Potential clashes of cultures in Tanizaki's Makioka Sisters

Corection to yesterday's post on Junichiro Tanizaki's three-book novel, The Makioka Sisters: The setting is either the late 1930s or early 1940s in Japan (Osaka and nearby) - as I should have noted from the use of taxicabs and a few other details. That said, some of the puzzlement I expressed yesterday still stands, stands stronger in fact. What JT is presenting in this novel is the last vestige of formal Japanese society and values: reverence for the elders, strict protocol regarding matchmaking, absolute requirement that the sisters (4 of them) get married in birth order (2 are already married and most of the action, such as it is, in book 1 involves the efforts to marry sister #3, especially important as sister # 4, the rebellious and artistic one, has a serious love interest but she's holding off on marriage in respect for the tradition. Through much of book 1, we see several matchmaking arrangements - an intermediary brings the two families together, they plan a formal meeting in a public space such as a restaurant, both sides engage in extensive research, as for a job applicant or a security clearance - I guess it makes sense but it seems so antiquated, and I suppose it was already somewhat antiquated when JT was writing and publishing - this work appeared serially from 1943 - 48. And there you see the other peculiarity, which I mentioned yesterday: we see the old traditions but JT does not generate any sparks by clashing it against the new ways of the "modern" world, and there is no reference to the events leading up to Japan's disastrous and shameful participation in WW2. There are hints: the Makioka sisters become friendly with a Russian family, emigres from the Communist takeover of Russia some 2 decades back, and on of the daughers/nieces plays with the children of a neighboring family, the Stolzes - and what Germans are doing in Japan in the late 30s is not yet made clear. So there's a bit of a sense of Japan's being open to interaction w/ foreign powers, being a little more culturally international that I'd have imagined (the sisters talk about going out for Chinese food, for example) - but JT is subtle about these relationships and tensions, perhaps too subtle. The first volume flows along pretty well, as you;d imagine for serialized work in the popular press, but so much is left unsaid or unexamined that it's hard to know whether to treat this novel as more than a storyboard for a soap opera; I suspect and expect and hope that it will develop more depth as it moves along, as this has been touted as one of the great works of modern Japanese literature, but so far - about 80 pp in - it's pretty flat.