This blog is part of assignment of Paper 107: The Twentieth Century Literature: From World War II to the End of the Century.
Topic: Memory, Guilt, and Self-Deception in Kazuo Ishiguro’s 'An Artist of the Floating World'
Personal Information :
Name:- Parthiv Solanki
Batch:- M.A. Sem 2 (2024-2026)
Enrollment Number:- 5108240032
E-mail:- parthivsolanki731@gmail.com
Assignment Details:-
Topic: Memory, Guilt, and Self-Deception in Kazuo Ishiguro’s 'An Artist of the Floating World'.
Paper:- 107: The Twentieth Century Literature: From World War II to the End of the Century.
Submitted to: Smt. Sujata Binoy Gardi, Department of English, MKBU, Bhavnagar
Date of Submission: April 17, 2025
Table of Contents :
- Abstract
- Keywords
- Introduction
- Memory as a Narrative Battlefield
- Guilt Disguised as Grace
- The Elegy of a Complicit Artist
- Generational Tension and the Inheritance of Silence
- The Architecture of Self-Deception
- The Ghost of the Floating World
- The Aesthetics of Unreliable Narration
- The Psychological Weight of Unspoken War Crimes
- Redemption or Rationalization? The Ethics of Remembering
- Conclusion
- References
1. Abstract
This study investigates the intricate interplay of memory, guilt, and self-deception in Kazuo Ishiguro’s An Artist of the Floating World. Through the unreliable narration of Masuji Ono, the novel examines how personal memory is shaped by trauma and social change. Set in post-war Japan, the text engages with national guilt and ideological regret, revealing how individuals reconstruct the past to maintain dignity. This assignment argues that Ishiguro's narrative reveals memory not as a reliable record but a psychological instrument, with self-deception acting as a defense mechanism in the face of moral collapse.
2. Keywords
Memory, Guilt, Self-Deception, Unreliable Narrator, Trauma, Post-war Japan, Kazuo Ishiguro, Identity, Ideology, Moral Responsibility
3. Introduction
Kazuo Ishiguro’s An Artist of the Floating World (1986) is a quietly haunting novel that navigates the murky terrain of memory, guilt, and self-deception in post-war Japan. Set in the aftermath of World War II, the narrative follows Masuji Ono, an ageing painter reflecting on his past artistic career and political affiliations. Beneath the surface of polite family conversations and understated nostalgia lies a profound inquiry into the moral ambiguities of personal responsibility and the unreliability of memory.
At the heart of Ishiguro’s narrative is the exploration of how individuals construct and reconstruct the past to cope with guilt and to preserve a coherent self-image. Ono’s fragmented recollections and evasive admissions reveal not only the burden of historical complicity but also the psychological mechanisms that obscure it. The novel is less a confession than a performance a self-authored myth of dignified regret that raises critical questions about the ethics of remembrance.
This assignment critically examines how Ishiguro uses unreliable narration, intergenerational conflict, and cultural silence to explore the intersection of personal memory and national shame. By analyzing Ono’s introspective journey, it aims to uncover how self-deception operates not as mere denial but as a sophisticated strategy of survival in the ruins of moral certainty.
4. Memory as a Narrative Battlefield
In An Artist of the Floating World, memory functions as a site of internal conflict, where Masuji Ono’s recollections shift and contradict, revealing the tension between truth and self-protection. Ishiguro portrays memory not as objective recall, but as selective and strategic, shaped by guilt, pride, and cultural change.
Through Ono’s unreliable narration, the novel shows how remembering becomes a moral act, constantly revised to defend personal legacy. Memory, in Ishiguro’s hands, becomes a battlefield one that reflects both individual and national struggles with a difficult past.
5. Guilt Disguised as Grace
Masuji Ono masks his guilt in the language of dignity and sacrifice, often presenting past actions as contributions to the greater good. Yet beneath his composed exterior lies a subtle but persistent anxiety a moral unease that slips through his carefully curated narrative. Rather than directly confronting his complicity in imperial propaganda, Ono reframes it as patriotic duty, transforming guilt into a form of grace.
This self-narrative allows him to retain social respectability, but it also reveals a deeper psychological truth: that grace, in this context, is not redemption, but repression. Ishiguro suggests that the most dangerous form of guilt is not the kind that leads to confession, but the one that wears the mask of virtue. Ono’s story thus becomes a study in how guilt can be concealed, sublimated, and even sanctified.
6. The Elegy of a Complicit Artist
Masuji Ono’s reflections in An Artist of the Floating World form an elegy not just for a fading cultural era, but for his own moral innocence. As an artist who once used his influence to promote imperialist ideals, Ono must now navigate the ruins of both national defeat and personal accountability. The novel frames his artistic legacy as both culturally significant and ethically compromised.
Ishiguro presents Ono not as a villain, but as a deeply human figure capable of beauty, blind to consequence. His narrative becomes an elegy for lost ideals, and a quiet mourning for the self he once believed himself to be. The artist's complicity is not shouted, but whispered through omission, revision, and regret.
Thus, the novel interrogates the role of the artist in times of moral crisis: Is art ever innocent? Or is it always entangled in the ideologies it serves?
7. Generational Tension and the Inheritance of Silence
One of the most striking undercurrents in An Artist of the Floating World is the quiet but persistent conflict between generations. The gap between Masuji Ono and his children particularly his daughter Noriko and grandson Ichiro reveals a deep cultural shift in post-war Japan, where the values of obedience, honor, and nationalism are replaced by skepticism, individualism, and Western influence. While Ono clings to the dignity of his past, younger characters subtly challenge his authority, not through direct confrontation, but through silence, sarcasm, or polite indifference.
This generational tension is framed by the unspoken legacy of war, a silence that conceals both guilt and trauma. Ishiguro presents a society that avoids open discussions of responsibility, allowing individuals like Ono to remain insulated within their curated memories. However, the younger generation’s quiet resistance hints at an awareness that the past has been distorted or suppressed.
As Ono reflects:“I cannot recall any colleague who held the sort of influence I did, or who commanded such respect. That is, until things began to change.”This statement, while modest on the surface, betrays a sense of declining relevance a realization that his ideological legacy is neither admired nor remembered by those who follow.
Thus, the novel shows how silence functions as both inheritance and resistance. The younger generation inherits the consequences of war without being given the full truth, while their muted responses reflect a refusal to validate the narratives of the past. Ishiguro, through this subtle generational friction, questions the ethics of a culture that buries its shame rather than confronting it.
8. The Architecture of Self-Deception
In An Artist of the Floating World, Kazuo Ishiguro constructs a complex psychological portrait of Masuji Ono, whose self-deception forms the central axis of the narrative. Ishiguro does not depict deception as a singular act of denial, but rather as a carefully built architecture of selective memory, rationalization, and narrative control. Ono’s unreliable narration is not only a literary device but a reflection of his inner need to reconcile personal pride with a compromised past.
Ono’s recollections are marked by hesitation, revision, and evasion, suggesting that memory, for him, is not a passive repository of truth but an active site of reconstruction. His frequent disclaimers such as “I may be mistaken…” or “as I recall…” signal an awareness of gaps in his account, yet these are never fully confronted. Instead, Ono surrounds himself with partial truths that preserve his dignity while quietly suppressing moments of moral reckoning.
This architecture of self-deception is further supported by the social climate around him. Post-war Japan’s reluctance to openly address wartime complicity mirrors Ono’s personal strategy: both retreat into ambiguity rather than face uncomfortable truths. As a result, Ono’s self-image as a once-influential artist remains largely intact though increasingly fragile as the past becomes harder to keep buried.As literary critic Brian W. Shaffer notes, “Ishiguro’s protagonists often engage in self-editing not simply to deceive others, but to protect themselves from internal collapse.” This internal architecture is, therefore, not merely defensive but existential: it allows Ono to maintain a sense of coherence in a world that has radically changed around him.
Through this layered portrayal, Ishiguro explores how self-deception operates as a survival mechanism, complicating our moral evaluations of individuals who must navigate guilt without the tools or courage to fully confront it.
9. The Ghost of the Floating World
The title An Artist of the Floating World draws from the Japanese concept of “ukiyo” literally “floating world” a term originally associated with the pleasure districts of Edo-period Japan, denoting a transitory world of beauty, entertainment, and sensuality. Ishiguro reconfigures this concept metaphorically to reflect the ephemeral nature of ideals, cultural values, and artistic identity, especially in the wake of political catastrophe.
Masuji Ono, once a celebrated artist in the nationalist cause, finds himself haunted by the ghost of a cultural aesthetic that has lost its meaning. The “floating world” he once depicted was initially apolitical, concerned with beauty and fleeting pleasures. However, as Ono’s art became aligned with imperial propaganda, this world took on ideological weight, contributing to a national vision that ultimately collapsed. What remains is a shadow a spectral memory of both personal influence and national illusion.
Ono’s walks through his old city underscore this spectrality. He observes ruined buildings, transformed districts, and fading memories symbols of a vanished world that still clings to him. This ghost is not simply historical; it is psychological. Ono’s repeated visits to the past, and his attempts to justify or diminish his role, show that the floating world now floats within him a haunting, not a haven.
As he notes in a moment of melancholy self-awareness:
“When one has made a mistake of that sort, when one has behaved with a lack of honour and integrity… it is not an easy thing to forget.”
This admission, rare and veiled, hints that the ghost of the floating world is not just cultural loss, but a persistent ethical shadow that follows Ono.
Thus, the novel positions the “floating world” as a specter of complicity and disillusionment—a beautiful past now recast as a silent witness to moral failure. Ishiguro turns aesthetic nostalgia into existential inquiry, asking what remains of art, honor, and memory when the world it served has vanished.
10. The Aesthetics of Unreliable Narration
Kazuo Ishiguro masterfully employs unreliable narration not as a mere stylistic device but as a central aesthetic and philosophical strategy in An Artist of the Floating World. Masuji Ono’s narrative is filled with hesitation, contradiction, and revision qualities that invite readers not to passively absorb his account but to actively engage in the construction of truth.
Ono’s tone is frequently marked by qualified assertions and subtle backtracking. He says things like “Perhaps I should not claim with certainty…” or “It may be that I misremember…” These phrases gesture toward a narrator who is not deliberately deceptive, but who is nonetheless deeply entangled in self-justification and selective memory. Ishiguro’s prose style calm, polite, and meandering mirrors the psychological process of evasion, making the act of narration itself part of Ono’s self-deception.
This unreliable narration becomes aesthetically powerful precisely because of its restrained ambiguity. Unlike traditional unreliable narrators who are quickly unmasked, Ono’s reliability is never fully dismantled only gently questioned. The reader must parse silences, omissions, and indirect references, thus becoming complicit in the ethical evaluation of the narrator.
As James Wood observes in How Fiction Works,
“Ishiguro’s narrators hide things from themselves, and by doing so, they show everything.”
This paradox is central to the novel’s aesthetic: truth emerges not from what is said, but from the emotional undercurrents and contradictions within Ono’s carefully structured narrative.
In essence, Ishiguro’s aesthetic of unreliability resists moral certainty. It reflects the novel’s deeper concern with memory, guilt, and identity, suggesting that our most intimate truths are often those we are least willing or able to tell ourselves.
11. The Psychological Weight of Unspoken War Crimes
In An Artist of the Floating World, Kazuo Ishiguro explores the invisible burden of war guilt not through confession or confrontation, but through silence, implication, and avoidance. The novel never explicitly details Masuji Ono’s role in Japan’s wartime propaganda machine, yet it is the very absence of direct acknowledgment that makes the psychological toll so palpable.
Ono’s vague allusions to his influence, his defensiveness during family negotiations, and his quiet anxiety during social interactions all suggest a deep awareness of having contributed to a national ideology that led to immense suffering. This unspoken guilt is not just political but deeply personal, threatening his sense of self-worth, legacy, and familial dignity.
The novel positions war crimes not as historical episodes but as psychological residues—persistent shadows that infiltrate everyday life. Ishiguro captures how collective atrocities can manifest as individual neuroses, buried under layers of denial and polite conversation. Ono’s mind becomes a battlefield, where he must navigate between justifying the past and fearing its consequences.
By never fully articulating the extent of Ono’s complicity, Ishiguro compels the reader to confront the discomfort of ambiguity a space where guilt cannot be neatly categorized, and where the legacy of violence continues to haunt those who profited from, or passively supported, destructive ideologies.
12. Redemption or Rationalization? The Ethics of Remembering
In An Artist of the Floating World, memory is not a transparent retrieval of the past but a moral act shaped by desire, fear, and self-preservation. Masuji Ono’s recollections are riddled with uncertainty, half-apologies, and qualified statements, raising a key ethical question: is he seeking redemption for his past or simply rationalizing it?
Ishiguro refuses to give us a definitive answer. Instead, the narrative oscillates between genuine introspection and subtle self-exoneration. Ono often seems to examine his complicity in Japan’s militarist propaganda, yet he quickly retreats into the comfort of social validation or abstract justifications. This tension is central to the novel’s ethical fabric: the past cannot be neatly accounted for, and moral clarity is elusive.
The ethics of remembering, in Ishiguro’s portrayal, are therefore deeply ambiguous. To remember is to risk confronting guilt, but also to risk rewriting history in the service of self. Ono’s calm demeanor and polite tone mask an ongoing internal struggle one where atonement and denial are not mutually exclusive, but entangled.
Ultimately, the novel suggests that redemption may not lie in confession or external forgiveness, but in the quiet, painful labor of internal reckoning. Whether Ono achieves this remains uncertain what matters more is Ishiguro’s profound exploration of the moral complexity of memory itself.
13. Conclusion
Kazuo Ishiguro’s An Artist of the Floating World is a masterful study of post-war guilt, generational estrangement, and the fragile architecture of memory. Through the unreliable narration of Masuji Ono, Ishiguro compels readers to confront not only the ambiguities of historical responsibility, but also the deep psychological mechanisms individuals use to survive them denial, rationalization, and selective remembering.
The novel transcends its historical setting, speaking to broader questions of ethical memory and personal accountability in the aftermath of collective trauma. Ono’s internal conflict reflects not only Japan’s national reckoning, but also a universal human struggle to reconcile the self with a morally compromised past.
By refusing to offer clear resolutions, Ishiguro places the burden of interpretation on the reader, forcing us to dwell in the discomfort of ethical ambiguity. The result is a haunting narrative that challenges our assumptions about truth, legacy, and the possibility of redemption.
In the end, An Artist of the Floating World does not ask us to judge Ono it asks us to recognize how easily we, too, might construct elegant justifications to shield ourselves from our own histories.
Words : 2471
Image: 3
14. References
- “An Artist of the Floating World Themes: Course Hero.” An Artist of the Floating World Themes | Course Hero, www.coursehero.com/lit/An-Artist-of-the-Floating-World/themes/. Accessed 10 Apr. 2025.
- Ishiguro, Kazuo. An Artist of the Floating World. 2001.
- Walkowitz, Rebecca L. “Ishiguro’s Floating Worlds.” ELH, vol. 68, no. 4, 2001, pp. 1049–76. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/30032004. Accessed 10 Apr. 2025.
- WRIGHT, TIMOTHY. “No Homelike Place: The Lesson of History in Kazuo Ishiguro’s ‘An Artist of the Floating World.’” Contemporary Literature, vol. 55, no. 1, 2014, pp. 58–88. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43297947. Accessed 10 Apr. 2025.
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