Product Description

As Japan rebuilds her cities after the calamity of World War II, the celebrated painter Masuji Ono should be enjoying a tranquil retirement. But as his memories continually return to a life and career deeply touched by the rise of Japanese militarism, a dark shadow begins to grow over his serenity.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #288271 in Books
• Published on: 2001-04-09
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 206 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
In An Artist of the Floating World, Kazuo Ishiguro offers readers of the English language an authentic look at post-war Japan, "a floating world" of changing cultural behaviours, shifting societal patterns and troubling questions. Ishiguro, who was born in Nagasaki in 1954 but moved to England in 1960, writes the story of Masuji Ono, a bohemian artist and purveyor of the nightlife who became a propagandist for Japanese imperialism during the war. But the war is over. Japan lost, Ono's wife and son have been killed, and many young people blame the imperialists for leading the country to disaster. What's left for Ono? Ishiguro's treatment of this story earned a 1986 Whitbread Prize.

Customer Reviews

Art, but not for Art's sake
An Artist of the Floating World (1986) was Kazuo Ishiguro's second novel and his first fully-fledged masterpiece, just as achieved as The Remains of the Day, if a little more opaque and less directly affecting emotionally. It features another of Ishiguro's unreliable narrators, Masuji Ono, who is an elderly man, the artist of the title, with a dark secret. For a time this was my favourite Ishiguro novel - not a controversial choice as it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the Whitbread Book of the Year award - and in certain moods it may still be so. Because although all Ishiguro's novels have unifying qualities, they are also all distinct, each appealing in a different way to a different mood. An Artist of the Floating World is spare and short like his debut, but had diversions that also made it a pleasure to read over and above the more literary qualities. He seemed to me, for example, to have developed an exceptional ear for children's voices, in the character of Oji, Ono's grandson, who may or may not be authentic but is charming and pleasing and a distinct character in the way that many young children in novels are not. As with A Pale View of Hills, the key is in the unspoken - while Ono sounds confident and calm most of the time, we know he is stricken and paralysed by some horror connected with the rise of Japanese militarism in the early- to mid-20th century. So Ishiguro is a gift to those who want their fiction to be a dialogue between writer and reader, and not a spoon-fed monologue. It also explains why his books always reward re-reading.

The Unflawed
It is a shame that this book, Ishiguro's second, is still less well read than "The Remains Of The Day." This one says more in a much tinier space, and is elegant, elliptical and intelligent beyond the call of duty.

In "An Artist Of The Floating World" (only when you read the book will you know the proper way to place emphasis on the title) Ishiguro tells the story of a Japanese man, Ono, who has something to hide, something to do with the war... To say more would be to give away the plot, and part of the pleasure of the book - as fans of "Remains" or "The Unconsoled" will know - is in seeing how much you can work out for yourself from how little Ishiguro tells you.

Incidentally, the book introduces Ishiguro's brilliant facility for children's speech, with Ono's grandson (going on to perfect this technique with Boris in "The Unconsoled") - quite the best representation I have read of the illogicality, intemperance and, well, childishness of the way children speak.

A flawless gem, a buoyant confection, and a seemingly effortless work of art.

One artist on another
I started reading Ishiguro backwards, beginning with When We Were Orphans, moving onto A Pale View of the Hills, The Remains of the Day and now, An Artist. I think this is easily the most linear of the four novels, the simplest to comprehend. That doesn't mean, however, that the subtext is any less complex, or easy to access. It's just that the author has concerned himself here with -- dare I say it, a more unidimensional -- man and his history, zigzagging through time and memories in a gently satirical fashion. There's more humour in this novel than the others, which also makes it more approachable. I still think When We Were Orphans is a superior work, but that maybe because I haven't read The Unconsoled yet... But am I looking forward to it! And for those of you who haven't read An Artist, just go out and get it!