An Artist of the Floating World

Hello everyone,

My Today's blog is about the novel An Artist of the Floating World by British author Kazuo Ishiguro.We also saw movie in classroom but language of the movie is Japanese so we understood it by reading of the caption and it was not that much good but film maker try to stay truthful to the novel so it's help us to understand novel.  This blog is responce to the thinking activity assigned by professor Dilip Barad.

Kazuo Ishiguro:- 

Sir Kazuo Ishiguro is a British novelist, screenwriter, musician, and short-story writer. He was born in Nagasaki, Japan, and moved to Britain in 1960 with his parents when he was five. Ishiguro is one of the most celebrated contemporary fiction authors writing in English. His first two novels, A Pale View of Hills and An Artist of the Floating World, were noted for their explorations of Japanese identity and their elegiac tone.

In 2017 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature for his works that “uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world.”

Introduction of the novel:-

An Artist of the Floating World 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 is all about trouble in marriage of Ono's daughter due to bad reputation of her father(Ono). Another conflict is about his relation with his students and master which was not good. As Ono was connected to white color artist and made paintings for buisness and patriotic. At end of the novel Ono ready to accept that,

"Humanity is terrible and stories of war lead to disaster, war is not something taken as good".

1) Lanterns 'appears' 34 times in the novel. Even on the cover page , the image of lanterns is displayed. What is significance of lanterns in the novel?

As we know Lanterns spread light into darkness and in this novel Lanterns are the symbol of the floating world. They represent the fleeting beauty and warmth of night life as well as the transience of the traditional way of life in Japan, which vanishes after the war. Lanterns are the old-fashioned, welcoming source of soft light at Mrs. Kawakami's. Within their spheres of light Masuji Ono is embraced. As a symbol of the floating world, lanterns often appear in Mori-san's work, either within the picture or as the implied light source for the subject in the painting. 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. We can also use lanterns as sign of temporaryness as lanterns was fire after the while it was burnd then there is no existence of lanterns just like art of you draw something but after the passing of the time there is no value of it. So in this novel Lanterns uses in many perspective positive as well as negative.

2) Write in brief a review of the film based on the novel.

 An Artist of the Floating World film  Director by Kazuki Watanabe release date March 30, 2019. Movie was not that much good but it's stay truthful to the novel. It is little bit difficult and boaring because it is in Japanese language so we have to watch as well as read. Movie start with home of Ono, in movie we can read many things through camera action only which we can not read during book reading so it is became helpful to us to read it with many angles. Film maker do some changes also in movie like, Ono ask his daughter about missing of his paintings but in novel there is nothing like that.

When we saw movie that time camera, background music and setting play an important role to understand the novel through movie. We can easily get idea about the happening situation for example when loud music came we got Idea about anger and somebody is hiding something. Camera angle also play an important role as we saw in this movie when Seiji Moriyama was taught to their students, camera angle was tell us that what happen to next.

3) Debate on the use of Art / Artist (five Perspectives: 1) Art for the sake of art

aesthetic delight, 2) Art for erning Money - Buisness 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)

Art is a central Idea of the novel, with Ono's role as a propaganda artist being the chief story line. 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 politicised or whether it should be simply a source of pleasure and aesthetic delight. In this novel we saw that how art is use by many characters in different way as per their interest and need. 

  First is Art for the sake of art - aesthetic delight  this is first and mostly use term of art in world. Delight is prime function of art.  Basic purpose of the art is to give aesthetic pleasure to the artist. In this novel, character of Seiji Moriyama believe in art for the sake of art, he also taught their students to use art for the pleasure and for good work. He believes that the most delicate beauty in the world exists in transient moments at late-night bars among geishas in the pleasure district, and is dedicating his life to trying to capture this beauty in his art. He uses European techniques in his painting, eschewing the use of dark outlines in favor of shading. When students try to take a different direction in their painting, Mori-san demands that they leave the villa.

Second is Art for erning Money - Buisness Purpose:-

This kind of art is for earning money, for Buisness Purpose. When someone do art for selling purpose that time it is not about quality and delight but just about quantity and speed. They just concerned about profit. In this novel there is Takeda firm  who hired painters to draw paintings related to Buisness. They have to do quik paintings and they do 'art for the sake of life'   in this art for the Buisness they have ot work as machine- money minded idea.

3)Art for nationalism/ imperialism - Art for the propaganda of Government Power:-

In novel we can saw that our Narrator Masuji Ono use art for the nationalism and became propaganda of government power. An aging artist who created propaganda for the Japanese during the Second World War and is now preoccupied after the war with assessing his legacy. Ono's father didn't support him as becoming artist. He makes money by painting works for export to foreigners. His work catches the eye of an artist and patron of the arts named Mori-san, and he spends the next seven years living in Mori-san’s villa. Then, under the influence of the nationalist Matsuda, Ono decides to change his style of painting to promote Japanese imperialism. During the war and the years leading up to it, Ono’s propagandist paintings earn him prestige in the city, but after the war’s end, nationalist ideas are discredited and Ono is forced into retirement. In the post-war period, Ono feels that, even if his work pursued a mistaken ideology of nationalism, his good faith effort to do what he believes in and make an important contribution means that he can be proud of his life’s work. Ono lost his wife Michiko and son Kenji in the war, but he doesn’t discuss his grief. But at the end of the novel he realised that, 

'Bad paintings make bad smoke'

Another character who do art for nationalism is Yukio Naguchi is a composer whose patriotic tunes were sung by many young Japanese men on their way to fight in the war. He feels enormous regret at any part he played in their deaths and commits suicide in a gesture of apology. He feel guilty for whatever he did in past.

Third character who use art for the National purpose is Chishu Matsuda - nationalist who once worked for the Okada-Shingen Society, recruiting Japanese artists. He would promise to feature them in exhibitions, which made them famous, and in return he secured their work for the government in creating war propaganda. A true art lover, Matsuda uses his influence to expose artists like Masuji Ono to things he believes need to change in Japan.

4) Art for the poor Marxism:-

This kind of art is for the poor people, when someone try to show poverty of society and portraits this in their art , it is called art for the poor Marxism. When someone draw for the voiceless people and try to become their voice.

 5) No Need of art and artist (Masuji's father's approach:-

Ono's businessman father , who believes that regards a career in finance as useful in opposition to a useless career in the arts. He recalls a priest predicting that Ono was born ‘with a flaw in his nature. A weak streak that would give him a tendency towards slothfulness and deceit’  and that therefore, we have  had to combat his laziness, his dislike of useful work, his weak will  artists  live in squalor and poverty. They inhabit a world which gives them every temptation to become weak-willed and depraved’. As a result, the father burns his paintings. Against this opinion Ono responds: 

"I have no wish to find myself in years to come, sitting where Father is now

sitting, telling my own sons about accounts and money … What are these meetings I’m so privileged to attend? The counting of loose change. The fingering of coins, hour after hour"

But Ono stands up to his father in terms of pursuing an artistic career, despite showing subordination in surrendering his paintings to be destroyed. 

So in this novel we can see five kind of artists who have different purposes for doing art and reason behind it.

5)What is the relevance of this novel in our times?

The novel ‘ The Artist of the Floating World’ is very fascinating in a way. The word ‘ Floating’ means 'changing of the time', something which is too important became useless.

In this 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 novel talks about ukiyo's painting. During that time Edo period is going on in Japan - people are doing parties and enjoying, girls only focus on beautify themselves and artist makes paintings of then which is called ukiyo's painting.

In today's time we saw that how value of art and creativity going to change day by day. In this novel also value of art became kind of Buisness and people start to look for benifits rather than aesthetic delight. Artist should write in timeless way then it's became long-lasting art, here i talked about paintings. In today's time we can see that art is controlled by linguistic, casteist and we can politics, so artists have to write and create anything under the fear of so many people and institutions and it's never became aesthetic art because art required freedom of thought and write. When anyone make paintings for nation then it's become political art and propaganda art.

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