Is it possible for a Japanese novel from 1948 to avoid the subject of Hiroshima!

It's by no means an action-packed or even eventful novel, but in its slow pace Junichiro Tanizaki's The Makioka Sisters has a certain charm and fascination: For the first 100 or so pp it seems we're watching a tightly wound, conservative, traditional Japanese family circa 1940 as they try to maintain the social order in which they've been raised: the 4 sisters are so committed to tradition that they to countenance the idea that the youngest sister could possibly marry ahead of her older sister (Yuchiko, sister #3); since the youngest - the most modern, artistic, and unconventional of the 4 sisters - has a serious love interest, the pressure is on to find a husband for Yuchiko, but the sisters are completely committed to the complex traditions of matchmaking: a recommendation from an intermediary (who will be rewarded if the match occurs), an arrange formal meeting, research by both families to ascertain the suitability of the match. What we see from the outset is the that M family is very picky - no match is good enough for Yuchiko (one suitor has a mother suffering from dementia - no good; another has something like Tourette's Syndrome - cross him off the list, and so on). The effect on Y is predictable, and here the novel begins to get interesting: She suffers from a # of physical and psychological ailments, she withdraws from the family; sent to live w/ the oldest sister who has just relocated to Tokyo - a big trauma and disruption in the family dynamics - Y spends time in her room, alone. It's obvious that she doens't really want to get married - but why, and what will her fate be? Similarly, the daughter of sister #2 begins to have strange symptoms, perhaps life-threatening. This is all played out in a minor key, but I think what JT is getting at is the dissolution of a way of life under the pressures of modernism, Westernism in particular. Japan seems to be entering the modern age, and the nation is developing an aggressive, militant stance: There is talk of a war with China, in fact. As the world moves forward, the sisters and their way of life seems increasingly antiquated, even absurd. The big question is to what extent JT will put Japanese militarism in the forefront in the 2nd and 3rd volumes of the novel; is it possible for a serious Japanese writer publishing a serial novel from 1043-48 to ignore the attack on Hiroshima/Nagasaki and the end of the imperial government? Only in a nostalgic novel, which this does not seem to be.