An Artist of The Floating World

by Kazuo Ishiguro

And you may be able to make out the dark clusters of birds perched uncomfortably on the tops of the poles, as though awaiting the wires along which they once lined the sky.

‘When you are young, there are many things which appear dull and lifeless. But as you get older, you will find these are the very things that are most important to you.’

looking from under my umbrella at those skeletal remains. I remember there were workmen wandering around that day, and so at first I paid no attention to the figure standing looking at one of the burnt-out buildings. It was only as I walked by that I became aware the figure had turned and was watching me. I paused, then looked around, and through the rain dripping off my umbrella, saw with a strange shock Kuroda looking expressionlessly towards me. Beneath his umbrella, he was hatless and dressed in a dark raincoat. The charred buildings behind him were dripping and the remnant of some gutter was making a large amount of rainwater splash down not far from him. I remember a truck going by between us, full of building workers. And I noticed how one of the spokes of his umbrella was broken, causing some more splashing just beside his foot. Kuroda’s face, which had been quite round before the war, had hollowed out around the cheekbones, and what looked like heavy lines had appeared towards the chin and the throat. And I thought to myself as I stood there: ‘He’s not young any more.’

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.

I suppose I thought that to pass away one’s time in such places, to spend one’s skills celebrating things so intangible and transient, I suppose I thought it all rather wasteful, all rather decadent. It’s hard to appreciate the beauty of a world when one doubts its very validity.’

But it is most kind of Father to have given such consideration to Ichiro’s feelings.’

I suppose I do not on the whole greatly admire the Tortoises of this world. While one may appreciate their plodding steadiness and ability to survive, one suspects their lack of frankness, their capacity for treachery. And I suppose, in the end, one despises their unwillingness to take chances in the name of ambition or for the sake of a principle they claim to believe in. Their like will never fall victim to the sort of grand catastrophe that, say, Akira Sugimura suffered over Kawabe Park; but by the same token, notwithstanding the small sorts of respectability they may sometimes achieve as school-teachers or whatever, they will never accomplish anything above the mediocre.

‘But you must remember, Ono, I come across many artists. You are on the whole an astonishingly decadent crowd. Often with no more than a child’s knowledge of the affairs of this world.’

Can you imagine any of the Western powers allowing such a situation? They would surely have taken action long ago.’

And no doubt these are the very paintings you are most fond of.’

I have learnt much in contemplating the world of pleasure, and recognizing its fragile beauty.

‘But there’s no need to blame ourselves unduly,’ he said. ‘We at least acted on what we believed and did our utmost. It’s just that in the end we turned out to be ordinary men. Ordinary men with no special gifts of insight. It was simply our misfortune to have been ordinary men during such times.’