An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro: book review

The novel, An Artist of the Floating World (1986), by the author of Remains of the Day is written from a retired Japanese artist’s perspective after World War II, from 1948 to 1950. Masuji Ono reflects on his memories of the “floating world” - a reference to his youthful life imbibing in the pleasures of art, entertainment and alcohol.

Now a grandfather, Masuji Ono has lost a wife (who died in 1945) and a son, Kenji (attempting to cross a minefield to escape the bombings during the war). His two daughters, Noriko and Setsuko, and Setsuko’s seven-year-old son, Ichiro, and his artist colleagues, are the subjects of his memoir. This is a beautifully sentimental portrayal of family relationships and gender roles and expectations: grandfather and grandson; married sister and single sister, father and daughters; father and son; father and son-in-law; art teacher and art students; husband and wife; aunt and nephew; and mother and son.

These current relationships are entangled in his memories of himself as a young artist and of people’s perceptions of his profession: “we artists may at times deserve mockery” and “as a breed, you artists are desperately naïve.” His own father stymied his desire to be artist, and government officials destroyed and burnt “unpatriotic trash” – with one official saying, as the paintings of Ono’s colleague, Kuroda, burn: “bad paintings make bad smoke.” In his retirement, Ono still paints “a few watercolours to pass the time.”

In the present, he watches his grandson grow amid European and American influences that slowly alter his traditional Japanese life – Ichiro wants to be a cowboy and imitates their English as he impersonates the Lone Ranger. Whatever happened to a child’s desire to be a samurai warrior or The Ninja of the Wind, Ono ponders. And whatever happened to a father’s role being respected by the household? And what will be Japan’s future after the humiliating defeat in the war?

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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