An Artist of the Floating World

I would call this the perfect Japanese novel. I think only Ishiguro can pull it off. I've lived in Japan off and on for 35 years. I've read many novels and non fiction from Japanese and expat authors. Foreign writers fall into the trap of overeffort conveying the Japaneseness of every scene; the bowing, honorifics, who serves who, who keeps their mouth shut and they feel a need to write 10-20% in "Nihongo". The story and the characters are drowned in this obsession with authenticity that bores and fails. Japanese writes; unaware of any need to explain themselves as it's the air they breathe write some very fun books; "Out" by Natsuo Kirino or "All She's Worth" by Miyuki Miyabe are good examples. Ishiguro finds perfection in not dwelling on words or custom but finds subtle ways to create scene and atmosphere. And he then attacks a topic - the adjustments in life in post war Tokyo that have rarely been more peronalized and portrayed. The constant ebb and flow of resentments or progress that permeated not just the economy but every aspect of life. It's 1949. Masuji Ono is around 60. In many ways his world is shattered. His son and wife are casualties of the war. His role in the government largely assisting propaganda art is not so respectable. One married daughter is devoted to him but lives far away and a second daughter has just experienced a rejection of a negotiated wedding proposal at the last second. Is Ono's past now hurting his daughter? We are not sure. Ono is a completely unreliable narrator. He's very interesting; recalling the past in ways that may show him important in some ways but benign in others. What is the truth is hard to divine and is almost beside the point. He loves his daughters. He wants to express something to help her next marriage proposal; is it regret for things he claims in his mind he did? Or is it more like Walter Mitty to admit he wasn't that relevant. It's an amazing condition to consider the delusions and the right path forward. And Ishiguro's balance of understanding Japan and the foreign reader and having the talent to write so well makes him so uniquely qualified to write this story. Well worth reading.

An Artist Of The Floating World is a wonderfully constructed reflection on post war Japan as experienced by a man who had been a promising artist focusing on images of the old order , Geishas and Nightlife of the pre-war period. (The Floating World) . He is wrestling with reconciliation following Japan's defeat as evidenced through his relationship to his two adult daughters and his reflections on the past which slowly illuminate his very personal relationship to the events that brought such dramatic change to Japan. This is a beautifully written novel that very gradually reveals how the past can haunt individuals and encroach on the present in very real terms. Wonderful reading and highly recommended.

Ishiguro has always been one of my favorite authors with his subtle prose, and he seems to pack a punch with his powerful, underlying meanings. Never take a word, scene, or conversation of his for granted in any of his novels because while they may seem simple at the outset, Ishiguro writes with a very strong purpose, tying everything together beautifully at the end. Now, in An Artist of the Floating World, imagine drawing propaganda posters for an imperialist dictator, and then finding that you, your talents, and everything that you believed in was wrong. What do you do at the end of WWII? Ishiguro delves into this dilemma of cognitive dissonance with great aplomb - do you dig in your heels and continue to defend your actions that supported a vicious dictator and thus ostracize yourself from your new world/society? Or do you swallow your pride, dress yourself with humility, and perhaps - at the advice of your own daughter no less - commit seppuku? Where does arrogance end and you again become human? What do you do? This is such a phenomenal idea of Ishiguro to take on, and I feel he somewhat succeeded. Perhaps the story was too subtle for me, more so than his other books, and I struggled with trying to understand this character. Remains of the Day was by far Ishiguro's best novel (so far anyway), but this was pretty typical for his beautiful prose as he wrestles with intense moral situations. At the very least, you see that people are human in the end and make - sometimes - terrible mistakes. In this case, Ono's terrible mistake encouraged the loss of thousands of lives. Ishiguro has another novel coming out in the Spring of 2021, and I greatly look forward to reading another of his books

Review: An Artist of the Floating World, by Kazuo Ishiguro Memory and the heart. Such fragile things on which to build our notion of ourselves. The old prophet Jeremiah said, “The heart is deceitful above all things . . . Who can understand it?” Memory is surely at least as deceitful as the heart. Both memory and the heart seem to be at the mercy of the transient, ephemeral world of human life. And they are central to the fiction of Japanese writer Kazuo Ishiguro. An Artist of the Floating World is a beautiful emotional set piece. Following World War II, an aging Japanese artist struggles to integrate his experience of post-war Japan with the memories of his pre-war life and his role in the rise of the empire that ended in the destruction of the old world. Kazuo Ishiguro may be best known for his novel The Remains of the Day and its film adaptation, with Anthony Hopkins as the butler Stevens and Emma Thompson as Miss Kenton. There are significant similarities in tone and theme between the two novels. In both cases, the main character looks back on a career in which he devoted his life to a cause that was later shown to be horribly mistaken and in which he turned his back on a path that would have resulted in a different, and probably more fulfilling life. In The Remains of the Day, Mr. Stevens does not marry Miss Kenton, and in An Artist of the Floating World, the artist Masuji Ono turns his back on “fine art,” the art focused on the fleeting beauty of this world, in order to make his art serve the empire of the “New Japan.” Both novels are told from a perspective not long after the war, looking back on a time prior to and during the war, blended with the narrator’s current life. The tone of both is nostalgic, beautiful. In An Artist of the Floating World, Ishiguro’s use of an unreliable narrator, whose growth in the novel is toward self-realization, is masterful. Numerous times in the narrative, the artist Ono says it is entirely possible that his memory of an event or conversation is not accurate, that things might not have happened exactly as he presents them. These admissions become part of his growth in awareness of self, and are some of the elements that make him sympathetic and human, and very like all of us. A reader who identifies with Ono, and feels compassion for him, may experience in reading this novel what Aristotle called catharsis in his Poetics, a vicarious purging of guilt and fear, the impetus toward self-understanding. Ishiguro seems to be saying that as we grow older, we come to realize how much of our image of ourselves is dependent on feeling and memory, and we come to understand how fickle, how deceitful, those things can be. And if we are to live in peace with ourselves, we must see ourselves honestly and forgive ourselves for all the well-intentioned errors of the past. Only then can we live with integrity and dignity.

I'll be the first to admit that I did not enjoy "Never Let Me Go," but removing Ishiguro from the science fiction genre seems to have allowed his distinctive style to shine through. Ishiguro perfectly captures a Japanese style of thinking, of feeling, even of raw culture in his writing. If you read this book for no other reason, read it as a study in subtle cultural cues as they appear in writing. The style also allows for the subtleties of the unspoken to bleed through. A great deal of the novels central elements are not dealt with directly and are only spoken about in parallel. Beyond the style, the story does stand on its own. The characters are dynamic and all seem to have their own agendas and motivations. Everything moves towards a climax with a resolution. It's not really evident what that climax is at first but in retrospect it is pretty clear. The only reason I did not give this novel five stars is due to its frame narrative. I just don't understand why the story is being told and who the audience is. I think most readers wouldn't even notice and I feel kind of bad bringing it up because now it just feels like I'm drawing attention to it... yeah, I'm going to stop now. Read for the style, stay for the story.

The protagonist and narrator is Masuji Ono and it is set 3 years after the end of WWII. Ono has managed to hold on to his assets and it begins as he is negotiating for the marriage of his youngest daughter. The novel is constantly going back and forth in his life as he is currently elderly in the telling of this novel. In the buildup to WWII, Ono is a promising young artist who breaks away from his teacher and his way of doing art. He becomes involved in making propagandistic art before and during the war and becomes an advisor to the Unpatriotic Acts Committee and even turns in one of his own students. Throughout the novel he comes to terms with the mistakes he made when he was young even though he did them for the best of reasons. He begins to think his daughter may not be able to get married because of his past. He has many fond memories of what he calls the pleasure district and where he spent much time as a young man. Since a lot of his city has been bombed and remains in ruins this district is obviously gone except for one bar which only he and one other man frequent. He has retired from his life as an artist and his son and wife are both dead but he is a grandfather by his oldest daughter who he only sees once a year or so. It's a story about the way life changes and societal attitudes change over time. It's also about a man looking back on his life and his mistakes and taking responsibility for them. You will be surprised at what he does take responsibility for and what he does not.

I have a hard time with these so secular struggles where God never comes into the picture. It's the same with Never Let Me Go, full of introspection and observation...but no God.

"An Artist of the Floating World" is a beautiful little novel, written in typical Ishiguro style, with the calm surface waters belaying the rapid current that flows beneath. It is an interesting style that attempts to ape classical Japanese literature, infusing it with Ishiguro's innate Brittishness, coming from being born of Japanese parents but raised in Britain. As with his other novels, and part of his style, a knowledge of historical events is taken for granted on the part of the reader. Allusions are made to once-famous or infamous events and people, and names are dropped with the understanding that everyone is intimately familiar with WWII and the cultures of Japan and England. The title is a bit misleading, as the "Floating World" is usually associated with the Edo period of Japan, and not with the Fascist era of Showa. Anyone expecting Geishas and Samurai will be disappointed. A very quick and quiet read, "An Artist of the Floating World" is something than can be read over a weekend with a cup of green tea. It contributes a viewpoint, and a necessary one, to WWII Japan and paints a human face onto a troubled period of history. Love and family and duty are on display here, along with good intentions leading down dark paths, and the righteousness of actions and re-actions. Like "Remains of the Day," "An Artist of the Floating World" is an intimate, beautiful character sketch. Very much worth the limited time needed to enjoy the book.