Kazuo Ishiguro was born in Nagasaki in 1954. His family moved to England when he was five, and he was educated there. His writing has the subtle sensitivity of a Japanese calligrapher and the eloquent flow of an English novelist. As he put it, "I'm not entirely like English people because I've been brought up by Japanese parents in a Japanese-speaking home. My parents didn't realize that we were going to stay in this country for so long, they felt responsible for keeping me in touch with Japanese values. I do have a distinct background. I think differently, my perspectives are slightly different."
He's most famous for The Remains of the Day, which won the Booker Prize; also, An Artist of the Floating World, When We Were Orphans, and Never Let Me Go each made their year's Booker shortlist. Ishiguro is a writer who might win the Nobel one day. He's very literary, without being at all hard. But I did find this book asked me to play close attention. Ishiguro's a little like Austen: he's lucid, charming, easy to read; but there are more quirks and shadows than appear on the surface.
The only Ishiguro I read before this was Never Let Me Go. It flowed nicely, but there were parts missing, hidden from the narrator, even hidden from the reader. It's Science Fiction, with the science crucial, but mostly in the background. We are in an alternate England, which we gradually uncover as the narrator grows up. One critic wrote "even after the secrets have been revealed, there are still a lot of holes in the story". We are supposed to learn as the narrator does, we're supposed to piece together more reality than Kathy ever does. The book demands little of you, but it does invite you to immerse yourself in discovering and wondering.
I like the kindness and craft in Ishiguro's style. He opens his story and invites us in - but if we pour more of our attention and imagination into his work, he rewards us richly for collaborating in his act of creation. I recommend that you take your shoes off at his threshold, and enter this novel gently, on receptive feet.
An Artist of the Floating World
Masuji Ono is an artist in the fall of a successful career. In the opening pages, we meet, first, his beautiful house:
If on a sunny day you climb the steep path leading up from the little wooden bridge still referred to around here as 'the Bridge of Hesitation', you will not have to walk far before the roof of my house becomes visible between the tops of two gingko trees. Even if it did not occupy such a commanding position on the hill, the house would stand out from all the others nearby, so that as you come up the path, you may find yourself wondering what sort of wealthy man owns it.
But then I am not, nor have I ever been, a wealthy man. . . .
If I tell you this, and when arriving at the top of the hill you stand and look at the fine cedar gateway, the large area bound by the garden wall, the roof with its elegant tiles and its stylishly carved ridgepole pointing out over the view, you may well wonder how I came to acquire such a property, being as I claim a man of only moderate means. The truth is, I bought the house for a nominal sum - a figure probably not even half the property's true value at that time. This was made possible owing to a most curious - some may say foolish - procedure instigated by the Sugimura family during the sale.
It is now already a thing of some fifteen years ago. . . .
Masuji Ono paints Japan for us with an artist's eye. He notices the nuances in others' behavior, and often intuits more than they say. He also misjudges, because there are darkness and deflection at the heart of this story. I'll address those in the next section.
The City where Masuji lives is never named (though many neighborhoods and landmarks are). This World is Japan, and the changes in the country and culture over the first half of the 1900s. An Artist of the Floating World is set in 1948-50, in a shattered Japan trying to recover from WWII, and to adapt from an inward-oriented empire into a Western-looking democracy. But much of the telling wanders back over the previous half-century, as Masuji recalls all the strands that led him to this present day.
Masuji shows us his city growing and changing: trams, trees, parks; buildings rising, bombed, replaced; neighborhoods changing character. Masuji's recollections add up and connect with each other, until you know the arc and twists of his career, how his craft and style as a painter evolved. We meet many of Masuji's colleagues and competitors, and we see how the artists who mentor or boss him can be inspiring leaders and petty tyrants.
We meet Masuji's parents, and get closer views of his daughters. In 1948, Masuji has lost his wife and son in the war; his elder daughter is married with one charming, bratty son; and he's trying to arrange his younger daughter's marriage. These tender negotiations reveal so much about Japanese values and etiquette; and about Masuji's social standing and self-image. Between Masuji's career dynamics, these marriage arrangements, and all the ways he and his family balance their individual impulses into their commonweal, Masuji reveals every part of his human experience and changing fortunes. I liked all the obliquity and hints, how people negotiate desires that would be gauche to say out loud. And how some of them manage - with great tact and delicacy - to be throughly obnoxious.
An Artist of the Floating World gave Ishiguro a broad and textured canvas, to paint and come to terms with the Japan he left behind. It's not all pretty, but it's all absorbing. Masuji has intelligence, dedication, passion, kindness - and an ego that refuses to see straight, and darkness he won't let go of.
When you Read a Mystery, do you Try to Solve It?
I know three ways to read a Mystery. 1) I've met two people who liked to read the last pages first, then go back and pick up all the clues (and red herrings) as they read the book. Personally, I find this approach absurd. But, it's a free country, more or less.
2) You can read the Mystery, pick up some of the clues, without trying to add them up along the way. You just enjoy the storytelling, with a bonus thrill if you happen upon the murderer early. This is how I usually read a Mystery; and, I think, how most of us do.
3) You can read the Mystery as a puzzle and a challenge. No doubt some enthusiasts jot down notes as they go - exact times of characters' movements, their alibis, etc. - in order to crack the Mystery. And many Mystery readers have read hundreds of them, so they can gather salient details as they go, without taking notes, and crack the crime like a detective.
I'm not a Mystery addict, I just like a good read. So it's not worth the extra work, to me, that solving the puzzle demands. Usually. When I read The Name of the Rose, I loved the setting, the intricate plot, the storytelling - so I really tried to solve that one. Not to the extent of taking notes, just stopping and scratching my head a lot.
An Unreliable Narrator's like a mystery: you can just read their tale, or you can try to solve it. I loved this book too, and I definitely tried to solve Masuji Ono. I said before, Ishiguro gives us such lucid, flowing prose that it would be easy just to skate through An Artist of the Floating World - you'd get the gist of it and see most of Masuji before you put it down. But I found the little hints, the pieces of his story that felt a little off, fascinating. And if you're paying attention, Ishiguro lets you know you're scanning a painting, not a photograph. As Masuji says,
But then each of us, it seems, has his own special conceits. If the Tortoise's modesty forbade him to disguise his timid nature, it did not prevent him attributing to himself a kind of lofty intellectual air - which I for one have no recollection of. But then to be fair, I cannot recall any colleague who could paint a self-portrait with absolute honesty; however accurately one may fill in the surface details of one's mirror reflection, the personality represented rarely comes near the truth as others would see it.
Masuji is an unreliable narrator, but he's not untrustworthy, I think. He tells us sincerely how he sees and remembers people and events. He's just proud of some qualities, tender and scared to look at others, and sometimes trapped in the image he presents of himself - instead of looking at his actual contribution to what happens. Sometimes we can see what he's doing is inappropriate, but he can't. Other times, it takes more deciphering. His daughter or grandson might do something which is most unlike them - so we infer that Masuji's behavior must have been more extreme than he admitted, to provoke that reaction.
I wouldn't say you need to read through a magnifying glass. Just, whenever something seems a bit off-kilter, be ready to second-guess whether Masuji is seeing quite straight.
These, of course, may not have been the precise words I used that afternoon at the Tamagawa temple; for I have had cause to recount this particular scene many times before, and it is inevitable that with repeated telling, such accounts begin to take on a life of their own. But even if I did not express myself to the Tortoise quite so succinctly that day, I think it can be assumed those words I have just attributed to myself do represent accurately enough my attitude and resolve at that point in my life.
Looking at all the qualifiers in that paragraph, I retract my "not untrustworthy, I think." Masuji is more trustworthy than not, but he wouldn't be allowing himself so much leeway unless he knew he needed it. This is not a photograph, but a portrait of the artist, with family, career and country behind him. The style of his telling is integral to his tale. Masuji is An Artist of the Floating Self.
Unreliable Narrators are often an excuse for the writer to show off their cleverness. You realize halfway through a book that the narrator is paranoid or delusional, and the whole text becomes a magic act to dazzle you. In this case, I found Masuji Ono one of the most rounded and fully realized characters I've met in quite a while. His flaws and blinkers pulled me deeper inside him, as I tried see beyond his sometimes crooked vision.
The darkness at the heart of this tale is the imperialism, the jingoism and cruelty, that led Japan into WWII. Which Masuji floated on the edges of, and which thrilled him. Now Japan is repudiating that darkness, but it still shines golden in Masuji's heart. One of the mysteries in the tale is, whether Masuji can face the darkness behind his pride and patriotism. How can he come to terms with this pride now called shame, and this strange new Japan?
If you read and enjoyed The Remains of the Day, you'll enjoy this book too. I only saw the movie of Remains - but this story is in some respects a Japanese parallel to that one, with the extra care and wonder Ishiguro applied to bring his lost homeland to life.