Kazuo Ishiguro: 'Artist of the Floating World' Quiz

Answer: The night-time world of pleasure and entertainment

The 'floating world' that occupies the novel - and which symbolises the carefree decadence of Japanese society in Masuji Ono's youth - is the 'pleasure district' of bars, geisha houses, theatres and bright lights where men can come to drink, tell stories, and dance with women. For Ono's mentor (sensei), the artist Seiji Moriyama, the subject matter of all paintings should be concerned only with this transitory pleasure - "the best things are put together of a night and vanish with the morning" - rather than with serious subjects like politics. Masuji Ono later on rejects this view of the purpose of art.

Answer: Bridge of Hesitation

The bridge got its name because it was said that some men - stricken with conscience about whether to cross the bridge for an evening's entertainment in the pleasure district, or return home to their wives - could be seen hovering about the bridge, hesitant and undecided which course to take. The formal and coded manner in which many of Ishiguro's characters tentatively communicate with each other in the novel reflects the importance of hesitation and ambiguity as themes throughout the book, so that the Bridge appears to be symbolic of something wider.

Answer: Army boots marching in formation

Masuji Ono believes that the authorities' decision to grant a license to the Migi-Hidari was because of his assurance that it would cultivate the 'new spirit' of Japanese imperialism, and be a counterfoil to the traditional decadence associated with the pleasure district.

His best art student at that time, Kuroda, presented Ono with one of his paintings, 'The Patriotic Spirit', depicting an evening in the Migi-Hidari - "for he [Kuroda] believed in such things then." Later, when Kuroda's art seems to have reverted from these imperialist beliefs, Ono reports him to those same authorities and Kuroda is jailed.

Answer: Paintings being burned

When Masuji Ono's father learns that his son is thinking of becoming an artist instead of following him into his business, he burns Ono's paintings in an earthenware pot. Many years later, Ono denounces his star pupil, Kuroda, to the Committee of Unpatriotic Activities. Kuroda's paintings are burned in a police raid, and he is imprisoned as a traitor and physically maltreated until the end of World War II.

Although Ono deplores the burning of Kuroda's paintings as 'going too far', his denunciation of Kuroda which led to this act has ironic echoes of his own father's view that unacceptable ideas can be burned out of existence.

Answer: He commits suicide

In the American-occupied Japan in which the novel is set after the war, there is a spate of suicides of prominent figures who feel obliged to atone for their support of Japan's imperialist actions and defeat in World War II. Some younger Japanese feel that these suicides are 'noble gestures' that allow them to forget the mistakes of the past and look to the future. This theme of guilt and responsibility, and how it is faced, is central to Ishiguro's book.

Answer: The 'Hirayama boy' has learning disabilities

The 'Hirayama boy' is around 50 years old but has the mental age of a child. Before and during the war people encouraged him to sing war songs and make patriotic statements, and gave him money and food because of it. Now that the war is over, with defeat and its accompanying sense of guilt, the 'Hiroyama boy' simply doesn't understand that times and sentiments have changed. He continues with the same patriotic behaviour that previously won him praise, but now he gets regularly beaten up as a result.

Answer: The China Crisis

In 1931, a section of the most right-wing Japanese military sparked an invasion of Chinese Manchuria, against the wishes of the more moderate Japanese government and the Emperor, which escalated to a full-blown Sino-Japanese War in 1937. In American-occupied Japan after the war, Shintaro has applied for a teaching post at Higashimachi High School, but he fears that his past history of producing propaganda art for Japanese imperial expansion will be a barrier to getting the post.

He asks Masuji Ono to write to the school committee explaining that Shintaro had really opposed the campaign at the time. Ono refuses, urging Shintaro to face up to the past rather than trying to revise his role in it.

Answer: Family background investigations

The highly formal marriage negotiations culminate in an interview (miai) between both families held in the Kasuga Park Hotel. Masuji Ono has come to believe that his enthusiastic support before the war for the imperialist 'new spirit', expressed through his paintings, will be highlighted by the Saito family's traditional detective investigations before the 'miai', and that this may prevent the marriage being agreed.

He visits his pre-war acquaintances in order to influence what they will say if approached by a detective.

Then, to protect Noriko's marriage prospects, he expresses regret at the 'miai' for his earlier enthusiasm for the military government, only to learn that his reputation as a champion of the 'new spirit' was not as well known as he had thought, and the Saito family was unaware of it!

Answer: Drinking sake at supper

Masuji Ono promises his grandson Ichiro that he can taste his first sake during supper. For Ono, this act has enormous significance for Ichiro, related to his male 'pride', and he believes it is an event Ichiro will never forget. In Shinto custom, tasting sake is part of the Shichi-go-san ceremony undertaken by young boys and girls, and Ono's own son Kenji (killed during the war) had first tasted sake at Ichiro's age. Ono's daughters however, Setsuko (Ichiro's mother) and Noriko (now married to Taro Saito), believe that Ichiro is far too young to drink sake and they defy their father by forbidding it to happen.

Answer: A bench in a new office car park

The old 'pleasure district' - half bombed, half derelict - has been demolished, including the Migi-Hidari bar, and replaced with a concrete road and new office blocks. In the front yard of these offices, on the spot where Masuji Ono imagines his old table once stood, there is now a bench. An elderly man now, he sits on the bench looking out, not over the pro-imperialist clientele of the old Migi-Hidari but over young office workers full of optimism and enthusiasm. "Our nation, it seems," Masuji Ono concludes the novel with, "whatever mistakes it may have made in the past, has now another chance to make a better go of things."