An Artist of the Floating World

'An Artist of the Floating World' is Kazuo Ishiguro's second novel published in 1986, was short listed for the Man Booker Prize. But his next novel was awarded the Man Booker Prize in 1989. In this book he depicted a Japanese of postwar Japan again as well as 'A Pale View of Hills'.

Masuji Ono is a retired Japanese painter. The situation is somewhere in postwar Japan around 1948. He knows the reason of the failures of the marriage negotiation of Noriko, his younger daughter, is caused by his past. Setsuko, his elder daughter, also points out the same thing to him. He looks back his young and training life, about his old teachers and colleagues, his own pupils. We readers begin to realize that his recollection is slightly different from others view.

What is Ono's past? It seems that Ono was the follower of the war as one of the artists of the war propaganda. Ishiguro, of cause, doesn't mention of Ono's past so much.

Ono confesses his past and apologizes at the table of Noriko's marriage meeting. All the people who listened to his speech were a little surprised at it. Ishiguro emphasizes the absurdity of Ono's self-consciousness in contrast with others indifference. Ono is also a man who is living in the changing times of the postwar as well as Ogata-san in 'A Pale View of Hills'.

In Ishiguro's works, the narrative of the narrator and conversation are important. And the conversation is often uncomfortable. This 'An Artist of Floating World' is the same, especially between Ono and Setsuko. His 'The Unconsoled' (1995) is typical of that.

I would say that Ishiguro shows us through his works that our memory and the relationship with other people are often unreliable.