The Generation Gap

Ono believes that there is a difference in the postwar generation. A difference in the way they see and understand things. zthey don't see things as they really are, but differently. Is this true?

In the second section of "An Artist of The Floating World" Ono goes to visit Kuroda. He makes this visit in an effort to clear up any misunderstanding they may have had in the past and make sure Kuroda doesn't sat anything about Ono's past that may jeopardize Noriko's marriage negotiations. Upon his arrival Ono is greeted by a young man, Kuroda's pupil, Enchi. Enchi assumes Ono is one of Kuroda's associates so initially he is very polite and welcoming, but when he finds out exactly who Ono is he changes. Ono says, "Until this point the young man had managed to maintain a polite tone in his voice, but now he seemed to lose his self control" (113). Enchi's voice changes and he is in this mood of disgust. From the things that Kuroda has shared with him about Ono the young man has no respect for Ono. Enchi accuses him of being a traitor and blames Ono for Kuroda being thrown in jail and all of the abuses he suffered while there. Ono says to him, "Young men of your generation tend to see things far too simply", (113).This angers Enchi and he responds even more forceful than before. Enchi believes that he knows exactly what happened and understood well enough.

Is it that Enchi sees thing too simply or is it that Ono simply doesn't understand the severity of the things that he did that may have caused Kuroda's imprisionment? This doesn't seem to be at all the case when one attempts to write Kuroda a letter and in Kuroda's response he say that he doesn't want anything to xo with Ono. This shows me that maybe the problem isn't with the younger generation at all. The problem is with Ono and has always been with Ono. The things that Hensley during the war were things that were considered in bad judgement at the time. Ono knew that but still he did them and had his pupils do it too.

In how own eyes Ono is right but to the people around him not so much. Shintaro, another of his pupils even came to him seeking a disclaimer to posters they had produced during he war. Ono refused to honor this request because he believed, as he later said, that a man should take responsibilty for things he has done in the past. So my question to you is: where do you think the difference lies, in the younger generation or in Ono?

Ishiguro, Kazuo. An Artist of The Floating World. New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1986. Print

Look at That Chassis

The author of, "Looking at Women", uses cause and effect to effectively explain to the readers why men look at women. So he tells us about the girl that his friend said had the nice "chassis" and then he explains to us how he began to understand why friend looked at women the way that he did. He went on throughout the explain what different things caused for him to examine the way men looked at women. He explain all these things but he ended just where he began; with the girl in the pink shorts. He used practical examples that all of his readers could relate to one way or another. He kept the readers attention by not drifting to deeply into any of his examples. He kept his essay interesting and didn't use to few or too many examples.

Stix

Aisha is slender, well extremely skinny, compared to her sister Khadija. Khadija is extremely jealous of that fact and is not ashamed to let that be known. She constantly teases Aisha about her size and in chapter 5 in the second paragraph on page 29 she just goes on a rampage with insults concerning Aisha's weight. She wants Aisha to feel bad about her size and the fact that the author starts off with, "Aisha's slenderness did not correspond to the diligence with which she ate" relates to how Khadija feels about Aisha's weight. This sentence was used to introduce the paragraph to display just how much she dislikes the fact that Aisha does not look like her. She tries to make Aisha feel bad for being as small as she is by bringing up the fact that the "potion" used to fattened up the rest of the women has failed to help Aisha gain weight, she attributes it to the fact that Aisha has little faith. Khadija definitely wants Aisha to feel bad and does everything she can to make that possible and the author does a tremendous job in setting the tone.