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An Artist of the Floating World
An Artist of the Floating World (1986) is a novel by 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 lunchbreak. 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 as 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 theme of how the world today is interconnected.
Originally published in 1986, An Artist of the Floating World was named the Whitbread Book of the Year Award and shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Published by Faber and Faber it is also printed by publishing companies such as Allen and Unwin and Penguin Vintage International. It has additionally become an eBook version and is available on most eBook websites such as kindle and iBooks, since 2012. Currently, An Artist of the Floating World, has been translated into over 40 languages around the world.
Kazuo Ishiguro was born in Nagasaki, Japan in 1954, eventually moving to England at the age of five, only to return to Japan twenty-nine years later. Growing up, Ishiguro had a traditionally Japanese mother, who influenced his writing when reflecting on Japan. Furthermore, his reading of Japanese novels and comics allowed him to stay connected to his Japanese heritage as well as see the differences between Western and Japanese society, influencing his writing through developing a sense of Japanese ideals.
Ishiguro was inspired to write An Artist of the Floating World, after tangentially treating a similar theme in his first novel A Pale View of Hills, which included an old teacher character, who has to rediscover and invent his own morals. Ishiguro's childhood of moving countries and subsequently not feeling completely 'at home' led him to write in a globalised and international way, through which he explored his own background and heritage. Overall, the novel is a reflection of Ishiguro's personal feelings of Japanese heritage, and a fictional reflection of his sense of identity, as presented through a youthful reconstruction of an imagined Japan. One character, the boy Ichiro, has a cowboy obsession, which stems from Ishiguro's own fascination with cowboys during his youth.
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 at the fall of his master's paintings into disfavour during a return to the use of more traditional bold lines in the paintings used for nationalistic posters.
An Artist of the Floating World, is structured through interwoven memories of the protagonist Masuji Ono. The novel is set in three distinctly different years, although Ono's memories go back to his own childhood, when his father opposed his wish to become an artist. The four different years and title sections of the novel are: October 1948, April 1949, November 1949, and June 1950.
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An Artist of the Floating World
An Artist of the Floating World (1986) is a novel by 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 lunchbreak. 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 as 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 theme of how the world today is interconnected.
Originally published in 1986, An Artist of the Floating World was named the Whitbread Book of the Year Award and shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Published by Faber and Faber it is also printed by publishing companies such as Allen and Unwin and Penguin Vintage International. It has additionally become an eBook version and is available on most eBook websites such as kindle and iBooks, since 2012. Currently, An Artist of the Floating World, has been translated into over 40 languages around the world.
Kazuo Ishiguro was born in Nagasaki, Japan in 1954, eventually moving to England at the age of five, only to return to Japan twenty-nine years later. Growing up, Ishiguro had a traditionally Japanese mother, who influenced his writing when reflecting on Japan. Furthermore, his reading of Japanese novels and comics allowed him to stay connected to his Japanese heritage as well as see the differences between Western and Japanese society, influencing his writing through developing a sense of Japanese ideals.
Ishiguro was inspired to write An Artist of the Floating World, after tangentially treating a similar theme in his first novel A Pale View of Hills, which included an old teacher character, who has to rediscover and invent his own morals. Ishiguro's childhood of moving countries and subsequently not feeling completely 'at home' led him to write in a globalised and international way, through which he explored his own background and heritage. Overall, the novel is a reflection of Ishiguro's personal feelings of Japanese heritage, and a fictional reflection of his sense of identity, as presented through a youthful reconstruction of an imagined Japan. One character, the boy Ichiro, has a cowboy obsession, which stems from Ishiguro's own fascination with cowboys during his youth.
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 at the fall of his master's paintings into disfavour during a return to the use of more traditional bold lines in the paintings used for nationalistic posters.
An Artist of the Floating World, is structured through interwoven memories of the protagonist Masuji Ono. The novel is set in three distinctly different years, although Ono's memories go back to his own childhood, when his father opposed his wish to become an artist. The four different years and title sections of the novel are: October 1948, April 1949, November 1949, and June 1950.