Faced with Tanizaki's Sasame Yuki (The Makioka Sisters), popular criticism has tried to find Western analogues for the techniques and themes of this major Japanese novel. Because it deals with bourgeois life and with humdrum events of human existence, because it finally results in a seemingly broad view of society, it is called a naturalistic novel. (pp. 19-20)

[While] Sasame Yuki does have characteristics in common with a French tradition, these are minor and it is Murasaki's Tale of Genji, a courtly romance, that is the immediate model for Sasame Yuki. The fact that Tanizaki interrupted work on a modern translation of Genji to write a chronicle of the Makiokas is significant, particularly when several of his novels are compared. It becomes clear that Tanizaki's quest is not for a duplication of reality, in the Zola manner, but it is a quest for ideal beauty, embodied in ancient...