ŷ������

My 'better late than never' review.

Several weeks ago, I put out a request for a recommendation of a good Japanese book to read. My good friend Marita immediately popped up with The Makioka Sisters. This recommendation was seconded by friend Silvia Cachia. I read their reviews and ordered the book, then forgot about it.

Then I became frustrated with the slowness of my current reading choices and complained on GR that I felt like I was stuck in a bog. Friend Travelin piped in with, "Go random." On my way out the door, I ran into the mailman who handed me a package from The Book Depository (no endorsement intended). That struck me as pretty "random". I had several books on order.

So here I am. An excellent novel. Extremely well written and translated. The story moves along well and at times is positively captivating.

I got my thoughts together and sat down to write what I hoped would be a pretty good review based on the fact that I loved the book and had written a few notes while reading the book. But then I read my friend Ilse's review. It looked a little familiar. Of course, there was the review I wanted to write. But it was better than anything that I could have written. It had all of my ideas but so much more, much, much more. And the writing was wonderful. And she had added beautiful pictures (I would love to have Fireflies up on my wall in my reading room.). She even had what I thought were brilliant references to Jane Austin and Thomas Mann which I had planned to use as an opener to my review. So if you want to read what I think of The Makioka Sisters, read Ilse's brilliant review and think that somewhere in that glowing brilliance are a few embers that would have been my review.

BUT WAIT, I would like to tell you a little about what this book brought to mind while I was reading it (if you're not already reading Ilse's review).

Yes the book is about that favourite subject of earlier Japanese writers, cultural change and its efforts on individuals. I love the theme and will continue to read these books. What struck me about The Makioka Sisters was that the story was strongly centred on an extended family and its struggles with that change. And, despite the fact that it was about a Japanese family in the mid 1940s, a few years before my appearance on this planet, I empathized, I understood and I related what I read to my own experiences.

Today, with our ever changing technology and constant pressures, financial, political and consumer, we see our young often floundering off in directions that deeply offend us. And yet, speaking for myself at least, we are, like Sachiko, who finds herself in the role of guardian of the values, weak and ineffective. Finally, again like Sachiko, we accept a hollow spectre of what we once held to be sacred.

Those values that we have tried to defend in families as parents, and even as children, have so little basis. They are nothing but conventions of our society and, for all of the Sturm und Drang we experience, in the final analysis, we are left worn and torn but still intact no matter what is left of our values.

Perhaps, as in the Makioka Sisters, we are best off to let those family values go in the name of maintaining the family.

I have recently gone through yet another family crisis with yet another deeply held value going the way of the passenger pigeon. In the final analysis, the family is magically still firmly together held that way by mutual love and caring. I cannot really expect more in our ever changing world. The option of fighting for the value and splintering the family is unacceptable.