An Artist of the Floating World is a novel by British author Kazuo Ishiguro, published in 1986. Ishiguro is a prolific and well-known novelist, famous for his books The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go. He has won the Man Booker Prize and won the Nobel Prize in 2017, and was knighted in 2019. An Artist of the Floating World, his second novel, is an example of his earlier writing, and was well-received, earning a Whitbread Award. This novel is particularly well-known for its use of an unreliable narrator, Masuji Ono. It tells the story of Ono, a retired Japanese artist trying to come to terms with changes in his country after the Second World War. Ishiguro himself was born in Japan, but emigrated to the United Kingdom as a child and did not return to Japan until after publishing An Artist of the Floating World. He has said that, by writing about places with which he is unfamiliar, such as post-war Japan in this novel, he is able to write more imaginatively.
1. 'Lantern' appears 34 times in the novel. Even on the cover page, the image of lanterns is displayed. What is the significance of Lantern in the novel?
Lanterns in the novel are associated with Ono’s teacher Mori-san, who includes a lantern in each of his paintings and dedicates himself to trying to capture the look of lantern light. For Mori-san, the flickering, easily extinguished quality of lantern light symbolizes the transience of beauty and the importance of giving careful attention to small moments and details in the physical world. Lanterns, then, symbolize an outlook on life which prizes small details and everyday moments above the ideological concerns of nationalists or commercial concerns of businesspeople. It is an old-fashioned, aesthetically focused, and more traditional way of viewing the world.
2. Write about 'Masuji Ono as an Unreliable Narrator'.
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.
Ono is an unreliable narrator, disguising his motives and spinning recollections to portray himself more favorably. Although he denies making mistakes, his true feelings slowly seep through and the evolution of his character is expertly revealed by the reactions of his worried daughters.
Ono does feel real guilt over his past, but he struggles to admit this — even to himself. His guilt tarnishes everything, turning the most innocent of comments into accusations. He lingers long over stories of those who choose to commit suicide to apologize for their mistakes.
3. Debate on the Uses of Art / Artist (Five perspectives: 1. Art for the sake of art - aesthetic delight, 2. Art for Earning Money / Business purpose, 3. Art for Nationalism / Imperialism - Art for the propaganda of Government Power, 4. Art for the Poor / Marxism, and 5. No need of art and artist (Masuji's father's approach)
Art enthusiast or not, this is a phrase many of us in the 21st Century will be familiar with. On questions of why we create and value art, “art for art’s sake” argues judgement should not be made based on how well work serves external purposes, such as moral or political commentary. Instead, value is intrinsically defined by the aesthetic impression.
The novel highlights the way politicized 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.
4. What is the relevance of this novel to our times?
The novel ‘ The Artist of the Floating World’ is very fascinating in a way. The word ‘ Floating’ is the most important thing in the whole work. 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 disfavor during a return to the use of more traditional bold lines in the paintings used for nationalistic posters.
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