332- ] English Literature
Kazuo Ishiguro
Ishiguro was born in
Nagasaki, Japan, and moved to Britain in 1960 with his parents when he was
five. His first two novels, A Pale View of Hills and An Artist of the Floating
World, were noted for their explorations of Japanese identity and their
mournful tone. He has since explored themes more typically associated with
science fiction and historical fiction, while continuing a focus on the
outsider's perspective, the search for an unattainable truth, and the sense of
recent history as a spider's web in which humans vainly struggle.
He has been nominated
for the Booker Prize four times, winning in 1989 for The Remains of the Day, which
was adapted into a film of the same name in 1993. Salman Rushdie praised the
novel as Ishiguro's masterpiece, in which he "turned away from the
Japanese settings of his first two novels and revealed that his sensibility was
not rooted in any one place, but capable of travel and metamorphosis".
Time named Ishiguro's
Never Let Me Go as the best novel of 2005 and one of the 100 best
English-language novels published between 1923 and 2005. He was nominated for
the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for the 2022 film Living.
Early life and
education
Ishiguro was born in
Nagasaki, Japan, on 8 November 1954, the son of Shizuo Ishiguro, a physical
oceanographer, and his wife, Shizuko. In 1960, Ishiguro moved with his family
to Guildford, Surrey, as his father was invited for research at the National
Institute of Oceanography (now the National Oceanography Centre). He did not
return to visit Japan until 1989, nearly 30 years later, when he was a
participant in the Japan Foundation Short-Term Visitors' Programme.
In an interview with
Kenzaburō Ōe, Ishiguro stated that the Japanese settings of his first two
novels were imaginary: "I grew up with a very strong image in my head of
this other country, a very important other country to which I had a strong
emotional tie … In England I was all the time building up this picture in my
head, an imaginary Japan."
Ishiguro, who has
been described as a British Asian author, explained in a BBC interview how
growing up in a Japanese family in the UK was crucial to his writing, enabling
him to see things from a different perspective from that of many of his English
peers.
He attended Stoughton
Primary School and then Woking County Grammar School in Surrey. Ishiguro sang
solos as a choirboy with his church and school choirs. He also enjoyed music as
a teenager, listening to the likes of Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, and
particularly Bob Dylan. Ishiguro began learning guitar and writing songs,
initially aiming to become a professional songwriter He says that "for me
there's always been big overlap between fiction and song. My style as a
novelist comes substantially from what I learnt writing songs. The intimate,
first-person quality of a singer performing to an audience, for instance,
carried over for me into novels. As did the need to approach meaning subtly,
sometimes by nudging it into the spaces between the lines." After
finishing school in 1973, he took a gap year and traveled through the United
States and Canada, writing a journal and sending demo tapes to record
companies. He also worked as a grouse beater, a practice of driven grouse
shooting, at Balmoral Castle. Ishiguro later reflected on his ephemeral
songwriting career, saying, "I used to see myself as some sort of musician
type but there came a point when I thought: actually, this isn't me at all. I'm
much less glamorous. I'm one of these people with corduroy jackets with elbow
patches. It was a real comedown."
In 1974, he began
studies at the University of Kent at Canterbury, graduating in 1978 with a
Bachelor of Arts (honours) in English and philosophy. After spending a year
writing fiction, he resumed his studies at the University of East Anglia where
he studied with Malcolm Bradbury and Angela Carter on the UEA Creative Writing
Course, gaining the degree of Master of Arts in 1980 His thesis became his
first novel, A Pale View of Hills, published in 1982.
He gained British
citizenship in 1983.
Career
1982–1994: Literary
beginnings and breakthrough
Ishiguro set his
first two novels in Japan; however, in several interviews, he said that he has
little familiarity with Japanese writing and that his works bear little
resemblance to Japanese fiction. An Artist of the Floating World (1986) is set
in an unnamed Japanese city during the Allied Occupation of Japan following the
nation's surrender at the end of World War II. The narrator is forced to come
to terms with his part in World War II. He is criticized by the younger
generation, who hold him responsible for Japan's misguided foreign policy. As a
result, he is compelled to reevaluate his beliefs in light of the modern ideals
represented by his grandson. Ishiguro said of his choice of time period,
"I tend to be attracted to pre-war and postwar settings because I'm
interested in this business of values and ideals being tested, and people
having to face up to the notion that their ideals weren't quite what they
thought they were before the test came."
In an interview in
1989, when discussing his Japanese heritage and its influence on his
upbringing, he stated, "I'm not entirely like English people because I've
been brought up by Japanese parents in a Japanese-speaking home. My parents
(...) felt responsible for keeping me in touch with Japanese values. I do have
a distinct background. I think differently, my perspectives are slightly different."
In a 1990 interview, Ishiguro said, "If I wrote under a pseudonym and got
somebody else to pose for my jacket photographs, I'm sure nobody would think of
saying, 'This guy reminds me of that Japanese writer.'" Although some Japanese
writers have had a distant influence on his writing—Jun'ichirō Tanizaki is the
one he most frequently cites—Ishiguro has said that Japanese films, especially
those of Yasujirō Ozu and Mikio Naruse, have been a more significant influence.
In 1989 he released
his book The Remains of the Day, set in the large country house of an English
lord in the period surrounding World War II. The book received widespread
acclaim as well as the Booker Prize for Fiction. The novel was adapted by
Merchant Ivory and made into a 1993 film of the same name starring Anthony
Hopkins and Emma Thompson.
1995–2018:
Established career and acclaim
His fourth novel, The
Unconsoled (1995), takes place in an unnamed Central European city. It received
the Cheltenham Prize for Literature. A 2006 poll of various literary critics
voted the novel as the third "best British, Irish, or Commonwealth novel
from 1980 to 2005", tied with Anthony Burgess's Earthly Powers, Salman
Rushdie's Midnight's Children, Ian McEwan's Atonement, and Penelope Fitzgerald's
The Blue Flower.
Some of Ishiguro's
novels are set in the past. Never Let Me Go (2005) has science fiction
qualities and a futuristic tone; however, it is set in the 1980s and 1990s, and
takes place in a parallel world very similar to ours. Time magazine named it
the best novel of 2005 and included the novel in its "100 Best
English-language novels published since 1923". The novel was adapted into
the 2010 film of the same name starring Keira Knightley, Andrew Garfield, and
Carey Mulligan. With the exception of The Buried Giant (2015), Ishiguro's
novels are written in the first-person narrative style.
No comments:
Post a Comment