Title: An Artist of the Floating World
Author: Ishiguro, Kazuo
Published by: Faber & Faber
Year: 2005
First published: Faber & Faber, 1986
Date reviewed: 9.05
ISBN: 0-571-22536-5

Reading Ishiguro’s novels out of sequence – this is the second to be published – possibly makes it harder to give a fair assessment, as expectations are already set. The acclaimed quality of his writing is as evident here as in his later books, and here too events are related in the voice of a flawed character.

Set in an unnamed city in Japan in 1948, the central character is an artist, Ono, now an old man. He admits his memory is not completely reliable, so when other characters’ versions of events differ we are not sure who to believe. This uncertainty is compounded by the conventions of Japanese society, where speaking directly and truthfully can be secondary to the need to save face (both one’s own and others’).

One delight is the way Ishiguro’s writing style mirrors the style of Japanese painting which is a theme of the book. The "floating world" of the title refers to the lantern-lit world of bars, pleasure houses and geishas, the subject of paintings by another artist in the book. Scenes and objects in the paintings have soft edges, and perspective – a conventional way of showing spatial relationships between objects – is weak or non-existent. Speaking through Ono, Ishiguro’s writing is also soft-edged, the narrative and relationships blurred by Ono’s uncertain memory and his habit of being sidetracked into reminiscences. And just as Ono’s first painting with hard edges shocks and outrages his tutor and fellow pupils in the studio where he is working at the time, so the few passages where Ishiguro writes in a sharp, direct style stand out and startle the reader.

While appreciating the elegance of the writing I am not sure the book works so well in achieving what I assume to be another objective: to give a picture of Japanese society in the aftermath of WWII. In the "floating world" of Ono/Ishiguro, historical events and the realities of everyday life are only obliquely referred to. It is like looking at the world through a blindfold with just a few pinholes – we have to infer the brutality of the Japanese militaristic state towards its own people, the horrors of the war itself, and the conflicts and confusions of the post-war period from a few brief passing remarks and uncertain memories. While this does allow us to form a picture, we cannot know how accurate that picture is and we know it is incomplete. It might be argued that this is entirely consistent with the theme of the book, but to me it is unsatisfying.