Winner of the Whitbread Award in 1986, Kazuo Ishiguro’s debut novel follows the first-person narrative of Masuji Ono, a Tokyo painter, after World War II. Masuji has retired and spends his time in meditative seclusion, in contrast to the prominence he once enjoyed as an advocate of Japanese nationalism, imperialism, and militarism. He drinks with old friends at Mrs. Kawakami’s bar, the last remnant of the district that once housed the Migi-Hidari, a gathering place for nationalists before and during the war—a kind of Japanese version of the Munich beer halls that helped propel Hitler’s Nazi party to prominence.

When the story opens in 1948, the rebuilding of Japan is well under way; young people do not want to be reminded of imperialist aggression, and so Masuji does not display his paintings even in his own home. Although he has survived the war, his reputation has not; his life’s work has vanished like the Migi-Hidari. Because of his past and the nation’s defeat in the war, he is now a liability rather than an asset to anyone too closely associated with him.

Kazuo Ishiguro

This situation would not be a problem except that Masuji has one unmarried daughter, Noriko. Since marriage in Japan is as much a liaison between families as between spouses, she is at a peculiar disadvantage: no respectable family wishes to ally itself with those who supported the war. One negotiation has already ended fruitlessly. The inevitable investigation of family background had turned up—who knows what? Polite excuses were made, and the marriage did not go forward. Noriko has become a prospect in another negotiation, but if this one fails, she is unlikely to get a third chance. The Saito family must accept her; their investigation must not turn up accusations against her father.

The subject is a touchy one, since even to broach it is to imply that Masuji has become an impediment to his surviving children’s well-being. A faint hint of ritual suicide suggests itself to Masuji. Many of the leaders of the nationalist movement have killed themselves honorably; others, convicted of war crimes, were still being executed. Having never carried a gun or held a political office or published a treatise urging war, Masuji has been spared this kind of retribution. Now he begins to feel that others may think he has gotten off too lightly.

He spends much of his time recalling his training. His master was influenced by Western notions of three-dimensional depth perception and soft outlines, applying these techniques to subjects drawn from “the floating world” of drinking establishments and geisha houses. When Masuji embraced nationalism, he rejected his master’s Western notions for older forms of Japanese painting with hard outlines, flat perspective, and slogans superimposed over the painting’s images. Then he had thrown himself into the nationalist movement and placed his art at the service of it; now he is not sure how great a responsibility he bears for the suffering his nation endured, nor how great a price his daughter may yet pay.

His concern for her slowly pushes him toward some kind of sacrifice to help her. With Noriko’s marriage, the shadow of ritual suicide would finally cease to haunt him as he looks out over the district once occupied by the Migi-Hidari being converted to offices where young people can shape careers that would have been impossible before the war. Even Mrs. Kawakami’s little establishment disappears, leaving no trace of the floating world that once existed there. Masuji finally recognizes that second chances are possible, both for the nation and for people like himself who helped lead it astray.

Since Ishiguro presents this novel as the first-person recollections of an old man partially hiding from his past, the plot unfolds in a digressive and associative manner. Events bring Masuji’s past to mind, and he allows his thoughts to wander over recent history and the burden of responsibility it places on the present. Little by little he pieces together the story of his own role in shaping Japan’s recent past and then takes responsibility for that role in the name of bringing about a better future for his youngest child.

Sometimes Masuji colors the truth so strongly that he can be considered an unreliable narrator; however, his unreliability is merely an effect of his desire to retain some shreds of self-respect in the light of personal and historical events.

Bibliography

Mason, Gregory. “Inspiring Images: The Influence of the Japanese Cinema on the Writings of Kazuo Ishiguro,” East-West Film Journal 3 (June 1989): 39–52.
Petry, Mike. Narratives of Memory and Identity: The Novels of Kazuo Ishiguro. New York: Peter Lang, 1999.
Shaffer, Brian W. Understanding Kazuo Ishiguro. Understanding Contemporary British Literature Series. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1998.

Categories: British Literature, Japanese Literature, Literature, Novel Analysis

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