Masuji Ono

An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro features a mysterious character named Masuji Ono who appears to be tormented by his pessimistic father.  Masuji is a grandfather and also has two daughters named Setsuko and Noriko.  Masuji Ono lost his only natural son when he ran across a minefield during the war.  Masuji is the narrator as well and provides the reader with vivid imagery of his surroundings both past and present.  During the beginning section of the book Masuji details the conditions of Japan both prior to the war as well as describing post war conditions.  He also goes into great detail about the experiences that he had as a child and how his father's actions molded him into the person he appears to be currently.

Masuji does not seem to have much appreciation for the younger generation and seems to attribute many of the problems of a world gone mad to their hateful and aggressive actions.  Masuji was raised to believe money was vital to happiness and success and it appears that his artistic side went away after he no longer profited from it.  I attribute this to the rhetoric that his father force fed him as a child.  Masuji's father was a bitterly cruel person that went as far as to refer to artists as "weak willed and depraved."  Masuji wants many things to remain the same even though his whole life he has been doing the exact opposite of his father's prognostication.

Masuji reminds me very much of my father in that he clings to many ideologies of the past and refuses to give the younger generation due credit.   While Masuji and my father both have skills outside of the work force and have multiple levels of depth with regards to their personality, they both remain "at the Bridge of Hesitation", possibly in order to fully gain control of their life at time where confusion begins to arise due to the changing world around them.  Instead of idolizing many of the heroes of Japan's past, Masuji's grandson chooses to idolize characters made popular by Western commercialism.  It seems only natural that feelings of anger and resentment would arise when such a dramatic change of ideologies occurs within one's lifetime.   To make matters worse, these Western heroes are being introduced by the only son (in-law) that Ono has left, Suichi, who represents the younger generation's anger and frustration . 

I feel that Masuji Ono has experienced a transformation in demeanor and personlity due primarily to the fact that he was unable to instill values and proper parenting to his son Kenji.  I believe that Ono wanted very much to be a more supportive parent than his father was and that losing his son lost most of his ambition as a both an artist and a person.  I'm hoping that as the story continues he is able to influence his grandson into idolizing samurai legends such as Lord Yoshitsune.