Burning paintings (situational irony)
A particularly acute case of situational irony arises when the police burn Kuroda’s paintings in front of Ono. The scene recalls the earlier moment when Ono’s father burned his early paintings in the reception room. Ono is self-aware enough not to physically destroy Kuroda’s paintings, and when he reports Kuroda to the police, he believes that his act is helpful and harmless. However, the act still leads to the same result—authority figures destroying art that they find distasteful. Since Ono causes this result without meaning to, the irony here has a tinge of fatefulness or inevitability, as if this pattern of creation and destruction is part of an unfortunate but universal cycle. Ono’s muted reaction to the situation is in itself ironic, although his words in the scene are an instance of dramatic rather than situational irony. For instance, he asks the police whether they are authorized to burn Kuroda’s paintings. In asking this question, he implies a belief that figures like his father and the police have a right to burn art they despise, provided they have enough power and authority. Therefore, though he says this as a challenge to the police, he ends up simply professing agreement with their worldview.
Ichiro and Masculinity (dramatic irony)
One way in which Ono often tries to protect his dignity and shore up support is by convincing Ichiro to side with him rather than with Noriko and Setsuko. To this end, he often evokes their shared masculinity, both because it is a useful way to make his daughters seem like outsiders and because it also invokes the memory of Kenji, Ono’s late son. Ironically, Ichiro is not particularly invested in this shared masculinity, except occasionally in the context of lighthearted jokes. Often, he goes along with his grandfather in order to protect Ono’s own feelings, and in doing so he infantilizes Ono even while Ono believes himself to be teaching Ichiro a mature masculinity. For instance, Ono pressures Ichiro to watch a scary movie, seeking a bonding moment with his grandson. Ichiro agrees, but seemingly only for Ono’s benefit, since he brings a jacket purposely in order to cover his eyes. Each time Ono tries to make himself seem authoritative in order to impress Ichiro, Ichiro goes along largely to preserve Ono’s bruised dignity.
Mrs. Kawakami's Nostalgia (dramatic)
It is very possible indeed that Mrs. Kawakami, the proprietor of the last bar left in the old pleasure district, feels a great deal of nostalgia for the district’s glory days. But so does Ono: this is evident from the way he reminisces about the district regularly, and from the suddenly poetic language that arises when he describes his time there. Ironically, though, Ono projects his nostalgia entirely onto Mrs. Kawakami, criticizing her for feeling nostalgic while claiming that he is completely at peace with the loss of the pleasure district. Though his lack of self-awareness is somewhat ironic, it may ultimately be a helpful coping mechanism for him. By projecting his own feelings onto a friend, he is able to critique, sympathize with, and evaluate those feelings at a distance, which helps him understand why he feels the way he does.
"Complacency" (visual irony)
“Complacency” is the first explicitly political work that Ono creates, and it is packed with sarcasm. Though much of the irony in this novel is dramatic irony stemming from Ono’s own lack of self-awareness, in the case of the painting, Ono is an artist in complete control of his own use of irony. He portrays extremely poor boys in a way that evokes samurai. With this contrasting image, Ono challenges the viewer’s expectation and cuttingly critiques the way in which poverty has robbed both individual Japanese people and the country in general of their dignity.
Social Status (dramatic irony)
On several occasions, Ono takes care to emphasize how little he cares about his reputation and social status. “I have never at any point in my life been very aware of my own social standing,” he tells us firmly. The irony lies in the amount of time he spends telling us just how little he cares what others think of him. If he truly didn’t care, we can assume, he wouldn’t think about the subject at all. Moreover, most of this novel revolves around Ono trying to ascertain what his own reputation is. He cares greatly about what others think of him, but is so determined to present himself as someone who doesn’t care about reputation that he cannot objectively interrogate his own self-perception. Ironically, his insistence that he is unaware of his own reputation makes it harder for him to calmly understand his own social standing, which leads him down a path of paranoia and obsession.