Giving the lie to our cliched notion of the Japanese family: Kawabata

As Yasumari Kawabata's 1950s novel "The Sound of the Mountain" moves along we become ever more aware of the incredible tensions and repressions in the postwar Japanese family: in this family, the patriarch, Shingo, obviously does not care for either of his children, is pretty cold and indifferent to his wife (thinks nothing of asking the young secretary in the office to go dancing with him or of spending time with a so-called Geisha - a whole other story, told a few times since the 1950s obviously, would be from the point of view of these minor characters, the office girl or the geisha, about why they feel compelled to spend any time outside the office with the lecherous old man) - the only one he cares for is his daughter-in-law, Kikuyo (sp?), and why is that? Because she continues to cater to his every need and whim, doesnn't complain about his son/her philandering husband, and perhaps on a psychological level because she has no children - making her seem more "available" to him in his fantasies. We have the cliched notion of the Japanese family with its reverence for elders and extreme politeness to the point of repression and beyond - and this quite contemporary-feeling novel gives the lie to all that, the family seething with anxiety and drowning in hypocrisy.