London: Faber and Faber, 1987 (originally published by Faber 1986)
ISBN 057114716X
This is a book that I have known about for a long time, but I had no intention of reading it this year until I saw a copy on the bookshelf of the beach-house I was renting this summer. I'm very glad I found it.
Ishiguro has written a deceptively simple, allusive tale of Japan's adjustment to post-war reality after their total defeat in World War Two. In a series of vignettes spanning the period from October 1948 to June 1950, through the eyes of retired artist Ono, we see not only the seeds of Japan's physical recovery from conflict but also the major mental changes that occur in the populace, particularly the young, over this period of time.
The opening of the book introduces us to Ono, as he entertains his married daughter Setsuko and her son Ichiro in the bombed-out remains of his house. His unmarried daughter Noriko, who still lives with him, has just gone through a failed marriage negotiation. Ono believes the arrangement fell through because the prospective groom was concerned that his social status was too low to have Noriko as a wife, but Noriko's sister Setsuko is concerned that there might be other reasons, to do with Ono's past, that might have crueled the match. Through Ono's reminiscences, we know that before the War he was a well-known artist and teacher, not without some influence, as pointed out by his former pupil and drinking mate Shintaro as they re-live earlier times in the ruins of the drinking quarter of their city (never identified in the book).
As the book progresses, the reader learns that Ono is at odds with the prevailing sentiment of the time, reflected in the bitterness of Setsuko's husband at the older generation for the pointless waste of the War, and in Noriko's prospective husband, who is pleased that the boss of his firm committed suicide to expiate his firm's wartime activities. Ono tries to argue that these people were doing what they thought best for the country at the time, but these protestations get short shrift.
His friend Shintaro comes to visit Ono with a request. He is trying to get a job teaching in a school, and has come to ask Ono for a letter, not of recommendation, but explaining how Shintaro had disagreed with him over politics while his student (a lie). It is in this passage we begin to learn that Ono was not just an artist, but a propagandist for the militarist faction in Japan, and so is out of favour in the new polity.
After the failure of Noriko's marriage negotiations another suitor appears, and this time Ono realises he needs to do something about his reputation. So he tries to visit some old acquaintances to try to ensure they do not destroy his daughter's chances by saying negative things about him. It is in this section of the book that we learn that Kuroda, Ono's star pupil, spent the War in prison, and has nothing nice to say about his former teacher.
Along the way we learn much about Ono's artistic upbringing, how his eyes were opened to the squalor of much of Japanese life, and how he became a supporter of the militarists out of what he saw as noble patriotism. We also learn that, much as he did to his own teacher, his best student, Kuroda turned against him politically. In a naive attempt to warn him off his unpatriotic ways Ono alerts the police, which is what led to Kuroda's imprisonment.
The last section of the book reveals Noriko now happily married, and as Ono talks with Setsuko, he is both surprised and irritated that she seemingly can't remember their earlier conversation about his past being a problem for Noriko's prospects and in fact doesn't see that his past is something he should apologise for at all. The end of the book sees Ono watching the traffic and office workers stream past the place where his favourite bar used to be, as he begins to accept the new Japan.
For such a short book (206p), there is a lot to take in. There is the change from being concerned with the past to forgetting it or putting it behind in a locked box. There is, in the person of Setsuko's son Ichiro, the infiltration of American values, as he pretends to be the Lone Ranger or Popeye. There is the radical physical change in the cities as apartments and offices take the place of traditional housing and shops. In Ono, himself, we see how a determined and talented man can do things of importance, and also how little that can mean if you hop on the wrong historical tram.
Ishiguro writes with much delicacy, a literary effect to inculcate the allusiveness and politeness of the Japanese, which he punctures from time-to-time to show how the younger generation have left a lot of the old behind. We learn that Ono's son was a soldier killed in Manchuria, and that Ono's wife was killed in one of the last raids of the War, but both these tragedies are not dwelt upon, and Ishiguro makes this clear that this was all too common at the time.
The sense of Ono being somewhat of a lost traveller, trying to negotiate the territory of the new Japan is felt strongly in this book, but as it goes on Ishiguro shows us that Ono has done this before, but then it was him and his associates who were creating the new Japan. It seems to me that at the end of the book Ono is perhaps coming to that realisation. He certainly is at peace withing himself in the knowledge that he did what he did for the right reasons, in his mind.
An excellent novel.
Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell
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