Status, Money, and Heritage: Arranged Marriages Today
To its sophisticated Western readers, Junichiro Tanizaki’s The Makioka Sisters presents a culture saturated with foreign traditions and exotic customs. The very plot of the novel is centered on one such seemingly exotic custom, arranged marriage, specifically the arranged marriage of Yukiko Makioka by her family. What could be more contrary to our twenty-first century views of individualism than the replacement of the demands of love with the wholly unromantic practicalities of finances, family name, and communal interests? One of the great pleasures in reading the The Makioka Sisters is that this very Japanese novel gives us the opportunity to reconsider our widely held notions about marriage and the ideal of “falling in love.”
In its portrayal of the struggle of the Makioka family to arrange a proper marriage for Yukiko, Tanizaki’s novel demystifies typical Western ideas about the process, including the assumption that the bride’s point of view is largely irrelevant. On the contrary, in The Makioka Sisters, Yukiko plays an active role in the selection of possible husbands. Throughout the novel, Yukiko and her family interview possible suitors to decide whether or not a suitable match might be made. At one point in the story, Yukiko single-handedly scares away a suitor despite her family’s efforts to put her in a favorable light, by refusing to go on a walk alone with the man. Her older sister Sachiko is mortified, but can doing nothing to force the match. Though she is pushing thirty and her younger sister cannot marry until she is engaged, there will be no marriage without Yukiko’s approval.
Even as The Makioka Sisters provides insight into Japanese courtship rituals, it reveals to us our own. While it may seem that Americans are free to choose partners, most Americans are conditioned to choose a mate of a similar social standing and socioeconomic background. Children are enrolled in daycares and schools with children from similar families, and young people are sent to summer camps to befriend children with similar interests. A survey by Ken Steele, senior vice president for education marketing at the Academia Group, Inc. found that the “recommendations of friends and parents [play] a strong role in influencing college choices.” While “recommendations” are not expressly “arrangements,” the unconscious tendency to surround oneself with likeminded and family-approved people works in much the same manner as the interview process in The Makioka Sisters.
Additionally, the interview process in the novel has parallels in American dating traditions and courtship rituals, particularly regarding what qualities are sought as the basis for marriage relationships. The advent of dating websites such as eHarmony.com, Match.com, and Chemistry.com allows single adults to sift through thousands of prospective mates looking for desirable characteristics and similar value systems. The site eHarmony.com requires users to fill-out a questionnaire and claims to match users based on twenty-nine areas of compatibility, including values and beliefs, emotional temperament, family background, family status, and education. What is this, if not a modern form of a marriage arrangement? According to eHarmony.com, “an average of 236 eHarmony members marry every day in the United States as a result of being matched on the site.” Ironically, this Westernized dating service relies upon such categories as level of education, income and temperament, many of the exact same qualities the Makioka family takes into account when considering a spouse for Yukiko.
While Western engagements do not require a formal meeting of the bride and groom’s family before marriage can take place, American couples generally seek the approval of friends and family before seriously pursuing a potential love interest. The meeting of a potential mate’s family is seen as a major step in most American relationships. The family meeting, while usually lacking the formality and pressure of a Japanese miai, serves to introduce a possible partner to family members in order to determine social compatibility. According to a study by Rutgers University, “the most likely way to find a future marriage partner is through an introduction by family, friends, or acquaintances.” Much like the miai of The Makioka Sisters, the meeting of a mate through friends and family works to ensure that spouses come from the same class. So, while most Americans may not actively participate in “arranged marriages,” the parallels between the arranged marriages in The Makioka Sisters and American traditions of courtship cannot be ignored. What may seem most foreign in the novel, then, the practice of arranged marriage, actually finds a modified double in a large segment of American society.
--Shreese Williams and Ashley Clark, UWF Students
Professor of English
