Symbolism in The Makioka Sisters

Let's look at all the odd things happening to the eponymous Makioka Sisters in Junichiro Tanizaki's novel: they live through a horrendous rainstorm and flood in their Osaka suburb during which the youngest sister is almost swept to her death in a torrent and hter brother-in-law risks his life trying to find and rescue her; Japan is at war with China (this is the late 1930s) which creates shortages and business failures and their next-door neighbors (a German family, the Stolzes) have to leave Japan and return home; the sisters and the daughter of sister #2 are suffering from weird maladies, such as vitamin shortages, and they repeatedly give one another injections of vitamin B and they take the daughter out of school for what seems to be weeks for her to see a specialist in Tokyo; the oldest sister, forced to relocate to Tokyo because her husband has a new job in banking, is living in a house far to small for their six (!) children and the parents (and 2 servants), and the house literally almost blows to the ground during a typhoon. I could go on - but it's obvious to all readers that their world is falling apart around them, they are no longer a prosperous family, the nation is in crisis - yet their continue to try to maintain and live by the code of various traditions, most notably keeping the youngest from marrying until her older sister marries and engaging in elaborate courtship rituals involving formal meetings and detailed background checks, which seem to be making it impossible for daughter #3 (Yochiko) to find a husband - and for that matter she seems to be afraid of marriage (and possible of sex?). JT is not one to write w/ heavy symbolism - this was a serialized novel (1943-48) and he was obviously trying to make the novel popular and accessible, much like a soap or a miniseries today, but we have to see the sisters as emblematic of an old and privileged way of life that is being crushed - much like their flimsy houses in the typhoon and the flood  - by the forces of modernism, nationalism, isolationism, militarism, and - perhaps, depending on how JT treats the alliance w/ Nazi Germany - racism.