An Artist of the Floating World Literary Elements

Historical Fiction

Japan, 1948-50, after World War II

Matsuji Ono is the novel's narrator and protagonist. He is an unreliable narrator, to a certain extent by his own admission, since he often confesses to memory lapses or uncertainty about the events he narrates.

The novel's tone is mostly matter-of-fact and quietly straightforward. It achieves emotional resonance mostly through subtle means and by occasionally contrasting its controlled tone with moments in which the tone very briefly becomes more dramatic. Its mood is similarly calm, pedestrian, and even professional, but when describing the past it often shifts abruptly. For instance, "the floating world" has a surreal, ethereal mood.

Ono presents himself as the protagonist, but, while he has various competitors, he ultimately feels that he is the antagonist of his own story.

The major conflict lies between Ono and others who look back on Japanese imperialism and sovereignty with nostalgia, and younger people who have embraced the American occupation and resent the Japanese role in the war. However, other conflicts arise, taking shape around this generational conflict. For instance, different movements in art are portrayed feuding with one another, and these movements can to an extent be linked to one side or another of the post-war generation gap, ideologically if not literally.

The climax of the novel is Ono's conversation with his daughter Setsuko, in which Setsuko casually announces that Ono is not guilty of any important wrongdoing, and in which she simultaneously absolves him of guilt and robs him of the illusion that his work has been relevant, even in a negative way. This scene causes the reader to reevaluate the content of the book until that point, and, in spite of its understated tone, represents the fullest and most direct confrontation between Ono and his daughter.

Ono's allusions to his own parting from his favorite student, Kuroda, foreshadow the violent and upsetting nature of their parting. Even when not speaking about Kuroda directly, Ono often speaks theoretically about students and teachers, and about the difficulty teachers find in letting their students mature. This foreshadows that Kuroda and Ono will part ways over an artistic disagreement.

Ono tends to speak at length about a topic on his mind, and then dismiss it as irrelevant, in an understatement both of how important the topic is to him and of how surprised he is to find himself talking about it. For instance, after the emotionally intense scene in which Ono watches the police burn Kuroda's paintings, he says to the reader "But this is all of limited relevance here." This is an enormous understatement, though it is also, strangely, a lie—the scene is deeply relevant to the reader, and it is absolute anathema to Ono. In this case, as in other similar ones, the understatement is strong enough to be subtly funny.

Lord Yoshitsune, who Ono encourages Ichiro to admire, is a celebrated historical Japanese warrior from the twelfth century.
The Lone Ranger is an iconic fictional Texas Ranger and a symbol of the American West.
Karl Marx was a German intellectual famous for his critique of capitalism and his advocacy of communism.
Vladimir Lenin was the leader of the Russian Revolution in the early twentieth century and the first leader of the Soviet Union.
Popeye the Sailor is a popular American cartoon character from the mid-twentieth century.
Kitagawa Utamaro was a Japanese artist working primarily at the end of the eighteenth century and known for his woodblock prints.

For the most part, the imagery in this novel is fact-based and visual. Ono describes images in great detail, but avoids using figurative language or employing non-visual senses, so that the reader learns a great deal of information without feeling completely immersed in an imagistic atmosphere. When describing places or times that were particularly important to him, though, Ono uses non-visual images, creating more vivid and immersive sensory engagement. In particular, important moments are marked with smell images. An impoverished neighborhood stinks of sewage, for instance, while the fire in Kuroda's backyard creates the scent of smoke. Sound images also pervade these important scenes. For instance, the old pleasure district is associated with the sound of wooden sandals on the sidewalk. As an artist, Ono can describe the visual faithfully and accurately, with a professional mindset. When he is emotional, though, he resorts to his other senses.

The major paradox in this book is the relationship between teachers and students. As our narrator notes, teachers want their students to remain loyal and obedient while still growing independent and mature. This is impossible, since the most mature artist will always develop distinct styles and opinions that differ from their teachers'. The paradoxical relationship leads to impossible situations in which teachers and their former students both resent and long for each other.

Ono's father burns Ono's earliest paintings because he disagrees with Ono's desire to create art. When Moriyama refuses to accept Ono's new work, the scene includes several explicit parallels to the one between Ono and his father: in both instances nearly-identical lines are exchanged, and both scenes include fire. The parallel becomes a pattern when Ono, too, burns his student's art, if only indirectly. By creating scenes that are so explicitly parallel to one another, Ishiguro implies that this conflict is a cyclical one.

Ono personifies the banners that used to hang in the pleasure district, describing the way that they leaned and pushed like people. He also describes the scrabbling of rats' feet as a kind of language, in the scene where Sasaki leaves Moriyama's villa, and therefore lightly personifies the animals.