Kazuo Ishiguro

Kazuo Ishiguro, born 8 November 1954 is a Japanese–British novelist. He was born in Nagasaki, Japan, and his family moved to England in 1960. Ishiguro obtained his Bachelor’s degree from University of Kent in 1978 and his Master’s from the University of East Anglia’s creative writing course in 1980. He became a British citizen in 1982.Ishiguro is one of the most celebrated contemporary fiction authors in the English-speaking world, having received four Man Booker Prize nominations, and winning the 1989 prize for his novel The Remains of the Day. In 2008, The Times ranked Ishiguro 32nd on their list of “The 50 greatest British writers since 1945″. Recently, his novel Never Let Me Go has been adapted to film.

        A number of his novels are set in the past. His latest novel, Never Let Me Go, has science fiction qualities and a futuristic tone; however, it is set in the 1980s and 1990s, and thus takes place in a very similar yet alternate world. His fourth novel, The Unconsoled, takes place in an unnamed Central European city. The Remains of the Day is set in the large country house of an English lord in the period surrounding World War II.

An Artist of the Floating World is set in an unnamed Japanese city during the period of reconstruction following Japan’s surrender in 1945. The narrator is forced to come to terms with his part in World War II. He finds himself blamed by the new generation who accuse him of being part of Japan’s misguided foreign policy and is forced to confront the ideals of the modern times as represented by his grandson. Ishiguro said of his choice of time period, “I tend to be attracted to pre-war and postwar settings because I’m interested in this business of values and ideals being tested, and people having to face up to the notion that their ideals weren’t quite what they thought they were before the test came.”

The novels are written in the first-person narrative style and the narrators often exhibit human failings. Ishiguro’s technique is to allow these characters to reveal their flaws implicitly during the narrative. The author thus creates a sense of pathos by allowing the reader to see the narrator’s flaws while being drawn to sympathize with the narrator as well. This pathos is often derived from the narrator’s actions, or, more often, inaction. In The Remains of the Day, the butler Stevens fails to act on his romantic feelings toward the housekeeper Miss Kenton because he cannot reconcile his sense of service with his personal life.

Ishiguro’s novels often end without any sense of resolution. The issues his characters confront are buried in the past and remain unresolved. Thus Ishiguro ends many of his novels on a note of melancholic resignation. His characters accept their past and who they have become, typically discovering that this realization brings comfort and an ending to mental anguish. This can be seen as a literary reflection on the Japanese idea of mono no aware.

mono no aware (物の哀れ ), literally “the pathos of things”, also translated as “an empathy toward things”, or “a sensitivity to ephemera”, is a Japanese term used to describe the awareness of impermanence , or the transience of things, and a gentle sadness (or wistfulness) at their passing.

 

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