An artist of the floating world

206 pages

English language

Published Nov. 20, 1989 by Vintage Books.

ISBN:
978-0-679-72266-3
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4 stars (1 review)

21 editions

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4 stars

An Artist of the Floating World evokes a lost world of artists' lives in the pre-War Japanese demi-monde against the rise of strident propaganda leading up to the catastrophe of the War. At one point, the narrator, Mr. Ono, a painter, describes his masters' geisha paintings as updating a classic 'Utamoro tradition' in order to "evoke a certain melancholy around his women, and throughout the years I studied with him, he experimented extensively with colours in an attempt to capture the feel of lantern light." Even as Ono turns his back on this "floating world" to create a "new Japan," the war consumes his old pleasure district, leaving only ashes, fertile ground for Japan's new Americanized business culture.

Against this backdrop, an Artist of the Floating World is a novel of guilt and remembrance, perception of self and perception of others, a brief journey in which Mr. Ono must confront …

Subjects

  • World War, 1939-1945 -- Art and the war -- Fiction
  • Fathers and daughters -- Fiction
  • Older men -- Fiction
  • Artists -- Fiction
  • Japan -- History -- Allied occupation, 1945-1952 -- Fiction