The Patriotic Artist

Being introduced to Japan in 1948 during the after-affect of the Second World War through the eyes of Masuji Ono, an elite artist, I began to question: what does the war have to do with the overall theme of an artist living in a floating world? Three different aspects from Ono’s life helped me answer that question in which we will see.
As Ono takes us down his time-line to when he was an adolescent receiving business meetings from his father, it’s evident that he inherited his philosophy of the way one must show respect to his elders, and how one must live with dignity from his father’s strict manner. Then as Ono gets older he tells his mother, “I have no wish to find myself in years to come, sitting where Father is now, telling my own son…I wish to rise above such a life”(47). I found this interesting because it takes a soldier to go against his parent’s will being raised in a strict household. I bring this aspect up because after reading this, I recognized the uniqueness and courage of Ono to say such a thing and actually go through with it. I knew from there I would be reading something that would include how Ono would change things in Japan some way. Then once it was obvious that Ono was an artist, I knew he would change Japan with his art and heart of a lion.
Later into the reading when it talked about Ono’s favorite bar the Migi-Hidari, which was back then known as Yagmata’s, and how it gained it’s name from an old veteran soldier, I knew it would have something to do with the how the war tied into the theme of an artist living in a floating world. Ono spoke of this place not possessing “the new spirit of Japan” (64) in which he described as something that beholds loyalty to Communism and the authorities controlling everything. I conclude this because the authorities were trying to run things in Japan and Ono believes that everywhere else possessed this “new spirit” except the Migi-Hidari where as Ono told us, “one could get drunk with pride and dignity” (74). He also told us that this bar was one where only elite artists would gather and converse and use their paintings such as, “The Patriotic Spirit,” (74) as a form of combat to the communism going on in Japan which was before the war. From this Migi-Hidari being “a proud and respectable atmosphere” (75), I see it that these artist are playing the role that soldiers would for earning their county’s independence, but they are fighting for the way they think things should be in Japan, therefore they are patriotic artists in my book.
Another aspect of my finding to how the war ties to artist living in a floating world relates to when Ono worked for his first firm and why he decided to leave to work for the painter and print maker Seiji Moriyama. While Ono worked for Master Takeda’s firm as an artist, he soon was fed up with the “unhappy working conditions” (65) and disloyalty going on in the firm so he decided to leave. I saw this as a patriotic move on his behalf because after he explained to Tortoise what he had learned from working at the firm. Ono told Tortoise while he was strolling around on Tamagawa grounds, “While it was right to look up teachers, it was important to question their authority… To rise above the undesirable and decadent influences that have swamped us and have done so much to weaken the fibre of our nation these past ten years” (73).
With all of theses aspects of Ono’s life, I find it that the war symbolizes what Ono is trying to do as an artist floating in the world not holding his own two feet on the ground, and is literally connected to why the war got started which I believe awaits us later in the novel.

Ishiguro, Kazuo. An Artist Of The Floating World. New York Vintage international:1989