Before and After

    Today I am going to analyze the character Masuji Ono from the book called "An Artist of the Floating World" by Kazuo Ishiguro.  The author Ishiguro's style is outstanding because it allows you to deeply get in the character Masuji Ono.  I found analyzing this style interesting.
 

     The story describes Japan's environment post World War II.  The main character, Masuji Ono, is an artist who lost his wife and only son due to the war.  He was left only with his two daughters and his grandson. He taught drawing for a long time.  He was an respected artist and had many students.  However, he used his drawings of WWII as propaganda to support the imperialist system in Japan.   At that time he was proud of this job.  But due to changing values he changed his views.
 

     In my opinion, I feel that he was held by past ideas and memories; he could not forget those past values and did not want to throw those away.  There is one example that I can use to explain why Masuji Ono was the character he was.  When he played with his cute grandson, Ichiro, Ichiro pretended to be a hero:

"Very impressive, Ichiro.  But, tell me, who were you pretending to be?"
"You guess, Oji."
"Hmm.  Lord Yoshitsune perhaps? No? A samurai warrior, then?  Hmm.  Or a ninja perhaps? The Ninja of the Wind."
"Oji's completely on the wrong scent."
"Then tell me.  Who were you?"
"Lone Ranger!"
"What?"
"Lone Ranger! Hi yo Silver!"
"Lone Ranger? Is that a cowboy?"
"Hi yo Silver!" (30)

     I like this scene a lot because of the gap between Ono and Ichiro.  I believe that this situation helps to explain the character Masuji Ono.  Actually, this scene is very common among a grandfather and his little grandson.  They do not have a common perspective, the generation gap is too large.  After WWII, Japan had to change its policy because Japan lost the war and was occupied.  Japan finally became an open economy.  Before WWII Japan was isolated from the world.  People in Japan knew little about the outside world because of imperialism prior to WWII.  Masuji Ono had been living in those days.  But post WWII, Japan's sense of values started moving other ways which they absorbed from the rest of the world.  Therefore, I believe that Ichiro was the symbol of post WWII and Ono was the symbol of pre WWII.  Ono could not catch up to the new values like Ichiro had, or at least had a hard time understanding the new values.  Ono regreted that he supported Japan's involvement in WWII with his pictures, but he was proud of it at that time.
 

     There is one more sign that he could not accept the new post WWII values.  It shows up in the marriage negotiation of his younger daughter, Noriko.  Noriko could not get a good marriage negotiation the first time and had a hard time with the second one.  After that Ono was concerned about Noriko's negotiations.  Ono thought that Noriko failed to get married because of his support of imperialism in Japan.  He understood that he had to change with the new values, but it was hard for him to do that.
 

     In conclusion, changing perspective is really hard for everyone including us.  I think the story tells us that changing one's values is really difficult.  This story's historical background is special because this was a time of change in Japan.  Therefore, everybody had to change at that time.  I bet that there are a lot of people like Ono.  Japan has succeeded to become an international country today because they changed.  I believe that breaking fixed ideas is necessary to reach to new dimensions.