Assignment
Paper No : 107- 20th Century Literature-2
Topic : An Artist of The Floating World
Name : Sangita Kantariya
Roll No : 19
Enrollment No : 4069206420210015
Semester : MA - 02
Year : 2022 -23
Submitted By : S.B.Gardi Department of English, MKBU
An Artist of The Floating World
An Artist of the Floating World (1986) is a novel by British author Kazuo Ishiguro. It is set in post-World War II Japan and is narrated by Masuji Ono, an ageing painter, who looks back on his life and how he has lived it. He notices how his once great reputation has faltered since the war and how attitudes towards him and his paintings have changed. The chief conflict deals with Ono's need to accept responsibility for his past actions, rendered politically suspect in the context of post-War Japan. The novel ends with the narrator expressing goodwill for the young white-collar workers on the streets at lunch break. The novel also deals with the role of people in a rapidly changing political environment and with the assumption and denial of guilt.
Kazuo Ishiguro, in full Sir Kazuo Ishiguro, (born November 8, 1954, Nagasaki, Japan), Japanese-born British novelist known for his lyrical tales of regret fused with subtle optimism. In 2017 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature for his works that “uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world.”
Ishiguro’s first novel, A Pale View of Hills (1982), details the postwar memories of Etsuko, a Japanese woman trying to deal with the suicide of her daughter Keiko. Set in an increasingly Westernized Japan following World War II, An Artist of the Floating World (1986) chronicles the life of elderly Masuji Ono, who reviews his past career as a political artist of imperialist propaganda. Ishiguro’s Booker Prize-winning The Remains of the Day (1989; film 1993) is a first-person narrative, the reminiscences of Stevens, an elderly English butler whose prim mask of formality has shut him off from understanding and intimacy. With the publication of The Remains of the Day, Ishiguro became one of the best-known European novelists at just 35 years of age. His next novel, The Unconsoled (1995)—a radical stylistic departure from his early, conventional works that received passionately mixed reviews—focuses on lack of communication and absence of emotion as a concert pianist arrives in a European city to give a performance.
Title
The novel's title is based on the literal translation of Ukiyo-e, a word referring to the Japanese art of prints. Therefore, it can be read as "a printmaker" or "an artist living in a changing world," given both Ono's limited understanding and the dramatic changes his world, Japan in the first half of the twentieth century, has undergone in his lifetime.
The title also refers to an artistic genre. Ono's master is especially interested in depicting scenes from the pleasure district adjacent to the villa in which he and his students live. Ono mentions the ephemeral nature of the floating world that could be experienced during each night. His master experiments with innovative softer Western-style painting techniques, rejecting the hard black outlining that was considered more traditional. Under the influence of right-wing political ideas about tradition, Ono becomes estranged from his master and forges his own career. He feels gleeful when his master's paintings fell into disfavour during a return to the use of more traditional bold lines in the paintings used for nationalistic posters.
Masuji Ono
Masuji Ono is the narrator and protagonist of the novel. He is presented as an elderly artist, father and grandfather to his family.Throughout the novel he is concerned with his younger daughter's marriage negotiations. As a child his father was opposed to him becoming a painter, although this is the career he eventually pursues. After rejecting his early studies with Mori-San, Ono works with the nationalist government in the creation of wartime paintings and become the lauded subject of prizes. In the present of the novel his involvement in propaganda has fallen into disrepute, which results in Ono living a conflicting life.
Noriko
Noriko is Ono's younger daughter. She lives with him in his house and is portrayed by the narrator as sometimes indignant and bad-mannered. She is somewhat bitter to Ono at the beginning of the novel as she suspects her father's past has led to her original marriage arrangement being cancelled. However, she soon becomes enamoured with her second marriage arrangement and is happy when she eventually marries. Noriko views her father, Ono, as someone she must care for forming a small resentment and anger towards him. Noriko is outspoken and boisterous throughout the novel, in contrast with her elder sister Setsuko.
Setsuko
Setsuko is Ono's elder daughter. She is a quiet and traditional woman, who is married to Suichi and has a son named Ichiro. She and Ono have a solid relationship and she helps him throughout the marriage arrangement proceedings and dealing with his guilt post-war; she acts as his listener.Setsuko and Noriko have a strong, sisterly relationship, despite being quite different temperamentally.
Ichiro is Ono's grandson, Setsuko's child and Noriko's nephew. In the present of the novel, he is a young boy with an active imagination. To Ono, Ichiro can be confusing and alienating owing to his adoption of Western culture, including some English words and an obsession with cowboys, the movie Godzilla, and eating spinach for strength. Ichiro and Ono nonetheless have a good relationship, and frequently bond over their masculinity.
Suichi is Setsuko's husband and son-in-law to Ono. He represents the new and changing ideals of Japan and is quite outspoken regarding Ono's role in the war. He frequently speaks out about his opinions regarding the war. Before the war he was seen as a well-mannered and happy man, but post-war he has changed into a relatively angry and bitter man as a result of his experiences as a soldier.
Kuroda
Kuroda was Ono's protege and student. They initially had a strong relationship, but after Ono disapproved of the direction of Kuroda's art he reported Kuroda to the Committee of Unpatriotic Activities. This results in Kuroda being punished and his paintings burned. Kuroda therefore develops a strong dislike for Ono, and, in the present of the novel, refuses to see Ono again.
Chishi Matsuda
Matsuda is a nationalist who encourages Ono to create politicised paintings. He disparages artists who do not deal with social and political issues through their art, considering them to be naïve. After the war, Matsuda becomes a sick and elderly individual who Ono visits. He is quite regretful of remaining unmarried and having no heirs to succeed him but seems not to regret the political aspects of his past.
Seiji Moriyama, also known as Mori-san in the novel, is Ono's art teacher during his younger years. He is a strong believer in painting the ‘floating world’ and teaches students in his villa. His main artistic technique is the abandonment of traditional Japanese techniques such as using dark lines in favour of shading.
Dr. Saito
Dr Saito is a major art professor with a high social standing who is a long-standing neighbour of Ono. Ono believes Dr Saito is well acquainted with his work, but Setsuko denies this, raising questions as to the validity of Ono's memory.
Mrs. Kawakami
Mrs. Kawakami is the owner of a bar in the pleasure district that Ono regularly frequents. She is a good friend to Ono. She remains hopeful throughout the novel that the pleasure district will have a resurrection, but this is not the case and by the end of the novel she sells her bar for redevelopment as offices.
Yasunari Nakahara
Nakahara, also referred to as ‘The Tortoise’ due to his slow painting, is a friend of Ono's during his youthful days at Mori-san's villa. He is mocked by many of Mori-san's pupils for his slow painting, although Ono defends him. However, after Ono alters his painting style to become politically engaged on the nationalist side, Nakahara distances himself, believing Ono has become a traitor.
Theme
Politicisation of art
Art is a central theme of the novel, with Ono's role as a propaganda artist being the chief story line. The novel questions the ability of art to influence and inspire political action within a community. There is a large conflict between whether art should be politicised or whether it should be simply a source of pleasure and gratification. The novel highlights the way politicised art was retrospectively seen as detrimental to society through the impact of the war, but also presents views within which art is conversely seen as ineffectual and unable to influence events, by implying that the war and its subsequent effects would have occurred with or without Ono's propaganda.
The novel is structured as a series of interwoven memories described by Masuji Ono. Ishiguro uses a variety of techniques to convey the fallibility of Ono's recollections to the audience, gradually revealing that Ono is an unreliable narrator and undermining the audience's faith in his story. For example, Ono makes frequent digressions into unrelated topics and events during his narration, downplaying and concealing his cruel actions and misleading the reader as to the significance of important topics. When Ono recounts interactions with family members, events are often referred to indirectly, or with incomplete information, disguising the truth of what has occurred. Because they are given incomplete and confusing information, it becomes more difficult for the reader to determine the extent of Ono's actions and the responsibility he bears for them.
Masuji Ono repeatedly reassesses events from his past throughout the novel, which suggests that he is constantly reconsidering his guilt about his actions and ultimately rethinking both the role of propaganda and the construction of memories. This process of reassessment highlights his status as an unreliable narrator, emphasising his fickle nature.The narration reflects the concept that memory is processed through an individual's consciousness, making it subjective to that particular person.
Responsibility
Similar to the theme of the politicisation of art, the novel explores the role of responsibility through the narration of Masuji Ono. There is a conflict between actions and culpability created through Ono's inability to take responsibility for the political aspects of his past work. Ono's deflections of responsibility are evident through his attempt at masking his actions and their subsequent consequences. An Artist of the Floating World makes reference to the liability of leaders after the war and how many of them were not held responsible, a group from which the narrator implicitly disassociates himself.
Wind up
An aspiring artist, young Ono began as a hack artist, then became the star pupil in a school of bohemian artists who enjoyed and celebrated bars and sake, hostesses and lantern light. Led by a member of the Okada-Shingen (New Life) Society, Ono's eyes were opened to social needs, and so he broke with the school and became an influential artist and propagandist for Japanese imperialism and the war effort. Now the war is lost. It is October 1948. Americans have occupied Japan and popular attitudes have changed radically. The young think of those who led Japan to its disaster as traitors. Some former leaders have killed themselves to expiate their guilt.
Ono's wife and son were killed in the war. His paintings have been put away. He now lives complacently in the handsome house bestowed on him 15 years earlier by its former owner as the man most worthy among the bidders for it. Ono's elder daughter is married and visits him with her lively little boy. His 26-year-old younger daughter, Noriko, still lives disconsolately at home. Negotiations for her marriage were all but completed the year before when the groom's family unexpectedly pulled out, on the pretense that their son was unworthy of the match. Now both daughters are uneasy that their father's past may cast a shadow on their future prospects.
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