into the domestic and the ancestral, tracing how private tragedy mirrors national transformation.
The story revolves around the Koizumi family, whose slow unraveling becomes an emblem for the moral and emotional cost of modernity. The patriarch dies, debts accumulate, children scatter — and what remains is the quiet desolation of those left behind to make sense of their inheritance. At its heart is the tension between the past’s burdens and the individual’s yearning to be free from them.
Tōson’s narrative unfolds with an almost documentary precision. He observes the Koizumis’ decline not with melodrama but with an anthropologist’s compassion — the rituals of mourning, the silent shame of poverty, the shrinking of a household once anchored by tradition. Yet beneath this realism lies something molten: guilt.
That guilt isn’t just filial; it’s authorial. The Family is semi-autobiographical — Tōson was writing out of his own losses and scandals, especially his sense of having failed his parents and siblings. The act of writing becomes, in itself, a kind of purification — an attempt to understand how families fracture under the pressures of pride, secrecy, and change.
His prose is remarkably transparent — lucid, restrained, yet swollen with emotion just beneath the surface. It captures that peculiarly Japanese blend of stoicism and sentimentality, the sense that life’s tragedies are not to be conquered but borne with grace. The Meiji world he portrays is both expanding and collapsing: modernisation promises liberation but delivers alienation.
What lingers most is the book’s sense of inherited melancholy. The family, as an institution, feels less like a refuge than a fate — something one must both love and escape. In the Koizumis’ dissolution, you glimpse Japan’s own metamorphosis: the household (ie) giving way to the self, tradition cracking under the weight of individuality.
Tōson’s genius lies in his refusal to romanticize either. He lets the pain stand as it is — stark, unsmoothed, dignified.
Why should you read this book today?
Because The Family speaks to anyone who has felt both devotion and exhaustion toward their own roots. It’s a novel for an age that’s constantly redefining “home” — where migration, ambition, and emotional distance have turned family into something fluid, even fragile.
In our hypermodern moment, when connection often feels performative, Tōson’s portrait of familial disintegration feels eerily relevant. It reminds us that every generation carries its ghosts, that progress often demands mourning. Reading it today feels like being reminded — gently but firmly — that no technology, no new ideology, can fully sever the invisible threads of ancestry.
What impact did the book have on me?
It broke something open in me. The quiet dignity with which the Koizumis endure their unraveling made me think of my own family — its unspoken debts, its small acts of endurance. I realized how easily love hides beneath silence, and how sorrow often becomes the glue that holds people together.
Tōson didn’t just show me a collapsing family; he showed me the poetry within collapse itself. When I finished the novel, I found myself calling home — not out of guilt, but gratitude. The book left me softer, more aware of the invisible sacrifices that shape every lineage.
Classic. Try it by all means.
December 3, 2023
It is a very interesting book. I had to read it for a class, so I wouldn’t normally have chosen it myself but after some time I was really invested in the story. I highly recommend to read the 33 pages before the actual story, those 33 pages are about the family history of shimazaki touson and other things. I highly recommend the book for fans of the shishosetsu genre or fans of naturalism. But still it’s a very hard read!
December 25, 2020
Such a heavy book. After learning that the story is based off his life I can understand that it must of partially been written as a form of grieving. Trying to find meaning in death. And condemn the family for their complicity in it due to their unwillingness to change.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews