Hello friends, in this blog I'm going to discuss a Japanese novel "An Artist of the Floating World". This blog is part of my classroom activity, given by our professor Dr. Dilip Barad sir. So let's start.
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. Here is one video for better understanding the novel,
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 ?
'Lantern' is an important symbol of 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'.
An Artist of the Floating World is a masterpiece that glides in and out of many dimensions. On the one hand, it is a story of generations separated by a massive ideological gulf. On the other, it is about an older man attempting to come to terms with his mistaken philosophies. It is also a historical fiction set in the Japan of limbos; Japan, which has suffered because of its misplaced imperialism, been shattered by bombings and is now critical of the past and every person representing it. At the heart of it is an unreliable narrator, Masuji Ono.
Both instances where Ono’s reporting of the words of others is explicitly signaled as unreliable relate to his career and reputation. The puzzled reactions of Noriko and the Saitos to his abrupt confession at the miai suggest that his guilt about his past is excessive. Even if there is a note of self-justification in Ono’s statements about his career, which alerts us to his possible unreliability, he is not so much covering up his past as being reticent about his present. Is it not strange that Ono has no recall whatsoever of a conversation he had a week ago with Jiro Miyake? Perhaps his problem is not the inability to recall past conversations but the inability to commit them to memory in the first place. There are two interrelated explanations for Ono’s absentmindedness during his interactions with others. The first explanation, even though this is something that is not foregrounded by the novel’s progression, its engagement of the reader’s interest and expectations lies in the recurring motif of alcohol. We see Ono sitting at Mrs. Kawakami’s day after day often as the only customer. His stories of his life as an artist are also set in such establishments or otherwise associated with the floating world of pleasure and decadence. Consider, for example, his memory of the painters passed out on the lawn at their teacher Mori-san’s villa. We may also recall Ono loudly snapping at his grandson Ichiro and insisting on giving sake to him even though the boy is only eight years old.
The most revealing, however, is the report of the miai with the Saito family:
"It may well be that the tension of the occasion made me drink a little more quickly than I intended, for my memories of the evening are not as clear as they might be."
It is as if we were reading a graphic novel in which the protagonist is wandering around the city and running into people he knows, but their speech balloons are all empty. While an ungenerous reader might take Ono’s failure to listen as further proof of his egotism, it is in fact an image of profound isolation and loneliness. Due to the loss of his wife and son and the grief it must cause him, Ono is deprived of intersubjectivity, of meaningful encounters with loving others. Ono only speaks about himself, making up an autobiographical narrative centered on his professional self, because this is the only thing he knows how to speak about and the only thing that has perceptual salience to him at this time.
The perplexed reactions of Masuji Ono's daughter and the family of the prospective groom to his abrupt confession at the miai offer support to the interpretation that Ono’s narrative of guilt is not based on facts but is, rather, an illusion generated by grief and depression. Instead of a “mad monologist” a well-established category of unreliable narrators obsessively speaking about themselves Ono could be termed a “sad monologist”. The term reflects the fact that it is his emotions that make him unreliable.
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 purposes. 3. Art for Nationalism / imperialism - art for the propaganda of government power, 4. Art for the poor / marxism, and 5. No need for art and artists (Masuji's father's approach).
We can observe all types of art in this novel. The first type of art for aesthetic delight. Masuji Ono's teacher Mori-san believed that the art is for aesthetic delight. In which artists create any art for the art's sake. For themselves, for their happiness they make any art. The second type of art is art for earning money purposes. So in the novel we can see that Master Takeda thinks that art is only used for business. With the use of art they used to make money first. The third type of art is art for Nationalism. In which artists think that he or she will have to give back to the nation through their art. So for that they used art as the propaganda of government power. The other form of using art is art for poor people. And the last one is about the meaninglessness of art. Masuji Ono's father believed that there is no importance of art in our life. But I want to say that not everyone has the ability to be an artist. Maybe it's inborn talent or it will be taught by someone. Like Masuji Ono learned from his master.
4. What is the relevance of this novel is our times ?
Every literary work has its own importance. In other words we can say that there was purpose behind any of the work. Why are they writing this all, because they want happened in past will never be repeated. And some artists are driven by the wrong person and unconsciously they make the work which inspires people to do wrong things.
We can connect this novel in today's time also. Sometimes we also do some floating things. The World is also like floating. When and how it changes, Nationalism can be seen in our society we never know. But Some artists are using art for the nation. They believe that we have to do something for our nation through art.
We are living in a floating world. Which changes every second. So we have to be part of the world. This is happening in our relationship also. So this is the relevance of An artist of the floating world.
Thank you !
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