Sugano, Motoko

Kazuo Ishiguro’s second novel, An Artist of the Floating World (1986) has been a challenging book for Japanese readers. The novel is difficult because it seems to invite us to be complicit to the narrator’s wrongdoing, particularly, imperial expansions to East and South East Asian countries. Even though the novel’s first narrator, Masuji Ono, mentions, with some hesitations, his ‘mistakes’ committed in good faith at his daughter Noriko’s miai meeting and Ono explains to his grandson Ichiro why Mr Naguchi killed himself using the word ‘apology’, it is evident that he does not regret his mistakes and feels, in hindsight, a ‘deep sense of triumph and satisfaction’ (Ishiguro 202) for his advocacy in Japanese militarism. In such complexities of character, Rebeca L. Walkowitz, in Cosmopolitan Style (2006), reads Ishiguro’s treason, that is, his attempts to betray any fixed notion of national culture. Her reading of Ishiguro is very sophisticated and astute, but her discussion focuses only on Ono’s domesticity, not on what Ono and Matsuda looked ‘beyond’ in the ‘Eyes to the Horizon’.

This paper attempts to revisit my essay ‘“Putting One’s Conviction to the Test”: The Japanese Translation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s An Artist of the Floating World’ (2011), and provide an update of criticisms dealing with Japanese war responsibility. Subsequently, I will discuss the TV drama adaptation of An Artist of the Floating World produced by NHK, the national broadcasting corporation and broadcasted in March 2019. The drama employs the latest 8K technology and is internationally recognised in TV media awards. What aspects are included and altered in the adaptation? The discussion of the TV drama adaptation will suggest how its representation is burdened by post-war Japanese history.