Maybe then I'll fade away and not have to face the facts

A review of An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro (London: Faber, 1986). 206 pp. Hardcover.

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If you were to ask me what my favourite novel was, I would quickly answer, The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro's third novel. My first reading of that novel was a shade under thirty years ago. Despite my love for Remains, until this year, I had never read any of Ishiguro's other books. I decided to fix that situation last year, and so I began January with A Pale View of Hills, and read An Artist of the Floating World in September.

Masuji Ono is an elderly artist—as well as a father, grandfather, and widower—in Japan, a few years after the end of World War II. He is now retired, as his paintings have gone out of fashion. Ono has two daughters as well as a son who died in the war. His older daughter, Setsuko, is married and has a young son, Ichiro, who is fascinated with Godzilla and Western cultural icons such as Popeye and the Lone Ranger. Noriko, the younger daughter, is unmarried. She and Ono are preparing for her miai, or interview with the prospective groom and his family. An earlier marriage arrangement fell through. Setsuko and Noriko suspect it had to do with Ono's past. Setsuko suggests that he take "precautionary steps"—meaning, make amends for his past errors with his former colleagues, in case Noriko's prospective in-laws use them to investigate his history.

Ono's recollection of his past is sketchy; he admits his memory is poor.¹ As a young artist he wanted to follow the philosophy of his teacher, Seiji Moriyama ("Mori-san"), and paint the "floating world" of Japan's urban nightlife. He later rejects Mori-san's teachings and gains fame as a painter of militaristic war propaganda for the Japanese government. After the war, the public and Ono's artist colleagues regard him almost as a traitor for helping to lead Japan to its defeat.

An Artist of the Floating World could well be called "An Artist in a Changing World." The Japan Masuji Ono knew and painted for is no more: like the ephemeral "floating world" of the city's pleasure districts, it was destroyed in the war. The younger generations have moved toward more Western values, and Ono's students and peers have distanced themselves from him, seeing him as a relic of a discredited imperialism. Japan has left Ono behind.

My first impression of this novel was that it seemed very much like a dry run for The Remains of the Day. Each is set shortly after WWII. Each has a major character whose undoing comes from siding with an Axis power. Each has an aging protagonist reminiscing about his past. Ono looks back with regret for his actions; Stevens in Remains looks back with regret for his inaction. Both are unreliable narrators: not in the sense of, say, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, in which the reader is deliberately deceived, but more in the sense of telling the truth while obfuscating or omitting certain details to make a better impression.

Between the Japanese setting and the non-linear plot (and the unreliable narrator!), I found this novel confusing, and had to reread in a few places to clear up what was going on. I don't generally have a problem with non-linear novels (another favourite is Catch-22, which I've read many times since my early teens). I chalk up the difficulty to unfamiliarity with Japanese culture, which I mainly know via Akira Kurosawa, Godzilla, and sushi.

I enjoyed reading An Artist of the Floating World very much, but it's no Remains of the Day. While I claim the latter as my favourite novel, it still remains to be seen whether Ishiguro becomes my favourite author. But this novel is a good start on the way there.

Footnote

¹ Up from the depths, 30 footnotes high: Perhaps Ono's recollection of taking Ichiro to see the monster movie in 1949, when in fact Godzilla came out in 1954, is a clue to the accuracy of his memory?