Ichiro’s Balance

Throughout the entire plot of An Artist of the Floating World, Kazuo Ishiguro forces the readers to put on Masuji Ono’s shoes through the descriptive detail that is packed into this book. Each narration and dialog I feel as though those people are actually surrounding me. I see the aging skin of myself (Ono) through a mirror, the newly formed beauty of Setsuko, and the “cobwebs and mould” in the “remains of Sugimara’s garden corridor.” (p.12) But the thing that stands out to me the most is the “heavy thump [that] made the whole house shake” that caught Ono’s attention. With a worried and cautioned look on Ono’s face, he quickly rushes into the dining room. He is taken aback by the darkness and waits until his eyes are able to adjust to it. After a while he notices that nothing is there. Before he gets a chance to turn around and leave, he hears two more bangs. He realizes that the noise is coming from the adjacent room. The moment he enters, he notices his grandson, Ichiro, galloping on a wooden horse.
Throughout this scene, Ishiguro displays Ichiro’s mature, demanding and independent character. He does this through descriptive detail and demanding diction. When Ichiro noticed he was being watched, he “angrily turned” to shout, “Can’t you see I’m busy?” (p. 29) Soon after, he tells his grandfather that he couldn’t play with him at the moment in a screeching way. After a while, he allows his grandfather to watch him as long as he wasn’t disturbed. Ichiro is descriptively described as being watchful and moody showing how serious he was about his drama. His demanding diction shows how his difference with other characters. While others are scared to say the wrong thing to someone, Ichiro speaks his mind freely.
He stands out from the rest of the characters because unlike him, everyone seems like their life is being drained. The other characters seem as though they don’t have any meaning left. Setsuko is being brain washed by her husband Suichi, Ono is focusing too much on what used to be, and Noriko is concentrating too much on her current marriage arrangements. Ichiro’s eagerness to repeat English while pretending to be Lone Ranger shows how he is ready to adapt to other cultures and is open-minded. He is eager to go watch Godzilla while the others aren’t that enthusiastic about it. His dissimilarity with his family balances them. He makes up for the lack of enthusiasm in his family.
Something that I notice is a reoccurring object is the veranda. Setsuko and Ono are always out there relaxing. I believe they find that place to be their sanctum to retreat from their stress. There has to be reason why that place is their place to retreat. Is it because they grew up in a house that had a veranda as well? Maybe it’s because the veranda brings them closer with nature.
In the first section that we read, Noriko’s previous marriage arrangement is an issue that was unsolved. The sisters have suspicions of the arrangement because they believed it was a “love match.” (p.18) They assume Ono had something to do with it or at least knows why it didn’t work out as planned. He claims that he knows nothing about what went wrong. On page 53, Noriko comes across Jiro Miyake. She talks to him like they were friends without having any arrangements made earlier. This says something about her character because she acts like nothing happened even though she was in love with him. Does this mean that she is strong willed and won’t let a bad incident keep her from being happy or does this mean she keeps things bottled up inside so well that it looks like she is happy?