著者

Ronald D. Klein

出版者

広島女学院大学

雑誌

広島女学院大学論集 (ISSN:03748057)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.44, pp.33-54, 1994-12

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Masuji Ono, retired artist, recalls his life during the narration of Kazuo Ishiguro's second novel, An Artist of the Floating World. It is a life of artistic development which leads him to the height of political power as a propagandist artist duirng the 1920s' social malaise, through the rise of right-wing militarism during the 1930s and finally as a wartime artist of the 1940s. Now that the war is over, Ono's elder married daughter, Setsuko, suggests that he take "certain precautionary steps" to protect the marriage prospects of his younger unmarried daughter, Noriko. Ono comes to realize that in certain contexts, his past may be seen as a liability. During Noriko's omiai dinner, Ono publicly acknowledges his past and apologizes for the suffering he may have caused. Yet, a year later, Setsuko denies ever making any suggestion to him and questions Ono's inflated opinion of his influence. Clearly, there is a discrepanscy here and the reader only has Ono's narrative to depend on. Ono's life is related in retrospection, delivered in four installments between October, 1948 and June, 1949. An analysis of Ono's narrative can be broken into two general areas -reflections and echoes. This paper will be written in two installments. The present one presents the idea of "reflections" in looking at Ono as a reliable narrator. There are problems of Ono's nonlinear style, his memory and, more centrally, how he views himself. The subtext of this paper presents three different meanings of "reflection" -the mirror of seeing what is there, the thoughtful recollection of what may have happened, and the more opaque innuendoes of unwanted distortions. The second installment of this paper will take up the "echoes" within the novel.