I’ve been sitting on my couch for the last hour thinking about “nostalgia” and how it could apply to me directly and it’s been very unproductive. I even looked up the definition just to make sure I fully understood its meaning was what I thought it was; to be nostalgic means to wish to relive the past or better times. Slowly I began processing different memories such as nights with friends, past relationships, and other events in my head that seem profound but nothing seems to suck me back and make me wish I could go back there. Sure, there have been great times and sure there are people from the past that I miss but nothing strikes me as being worth the idea of regressing and going BACK in life.
While there might not be fond memories that would make me want to go back and relive them, there IS a state of mind I wish I could revisit and maybe get lost in again and I think most people can relate. Remember what it was like to be a kid, to be completely ignorant of everything that is outside of your line of vision? I remember having only a vague conception that there was a big world I had no idea of but I also remember not caring at all. And the reason I said that this was something that most people can relate to is because age brings such a heavy load of reality and responsibility and people use trivial things like TV and harmful things like alcohol to escape the stresses of their lives. Wouldn’t it be terrific if we were all just as ignorant of the ugliness of the world and be blissfully happy?
Masuji Ono, the main character in Kazuo Ishiguro’s An Artist of the Floating World, lives such a life, one without having to face the harshness of post-war-Japan. Going back to my last post about selective self-narration, there are many holes in Ono’s story about himself that call his credibility as the narrator into question, and the details omitted seem intentionally misplaced to protect his image. This portrays Ono’s character as arrogant and pious and, frankly, as an asshole. But thinking about nostalgia and applying it to Ono gives a completely different perception of the character entirely. Is it possible that Ono is nostalgic about when he was well respected so now he’s regressed to being ignorant of his own mistakes that have alienated him from that old life? For example, when Ono runs into Jiro Miyake, his daughter’s former prospective husband, they begin talking about people who “led the country astray” (56), in Miyake’s words. Miyake related to Ono about his superior who killed himself out of guilt for his part in the war and Ono thought that people killing themselves for that reason was a “great waste” (56). But when Miyake gets a little personal with Ono and insinuates that Ono may have had some hand in the mess, Ono questions if “Miyake really [said] all this to [him] that afternoon” (56). It’s as if there is some kind of mental block he’s put up to keep himself from considering his own sense of guilt. And Noriko even describes him as moping through the house all day, probably feeling sorry for his self for betraying people who were close to him, like his old student Kuroda. The only time that he comes out and admits his own guilt is during the miai with his daughter and her prospective husband and his family. He blames it on drinking a little too much and even claims he was told mostly about it by Noriko but he feels the tension at the table and breaks it with an outburst admitting he felt partially “responsible for the terrible things that happened” (123) to Japan. Ono doesn’t want to fully admit this guilt and sense of responsibility to his self or anyone else which is why he credits the confession to the alcohol but nonetheless, we’ve heard it from his mouth and he doesn’t deny it. He’s chosen to be ignorant of the reality of his own actions and their consequence and, with this in mind, the dynamics of the rest of the book change and instead of being a pompous asshole, Ono now comes across as a sad little kid you can’t help but feel sorry for.
2 comments on With the Ignorance Of a Child
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Nice. Very articulate. Very accurate.