An Artist of the Floating World

An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro

“It is not necessary that artists always occupy a decadent and enclosed world. My conscience, Sensei, tells me I cannot remain forever an artist of the floating world.” An Artist of the Floating World, Kazuo Ishiguro

I was expecting this book to be of a similar style to the only other book I’ve read by Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go, but it wasn’t. It’s not that I don’t understand that writers can write more than one genre, but the title of this book had me thinking that this one might also be written in some alternate world to ours. That isn’t the case, but I still enjoyed An Artist of the Floating World.

The book is set in Japan between April of 1948 and June of 1950, but the main character often derails from the story he is trying to tell us, and focuses on the growth of his successful career as an artist now that he’s retired. For the first (roughly) half of the book, the main concern in the present for Ono is getting his youngest daughter married. Concerns centering round this bring back memories from the time before and then after the war, as the other family in the marriage negotiations will be investigating their family, and his past.  The rest of the book, the main concern of Ono seems to be coming to terms with his past, and partly with his retirement, especially after reuniting with an old friend/colleague.

At 206 pages, the book was a really fast read, finished quite easily in two days. Unfortunately, while I enjoyed reading it, having finished it I find that it really didn’t leave much of a mark. I say this in the sense that it didn’t really have that much of an impact on me. I didn’t find it boring while reading it (for the most part), but now can’t really remember anything remarkably good or bad about it.

One interesting thing I do remember thinking about while I was reading was the way that Ono’s daughters and sons-in-law interacted with him throughout the book, and to an extent how his grandson (Ichiro) interacted with him about other members of the family. Ono’s eldest daughter, Setsuki, seemed timid and overly polite in his presence/when interacting with him and even with her younger sister. Noriko was much bolder and never seemed to be even remotely polite to her father. Her words may have seemed polite, but you could tell that she was not saying them in a manner that would have been interpreted as polite. They both (and the songs-in-law) referred to Ono as ‘Father’ even in a sentence, rather than saying you. (“I see Father is up,” for example.) Ichiro would do it in a similar manner, but use ‘Oji’ instead of ‘Father’. He also seemed quite rude to many members of his family, especially his Aunt Noriko, who was repeatedly said to have been good with children. It struck me as odd that no one, or at least Ono, seemed to reprimand him for some of the things he said, and some of the ways he acted. I may have to chalk it up to not being familiar with Japanese family dynamics during that decade.

Overall, I’d give the book a 4.5/10.

Read on!

Molly