anartistofthefloatingworld-blog

[anartistofthefloatingworld-blog]

An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro- Reactions and Analysis

Immediately I was drawn to the premise of an artist who regrets his artistic career and has to re-evaluate the principles upon which he became a creator. Ishiguro’s An Artist of the Floating World sets out to examine the broad culture of postwar Japan through the personal lens of Masuji Ono, a retired artist who gained fortune and success through creating imperialist propaganda. I thought the concept of an artist- someone whose creations help give their life meaning, who exist to create art and influence the world in some way with it- who, in old age, regrets his motivations for becoming an artist, would be a fantastic insight into human nature and the aftermath of World War II in Japan that is often overlooked.

This book came out in 1986, but I would absolutely classify it as a Modernist work. An Artist of the Floating World’s focus on Masuji’s personal, inner turmoil paints an introspective and reflective look at humanity. Being entirely from Masuji’s perspective, the narrative is driven by his thoughts, his perceptions, and his definitions of reality. In many ways this lack of input from other characters makes the story feel very isolated and lonely. Masuji often dismisses accounts from other characters that force him to examine his life in a negative way, and is reluctant to accept change. In this way, Masuji Ono is also a very unreliable narrator. The concept of the “stream of consciousness” is also more clearly defined here than I have ever seen previously, as the book truly reads as a continuous depiction of Masuji’s thoughts as he progresses through old age. He frequently jumps back and forth between the past and the present, often connecting a current story with a related tangent from the past that adds some context to the way Masuji will react in the modern situation. There are nearly no breaks in the narration save for marked changes in the month and year, and he even addresses the reader when he goes on tangents or apologizes for getting off track from his main point. All of these attributes help An Artist of the Floating World really feel like a personal experience, as though you were conversing personally with Masuji or reading a transcript of his thought processes.

Themes of nostalgia, ruin, and consequence are prominent throughout the entirety of the novel. Masuji frequently makes comparisons between his life in his prime, when he was an active artist frequenting geisha houses and places to drink, to his comparatively dreary life after the war. Everything in Masuji’s life seems to be a husk of what it once was. He lives in an extravagant, beautiful house that once belonged to a well-respected member of society. In flashbacks he recollects how much he and his family used to enjoy certain parts of the house like the corridor or the “garden tunnel.” However, after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the house was left in ruins, and despite all of Masuji’s best efforts to restore the home to its former elegance, the evidence of destruction is always there. Masuji also still takes visits to the “pleasure district,” also known as the eponymous “floating world,” which in his early years as an artist prior to creating imperialist artwork he depicted with decadence; he feels strong ties to this place as it was where he rose to fame and spent his young adulthood, enjoying drink and vibrant nightlife and the company of geishas. This dreamy, isolated, and detached world of indulgence and entertainment was not absolved from the effects of the bombings, however, and now he pays regular visits to the one remaining establishment, Mrs. Kawakami’s bar, to regain some sense of the way things were before his artwork transformed into an imperialist weapon. Among the rubble and destruction, he finds solace in this lonely bar, where it seems as though nothing has changed and he can enjoy the company of a protege who still reveres him. The pleasure district, like his house and like his career, crumbled underneath the pressure of the war, but still maintains appearances in the name of pride and nostalgia.

Another prominent theme of the novel which ties into the aforementioned nostalgia and opposition to change presents itself in the form of misogyny. In Masuji’s present day, he frequently makes mention of “women’s work” and “women’s talk,” concerning the duties of his two daughters Setsuko and Noriko. He tries to instill these values in his grandson, Ichiro, by telling him things like “What a nuisance these women are” and demanding that he “tell these women, Ichiro” (Ishiguro 38). His respectful and for the most part gracious and humble demeanor that he presents to the reader seems to contradict this view of women as submissive and concerned with less important things, but upon examining his history of visiting geisha houses and depicting them in his artwork, it is unsurprising that those values of submission and subservience have stayed with him. His wife and son also died in the aftermath of World War II, which also contextualizes his dismissal of his daughters. I interpret those values as his attempt to cling to those old days, which, despite also bringing him shame, bring him a sense of comfort and tradition that he can believe in amidst the aftermath of a catastrophe like World War II. His career, built on imperialist propaganda and Japanese pride, has no place in a society that now rejects those values as shameful, which he himself knows to be true in his old age. Knowing that he can always return to his memories of that time and the prestige they brought him is an uneasy comfort he can rely on.

Masuji’s unreliability as a narrator is explored also through the accounts he gives of other characters. The nature of his artwork is unknown to the reader at the beginning of the book but is slowly revealed by other characters’ reaction to him and his work. For example, his grandson, Ichiro, expresses an interest in art that Masuji wishes to foster when he sees his drawings in his sketchbook. We also know that Masuji’s wife and son died in WWII, and his son took a similar interest in art prior to his death, so can we assume that Masuji truly sees potential in Ichiro? Or is that his attempt to revisit that time when his family was intact and he had a son he could pass on his dreams to, who could become an artist without government ties? Ichiro within that same scene asks Masuji to show him his old artwork, which Masuji declines to do. At that point the reader doesn’t know what Masuji’s old artwork entails, but can assume that he or someone in his family is ashamed of it if his eager grandson, in whom he wants to instill a love of art, is not allowed to see his grandfather’s work. Details about Masuji and the true nature of his creations are revealed through this scene, as well as interactions with Setsuko, his married daughter whose husband’s ideas clash with Masuji’s. His disapproval of Setsuko relaying the messages of her husband, Suichi, not only reveal more of his misogynistic views, but more of the reluctance with which he wants to accept change. Suichi is more progressive and accepting of Western influence than Masuji by far, encouraging Ichiro to enjoy American cinema and disapproving of Masuji’s generation as a war veteran. Masuji defines this as merely generational difference, but further examination reveals that Suichi harbors a strong dislike for Japanese imperialism, as much of the younger generation of postwar Japan in 1948 did, adding a new layer of depth to the struggles Masuji faces in attempting to regain stability after everything he knew fell apart.