Masuji Ono's Life as We Know It

In the story An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro, the main character Masuji Ono one who has to live life different in what seems to be day to day.  There are always changes happening in his life.  Some of these would be considered tragedies, but some of them are just bad happenings.  It seems as if his lifestyle has to change on many occasions just to keep up with everything that is happening, which makes it seem as if he is caught in between various worlds. 

            To start off all the changes in his life, Ono’s father shows characteristics of hate.  As the title suggests, Ono is actually an artist.  His father however does not support him in this.  His father hints that he doesn’t want Ono to be a painter.  The biggest hint that Ono receives would be when his father burns the paintings that Ono is about to display.  Something that takes a person a lot of time will definitely upset them if ruined, so it is understandable if Ono would not want to speak to his father again anytime soon. 

            Ono also lost close parts of his family due to the war happening.  His son and mother were both casualties of the war.  Losing two people who are that close to a person will be devastating to whoever it happens to.  Along with this one of Ono’s daughters is married while the other daughter that he has is engaged, sort of.  So in a sense he is losing almost all the family that he has.  He probably won’t speak to his father much because of the somewhat rough upbringing, his mother and son have both died, and it seems as if both his daughters are moving on in their lives.

            Since Ono has lost most of his family this leaves him pretty lonely.  This is why I say that he is caught in between various worlds.  He has lost much of what he has, and basically has to start over.  I believe that this is shown in his narrating.  He seems to be upset with his father often for the life that he has so far lived.  There are other things that he seems to be upset about, like the engagement factor of his daughter, in which there is very little known about the plans of the engagement.  For anyone things like this would be hard and so I understand that Ono is somewhat stuck with where he stands in his life.