An Artist of the Floating World, the fifth book I read by my most adored novelist Kazuo Ishiguro, seems at first glance a Japanese version of his classic The Remains of the Day - both about an aging protagonist brooding over his flawed years during WWII. Remains, marked by its nostalgic Englishness and incandescent prose that unmistakably belongs to the most eloquent of English writing styles, presents to us a butler - well nigh the symbol of England - who attempts, albeit to no avail, to defend his master from the relentless accusations of providing assistance to the Nazis during the war. In Artist, we see a similar narrator who tries to justify his support for Japanese militarism in WWII. It would, however, seem superficial to say the two consecutively published novels are creatures of the same sort. Artist brings itself to a surprising turn towards the end, when we learn that while the protagonist has admitted his mistakes, those were of little significance to the course of war; he, as a painter, simply did not exert influence on the war as much as those army officers and politicians did. What he cannot face all through the years is not, though we have been led to believe, the incorrectness of his ideas, but rather his failed endeavor to lead a more influential life. He is really an artist of the floating world, in which art is futile and he can do nothing more than catching 'things that disappear with the morning light'. This early effort of Ishiguro's is surely no less poignant and inspiring than Remains.
