An Artist of the Floating World

by Kazuo Ishiguro

  Consider Shintaro, for instance – who appears, incidentally, to have secured the teaching post he was so coveting. Shintaro would in my view be a happier man today if he had the courage and honesty to accept what he did in the past. It is, I suppose, possible that the cold reaction he received from me that afternoon just after New Year may have persuaded him to change tack in dealing with his committee over the matter of his China crisis posters. But my guess is that Shintaro persisted with his small hypocrisies in pursuit of his goal. Indeed, I have come to believe now that there has always been a cunning, underhand side to Shintaro’s nature, which I had not really noticed in the past.

  ‘You know, Obasan,’ I said to Mrs Kawakami when I was down there one evening not so long ago, ‘I rather suspect Shintaro was never quite the unworldly sort he would have us believe. That’s just his way of gaining an advantage over people and getting things to go his way. People like Shintaro, if they don’t want to do something, they pretend they’re helplessly lost about it and they’re forgiven everything.’

  ‘Really, Sensei.’ Mrs Kawakami gave me a disapproving look, understandably reluctant to think ill of someone who had for so long been her best customer.

  ‘For instance, Obasan,’ I went on, ‘think how cleverly he avoided the war. While others were losing so much, Shintaro just went on working in that little studio of his as though nothing was happening.’

  ‘But Sensei, Shintaro-san has a bad leg …’

  ‘Bad leg or not, everyone was being called up. Of course, they found him in the end, but then the war was over within days. You know, Obasan, Shintaro told me once he lost two working weeks on account of the war. That’s what the war cost Shintaro. Believe me, Obasan, there’s far more to our old friend beneath his childish exterior.’

  ‘Well, in any case,’ Mrs Kawakami said tiredly, ‘it looks as though he won’t be returning here any more now.’

  ‘Indeed, Obasan. It seems you’ve lost him for good.’

  Mrs Kawakami, a cigarette burning in her hand, leaned on her edge of the counter and cast an eye around her little bar. We were as usual alone in the place. The early evening sun was coming in through the mosquito nets on the windows, making the room look more dusty and older than it does once darkness has set in and Mrs Kawakami’s lamps are illuminating it. Outside, the men were still working. For the past hour, the sound of hammering had been echoing in from somewhere, and a truck starting or a burst of drilling would frequently cause the whole place to shake. And as I followed Mrs Kawakami’s glance around the room that summer’s evening, I was struck by the thought of how small, shabby and out of place her little bar would seem amidst the large concrete buildings the city corporation was even at that moment erecting around us. And I said to Mrs Kawakami:

  ‘You know, Obasan, you really must think seriously about accepting this offer and moving elsewhere now. It’s a great opportunity.’

  ‘But I’ve been here so long,’ she said, and waved a hand to clear the smoke from her cigarette.

  ‘You could open a fine new place, Obasan. In the Kitabashi district, or even in Honcho. You can be sure I’ll drop in whenever I’m passing by.’

  Mrs Kawakami was quiet for a moment, as though listening for something amidst the sounds the workmen were making outside. Then a smile spread over her face and she said: ‘This was such a splendid district once. You remember, Sensei?’

  I returned her smile, but did not say anything. Of course, the old district had been fine. We had all enjoyed ourselves and the spirit that had pervaded the bantering and those arguments had never been less than sincere. But then perhaps that same spirit had not always been for the best. Like many things now, it is perhaps as well that that little world has passed away and will not be returning. I was tempted to say as much to Mrs Kawakami that evening, but decided it would be tactless to do so. For clearly, the old district was dear to her heart – much of her life and energy had been invested in it – and one can surely understand her reluctance to accept it has gone for ever.

  NOVEMBER, 1949

  My recollection of the first time I ever met Dr Saito remains quite vivid, and I am thus confident enough of its accuracy. It must have been all of sixteen years ago now, on the day after I moved into my house. I recall it being a bright summer’s day, and I was outside adjusting the fence, or perhaps fixing something to the gateway, and exchanging greetings with those of my new neighbours who passed by. Then at one point, after my back had been turned to the path for some time, I became aware that someone was standing behind me, apparently to watch me work. I turned to find a man of around my own age studying with interest my newly inscribed name on the gatepost.

  ‘So you are Mr Ono,’ he remarked. ‘Well now, this is a real honour. A real honour to have someone of your stature here in our neighbourhood. I am myself, you see, involved in the world of fine art. My name is Saito, from the Imperial City University.’

  ‘Dr Saito? Why, this is a great privilege. I have heard much about you, sir.’

  I believe we went on talking for several moments there outside my gateway, and I am sure I am not mistaken in recalling that Dr Saito, on that same occasion, made several more references to my work and career. And before he went on his way down the hill, I remember his repeating words to the effect of: ‘A great honour to have an artist of your stature in our neighbourhood, Mr Ono.’

  Thereafter, Dr Saito and I always greeted each other respectfully whenever we chanced to meet. It is true, I suppose, that after that initial encounter – until recent events gave us cause for greater intimacy – we rarely stopped for prolonged conversations. But my memory of that first meeting, and of Dr Saito recognizing my name on the gatepost, is sufficiently clear for me to assert with some confidence that my elder daughter, Setsuko, was quite mistaken in at least some of the things she tried to imply last month. It is hardly possible, for instance, that Dr Saito had no idea who I was until the marriage negotiations last year obliged him to find out.

  Because her visit this year was so brief, and because she spent it staying at Noriko and Taro’s new home in the Izumimachi district, my walk with Setsuko that morning through Kawabe Park was really my only chance to speak properly with her. It is not surprising then that I should be turning that conversation over in my mind for some time afterwards, and I do not think it unreasonable that I now find myself becoming increasingly irritated by certain things she said to me that day.

  At the time, however, I could not have been dwelling too deeply on Setsuko’s words, for I recall being in a good enough mood, happy to be in my daughter’s company again, and enjoying walking through Kawabe Park, which I had not done for a while. This was just over a month ago, when as you will recall, the days were still sunny, though the leaves were already falling. Setsuko and I were making our way down the wide avenue of trees that runs through the middle of the park, and because we were well ahead of the time we had agreed to meet Noriko and Ichiro beside the statue of the Emperor Taisho, we were walking at an easy pace, stopping every now and then to admire the autumn scenery.

  Perhaps you will agree with me that Kawabe Park is the most rewarding of the city parks; certainly after one has been walking around those crowded little streets of the Kawabe district for a time, it is most refreshing to find oneself in one of those spacious long avenues hung over with trees. But if you are new to this city, and unfamiliar with the history of Kawabe Park, I should perhaps explain here why the park has always held a special interest for me.

  Here and there around the park, you will no doubt recall passing certain isolated patches of grass, none larger than a school yard, visible through the trees as you walk down any of those avenues. It is as though those who planned the park had become confused and abandoned some scheme or other half-completed. This, in fact, was more or less the case. Some years ago, Akira Sugimura – he whose house I had bought shortly after his death – had the most ambitious of plans concerning Kawabe Park. I realize Akira Sugimura’s name is rarely heard these
days, but let me point out that not so long ago he was unquestionably one of the most influential men in the city. At one stage, so I heard, he possessed four houses, and it was hardly possible to walk around this city for long before stumbling across some enterprise or other owned by or connected heavily with Sugimura. Then, around 1920 or 1921, at the peak of his success, Sugimura decided to gamble much of his wealth and capital on a project that would allow him to leave his mark for ever on this city and its people. He planned to convert Kawabe Park – which was then a rather drab neglected place – into the focus of the city’s culture. Not only would the grounds be enlarged to contain more natural areas for people to relax, the park was to become the site for several glittering cultural centres – a museum of natural science; a new kabuki theatre for the Takahashi school, who had recently lost their venue in Shirahama Street through fire; a European-style concert hall; and also, somewhat eccentrically, a cemetery for the city’s cats and dogs. I cannot remember what else he planned, but there was no mistaking the sweeping ambition of the scheme. Sugimura hoped not only to transform the Kawabe district, but the whole cultural balance of the city, bringing a new emphasis to the northern side of the river. It was, as I have said, nothing less than the attempt of one man to stamp his mark for ever on the character of the city.

  Work on the park was well underway, it seems, when the scheme ran into terrible financial difficulties. I am not clear on the details of the affair, but the result was that Sugimura’s ‘cultural centres’ were never built. Sugimura himself lost a great deal of money and never again regained his old influence. After the war, Kawabe Park came under the direct control of the city authorities who built the avenues of trees. All that remain today of Sugimura’s schemes are those oddly empty patches of grass where his museums and theatres would have stood.

  I may have said before that my dealings with Sugimura’s family after his death – on the occasion of my buying the last of his houses – were not of the kind to make me particularly well disposed to the man’s memory. Nevertheless, whenever I find myself wandering around Kawabe Park these days, I start to think of Sugimura and his schemes, and I confess I am beginning to feel a certain admiration for the man. For indeed, a man who aspires to rise above the mediocre, to be something more than ordinary, surely deserves admiration, even if in the end he fails and loses a fortune on account of his ambitions. It is my belief, furthermore, that Sugimura did not die an unhappy man. For his failure was quite unlike the undignified failures of most ordinary lives, and a man like Sugimura would have known this. If one has failed only where others have not had the courage or will to try, there is a consolation – indeed, a deep satisfaction – to be gained from this observation when looking back over one’s life.

  But it was not my intention to dwell on Sugimura. As I say, I was by and large enjoying my walk through Kawabe Park with Setsuko that day, notwithstanding certain of her remarks – whose significance I did not fully grasp until I reflected on them some time later. In any case, our conversation was brought to an end by the fact that in the middle of our path only a short distance ahead loomed the statue of the Emperor Taisho where we had arranged to meet Noriko and Ichiro. I was casting my gaze towards the benches that circled the statue when I heard a boy’s voice shout: ‘There’s Oji!’

  Ichiro came running towards me, his arms outstretched as though to anticipate an embrace. But then as he reached me, he appeared to check himself, and fixing a solemn expression on his face, held out his hand to be shaken.

  ‘Good day,’ he said, in a businesslike manner.

  ‘Well, Ichiro, you’re indeed growing into a man. How old are you now?’

  ‘I believe I’m eight. Please come this way, Oji. I have a few things to discuss with you.’

  His mother and I followed him to the bench where Noriko was waiting. My younger daughter was wearing a bright dress I had never seen before.

  ‘You’re looking very cheerful, Noriko,’ I said to her. ‘It seems when a daughter leaves home, she immediately begins to get unrecognizable.’

  ‘There’s no need for a woman to dress drably simply because she marries,’ Noriko said quickly, but she seemed pleased by my compliment none the less.

  As I recall, we all sat down for a while beneath the Emperor Taisho and conversed for a while. The reason for our meeting in the park was that my two daughters had wished to spend some time together shopping for fabrics, and I had thus agreed to take Ichiro to lunch at a department store, then spend the afternoon showing him the city centre. Ichiro was impatient to leave, and continued to nudge my arm as we sat talking, saying:

  ‘Oji, let the women chatter between themselves. We have things to attend to.’

  My grandson and I found ourselves at the department store slightly after the usual time for lunch, and the restaurant floor was no longer crowded. Ichiro took his time choosing between the various dishes displayed in the cabinets, at one point, turning to me and saying:

  ‘Oji, you guess what my favourite food is now.’

  ‘Hmm. I don’t know, Ichiro. Hot-cake? Ice-cream?’

  ‘Spinach! Spinach gives you strength!’ He puffed out his chest and flexed his biceps.

  ‘I see. Well now, the Junior Lunch here has some spinach.’

  ‘Junior Lunch is for small children.’

  ‘That may be so, but it’s very nice. Oji may order one for himself.’

  ‘All right. I’ll have Junior Lunch too. To keep Oji company. But tell the man to give me lots of spinach.’

  ‘Very well, Ichiro.’

  ‘Oji, you’re to eat spinach as often as possible. It gives you strength.’

  Ichiro chose for us one of the tables beside the row of wide windows, and while waiting for our lunch, continued to place his face against the glass to observe the busy main street four storeys below. I had not seen Ichiro since Setsuko’s visit to my home over a year ago – he had not been present at Noriko’s wedding on account of a virus – and I was struck by how much he had grown in that time. Not only was he significantly taller, his whole manner had become calmer and less childlike. His eyes in particular seemed to have a much older gaze.

  In fact, as I watched Ichiro that day, pressing his face against the glass to see the street below, I could see how much he was coming to resemble his father. There were traces of Setsuko too, but these were to be found mainly in his mannerisms and little facial habits. And of course, I was struck yet again by the similarity Ichiro bore to how my own son, Kenji, had been at that age. I confess I take a strange comfort from observing children inherit these resemblances from other members of the family, and it is my hope that my grandson will retain them into his adult years.

  Of course, it is not only when we are children that we are open to these small inheritances; a teacher or mentor whom one admires greatly in early adulthood will leave his mark, and indeed, long after one has come to re-evaluate, perhaps even reject, the bulk of that man’s teachings, certain traits will tend to survive, like some shadow of that influence, to remain with one throughout one’s life. I am aware, for instance, that certain of my mannerisms – the way I poise my hand when I am explaining something, certain inflexions in my voice when I am trying to convey irony or impatience, even whole phrases I am fond of using that people have come to think of as my own – I am aware these are all traits I originally acquired from Mori-san, my former teacher. And perhaps I will not be flattering myself unduly were I to suppose many of my own pupils will in turn have gained such small inheritances from me. I would hope, furthermore, that in spite of any reassessments they may have come to make concerning those years under my supervision, most of them will have remained grateful for much of what they learnt. Certainly, for my own part, whatever the obvious shortcomings of my former teacher, Seiji Moriyama, or ‘Mori-san’ as we always called him, whatever occurred between us in the end, I would always acknowledge that those seven years I spent living at his family villa out in the hilly countryside of the Wakaba prefecture were some of th
e most crucial to my career.

  When I try today to summon a picture of Mori-san’s villa, I tend to recall one particularly satisfying view of it from up on the mountain path leading to the nearest village. As one climbed that path, the villa would appear down in the hollow below, a dark wooden rectangle set amidst the tall cedar trees. The three long sections of the villa linked to form three sides of the rectangle around a central yard; the fourth side was completed by a cedar fence and gateway, so that the yard was entirely enclosed, and one could imagine how in olden times, it would have been no easy task for hostile visitors to gain entry once that heavy gate had swung shut.

  A modern intruder, however, would have found little such difficulty. For though one would have been unable to see this from up on that path, Mori-san’s villa was in a state of considerable dilapidation. From up on that path, one would not have guessed how the interiors of the building comprised room after room of torn papering, of tatami floors so worn that in several places there was a danger of falling right through if one trod carelessly. In fact, when I try to recall a picture of the villa seen at closer quarters, what comes to me is an impression of broken roof tiles, decaying latticework, chipped and rotting verandas. Those roofs were forever developing new leaks and after a night of rain, the smell of damp wood and mouldering leaves would pervade every room. And there were those months when insects and moths would invade in such numbers, clinging everywhere to the woodwork, burrowing into every crevice, so that one feared they would cause the place to collapse once and for all.

  Of all those rooms, only two or three were in a condition to suggest the splendour the villa must once have possessed. One such room, which filled with a clear light through much of the day, was reserved for special occasions, and I remember how from time to time Mori-san would summon all his pupils – there were ten of us – into that room whenever he had completed a new painting. I recall how before we stepped inside, each of us would pause at the threshold and gasp in admiration at the picture mounted at the centre of the floor. Mori-san, meanwhile, would be attending to a plant perhaps, or looking out of the window, seemingly oblivious to our arrival. Before long, we would all be seated on the floor around the painting, pointing things out to each other in hushed tones: ‘And look at the way Sensei has filled in that corner there. Remarkable!’ But no one would actually say: ‘Sensei, what a marvellous painting,’ for it was somehow the convention of these occasions that we behave as though our teacher were not present.