A review by black_girl_reading
An Artist of the Floating World, by Kazuo Ishiguro

4.0

An Artist of the Floating World was totally classic Kazuo Ishiguro and also felt an awful lot like a companion novel to The Remains of the Day in the best way. About an aging Japanese artist forced into retirement at the end of WWII due to the propaganda he created for regime, Masuji Ono finds himself reflecting on his life, and his new reviled position in society, while largely avoiding honestly examining his own experiences and choices during the war, and the impacts of this on his life (see? Classic Ishiguro). Ono struggles to maintain relationships with his remaining living adult children, who resent him and what his fall from grace has meant in in their lives, he tries to grow close to a grandchild enamoured of American culture, and he largely ignores the emotional implications of the deaths of his his wife and son during the war. Ono also faces colleagues from the pleasure district (the floating world of the title) whom he fell out with over his choice to support the government campaigns with his art, many of whom went to prison for their resistance to the war, and finds himself in the impossible position of needing things from them while also refusing to accept responsibility for his choices. Ono is truly alienated from himself, his now destroyed art, and the world. This book was as foggy and winding as any Ishiguro, and much more of the story was told in what wasn’t said than in what was. This subtlety and ambiguity was emphasized for me as I know so little of pre and post WWII Japan - I would love any balanced reccos for books about this time. I love that Ishiguro always hints at darker things without fully entering the shadows, and that he always dances over the line of what is forgivable and what isn’t, leaving the reader with so much power to shape their own reading of the story, and to decide things for themselves.