Why The Makioka Sisters is more than a soap opera in prose

Crisis for the four sisters in Junichi Tanizaki's The Makioka Sisters (1943-48) as, following the death of the young photographer Ikaburo (?), the youngest sister, Taeko, aka Koi-san, has begun surreptitious visits to her Okabata, aka Kei-boy, who was her former love interest and now is emerging as a serious potential husband. But the older sisters are disturbed by Taeko's blatant scorning of convention and flaunting her independence and, in their view, amorality - visiting Okabata in his home, even at night! The sisters are not really sure what to do as, on the one hand, Okabata might make a good match for Takeko - he's profligate, but wealthy - yet there's always the issue of daughter #3, Yochiko: Taeko can't marry until her holder sister is married. The sisters write to sister #1, Tsuruko, who lives apart from the other 3 w/ her husband and 6 children in a crowded house in Tokyo and who is horrified by Taeko's behavior and demands - easy for her to do from afar - that Taeko break off relations w/ the unsuitable Kei-boy. Taeko decides to leave home (she's in her 20s, by the way). Meanwhile there has been yet another marriage inquiry regarding the beautiful but morbidly shy and physically weak Yochiko - this time from a very wealthy widower; after the clumsily arranged meet-up, the miai in Japanese, the man (Sawazaki) sends a brief not to the intermediary that says sorry, no longer interested. This is another blow to the pride of the M sisters, as up to now it had always been the sisters who rejected the potential suitors; now the shoe is on the other foot. Perhaps Yochiko's time has passed? All this to give you a sense of the soap-opera qualities of this novel - I have to believe it has been adopted for TV or screen somewhere, and you can see how it was popular as a serial novel in Japan in its time - but there's much more to the novel that the goings-on; it's really a portrait of a segment of Japanese society in decline set against the backdrop, only just barely sketched in (for example, a passage of one of the characters admiring the diamond-like designs seen around Tokyo at this time - obviously, swastikas) of Japan heading toward an alliance w/ the hateful German regime and near-total devastation in the war. It's in the tradition of Buddenbrooks, Gone with the Wind though without the romance, and even perhaps War and Peace though without the war.