Masuji Ono

It’s interesting how words are symbols, those symbols have meaning.  For instance our names that we are giving at birth play some role in the meaning of our lives. In the Japanese language characters are symbols and most all have meaning. Whether it was my curiosity about the main character in An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro or the Japanese culture, I find very interesting. 

When we first meet Masuji Ono he comes across, humble, friendly, and modest. We find he is well respected in the community has a family and a grandson. Being a retired painter he is busy trying to marry off his daughter.  As he was telling his story I couldn’t stop to think about what his name means.  Do you know what the Japanese character Ono means in English?   “Ono is the Japanese word for an "axe" or a "hatchet", sometimes employed as weapons. Generally four feet long with a heavy, over-sized steel blade. The few existing academic references to this weapon and documentation of extant examples are in connection with the sohei (warrior monks), who also adapt other agricultural tools as weapons. Ono specifically designed for military use is of extreme rarity” (Wiki).  I know the source is not credible but I did reference to a Japanese-English dictionary and Ono does mean ax.  I still believe it to be very interesting maybe a little foreshadowing. It could even be a metaphor Ono being the ax that is used in battle to slice through the war.

Ono Character

Ono seems to be a proud and humble man that has learned a lot from his experiences. We find out that he was a painter “Our father was a cultured man, Mr Ono. He had much respect for artists. Indeed, he knew of your work” (9).  A retired painter it was not easy getting there.  When he was fifteen his father burnt his art work in the reception room in front of him. In a punitive manner “your mother seems to be under the impression that you wish to take up painting as a profession.  Naturally, she is mistaken supposing this” as he stares at the burning artwork in his hand (44).  This is the beginning of Ono’s hatred toward his father. His father, being so strong headed and closed minded “the only thing father’s succeeded in [was] kindling my ambition” (47).  He is referring to being a better person than his father was. Being moral and just is where he was going with this.

The question still stands why did he stop painting? If you retire from something you love, for no reason other than he got too old there is something yet to be told.  He still loves painting. When teaching his grandson Ichiro to use crayons to draw, this gave Ono a great sense of hope and excitement.

Ono is torn from the past and the present. He lacks understanding about the new changing world, he feels as if on the bridge of hesitation again.  He is torn and hesitant to cross into the new, he knows the old and really enjoys it.  This book is about change and how Ono reacts to it. The war has changed Ono “Father is very different now” (13).  In denial that he is kinder and more gentle of what his eldest daughter had said.

This shows how the world is changing “for nothing really remains of our old pleasure district now; almost all her old competitors have close up and left” (23). Talking about Mrs. Kawakami’s bar, Ono really enjoyed the past, being apart of something bigger than just himself.  He does not understand or does not want to understand that the world is changing.  “but such a transformation is by no means these days I see it all around me something has changed in the character of the younger generation in a way I  do not fully understand” (59).  He will eventually embrace it.