An Artist of The Floating World

 Hello!

I am Nidhi Jethava and I am a student of MKBU department of English. Today I am going to ponder some questions connected with ‘ An Artist of Floating World’  by Nobel Prize-winning British author Kazuo Ishiguro.

Kazuo Ishiguro :-

Sir Kazuo Ishiguro (born 8 November 1954) is a British novelist, screenwriter, musician, and short-story writer. He was born in Nagasaki, Japan, and moved to Britain in 1960 when he was five. Ishiguro is one of the most celebrated contemporary fiction authors in English. He has received four Man Booker Prize nominations and won the award in 1989 for his novel The Remains of the Day. Time named Ishiguro's novel Never Let Me Go the best novel of 2005 and one of the 100 best English-language novels published between 1923 and 2005.

In 2017, the Swedish Academy awarded Ishiguro the Nobel Prize in Literature, describing him in its citation as a writer "who, in novels of great emotional force, has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world"

 

An Artist of the Floating World:-

 

An Artist of the Floating World (1986) is a novel by Nobel Prize-winning British author Kazuo Ishiguro. It is set in post-World War II Japan and is narrated by Masuji Ono, an ageing painter, who looks back on his life and how he has lived it. He notices how his once great reputation has faltered since the war and how attitudes towards him and his paintings have changed. The chief conflict deals with Ono's need to accept responsibility for his past actions, rendered politically suspect in the context of post-War Japan. The novel ends with the narrator expressing good will for the young white-collar workers on the streets at lunch break. The novel also deals with the role of people in a rapidly changing political environment and with the assumption and denial of guilt.

The novel is considered both historical fiction and global literature (Weltliteratur). It is considered historical fiction on account of its basis in a past that predates the author's own experiences, and it draws from historical facts. It is also considered global literature on account of its broad international market and its thematization of how the world today is interconnected.

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?

Answer :- 

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'.

Answer :-

Released in 1986, this relatively short novel is dense with ideas and possibilities. Set in Japan in the late 1940s, the story is narrated by Masuji Ono, a celebrated painter who once created propaganda for the Imperial Army. He now finds himself labeled a traitor by the younger generation, a reputation that threatens to derail his youngest daughter’s forthcoming marriage.

With Ishiguro, however, nothing is straightforward. 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.

“An Artist of the Floating World” is a sensitive examination of the turmoil in postwar Japan, a time when certainties were overturned, gender politics shifted, the hierarchy of the generations seemed to topple and even the geography of cities changed. All this is made more poignant when seen through the eyes of a man who is rejected by the future and who chooses to reject his own past.

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)

Answer :-

Art is a central theme of the novel, with One's role as a propaganda artist being the chief storyline. The novel questions the ability of art to influence and inspire political action within a community. There is a large conflict between whether art should be politicized or whether it should be simply a source of pleasure and gratification. 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?

Answer :- 

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.

This time is also very relevant with the Floating world. We can say that we are living in a floating world. Specially after this pandemic we can say that we all are in that kind of situation when we all are floating in air. 

Thank You...

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