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an interview with
KAZUO ISHIGURO
I would like to thank Rhodes College for its generous support of this interview and
Elizabeth Keith for her invaluable editorial and typing assistance. Thanks are also due
to Jennifer Brady and Jo Ellyn Clarey for their editorial input.
K AZ U O I S H I G U R O
2 * CONTEMPORAR Y L I T E RAT U RE
Q. It sounds as if, on the front end, you worried a lot about your
new novel's relative degree of realism.
A. Definitely. Although many dimensions of the novel sort of
worked themselves out as I went along, I had to make a decision
before I even started work on the novel as to what extent the setting
would be that strange, unrealistic world and to what extent it
would be closer to realism. In other words, I had to decide where
to position it on that spectrum between a weird world and a recog-
nizably realistic, everyday world. This is something that I was
forced to think about consciously to some extent because these is-
sues had been raised by The Unconsoled,not just by me but by its
readers. I decided to start the new novel off relatively close to real-
ity, but not too close, of course, as we're still quite a bit away from
reality since we're talking about the world of detectives-a world
in which detectives are celebrated in a fairly everyday manner and
4 - CONTEMPORAR Y L I T E RAT U RE
Q. Yet isn't this reminiscent of Ryder's belief that he can save the
town through his much anticipated "performance"?
A. Yes, that is there. There's obviously a clear parallel between
Christopher Banks's saving the world and Ryder's saving the town.
But I think they are distinct, even if both are in some way related
to the more idealistic and morally ambitious narratorsof the earlier
books.
Q. Your point about nostalgia and the childhood bubble our par-
ents construct and then lead us out of reminds me of a line in E. M.
Forster's first novel, WhereAngels Fear to Tread:"All a child's life
depends on the ideal it has of its parents." I was wondering if you
think this to be a fair summation of Banks's situation in Orphans.
Or, for that matter, of Ryder's in The Unconsoled,or Stevens's in
The Remainsof the Day?
A. Yes, it probably is. Still, that's quite an extreme statement be-
cause it suggests that parents are everything. But it's certainly the
case that I've represented my characters as people who, to some
extent, have built their sense of the ideal upon a parent or parent
figure. And I suppose that only later on do they discover that the
parent figure or figures weren't quite as they saw them: Stevens
and his father, or Banks (in a much more literal, less subtle way)
and his parents. I guess Banks builds his parents up in his mind;
he gives himself a version of events that makes them very dignified
and heroic. But to some extent, maybe it's all right for us to have
an exaggeratedly heroic view of our parent figures if it helps us in
life-rather than going around thinking that the people we emo-
tionally admire or emulate are shabby figures. Maybe it's better to
err on that side-to err on the side of thinking that they're grander
and more heroic than they really are. But I think the downside of
that-and I think this is what to some extent my books are about-
the downside of having parents whom my protagonists idealize is
that this exerts enormous pressure on them. And sometimes it
means that they've contorted and distorted their lives in an attempt
I S H I G U RO
0 9
A. Yes, the book moves from one kind of realism to another kind
of realism. I remember now when I was devising the novel that
this shift was partly prompted by my feeling that people are quite
strong emotionally when they're young. When I was a young man
myself I always imagined that you got stronger and stronger, emo-
tionally speaking, as you aged. You got more and more stable; you
worked out all these things in your life more and more successfully.
So you would suffer less and less from anything that life handed
you early as you learned to assimilate and cope with these hard-
ships. That's certainly how the adult world looked to me then. But
as I've gotten older myself, I've noticed that's not the case. Around
me, people I imagined were coping with their lives perfectly well
in their twenties seemed to crash on some rocks. If you looked care-
fully, you could see that these problems were there right from the
start. When you're young, there's the sense that your life can
change, that you can become something else later on if you wish.
This seeming open-endedness keeps people going for a certain
time; but problems seem to catch up with them at that point when
they realize their lives aren't going to change that much anymore.
Life doesn't present an infinite series of twists and turns now.
You've been dealt a certain hand and that's it. People's lives fall
apart; they get depressed. I've seen quite a lot of this happen to
people in their late thirties or so. Although until now they've been
able to keep going on certain hopes and plans, suddenly all this
baggage from the past comes in and overwhelms them. So it felt
right to me that the earlier part of Banks's life should be relatively
I S H IG U R0 11
A. Well, I can see that that question is relevant to people like Ono
and Stevens, because their books pose the questions, Is it possible
to contribute to the good of the world? How difficult or easy is it
to make a contribution to a more civilized world? They do pose
these questions, so it is justified for people to argue over whether
these novels close on a hopeful note or not, particularly as Ono and
Stevens discover that, despite their best efforts, they've actually not
succeeded. You're asking about Banks here, but I'd like to say a
bit more about Ono and Stevens in order to answer your question.
I wanted An Artist of the Floating Worldto end on a note of Ono
thinking, "My life's messed up because I happened along at a cer-
tain time in Japanese history." I wanted a certain poignancy to
emerge from his sense that a man's life is only so long, while the
life of a nation is much longer; that Japan as a nation could actually
learn from its mistakes and try again even if Ono couldn't. Ono is
looking at this younger generation of people coming up. Perhaps
they have the same sense of patriotism or idealism that he had, but
they live in different times and they may well have a better chance
of creating something worthwhile. Ono has got to accept that a
man's life is much too short to have a second chance. He had a go;
it's too late for him to have another. But he takes comfort in the
fact that a nation's life isn't like a man's life. A new generation
comes along; Japan can try again. So there's a mixed hope-I in-
tended that anyway-at the end of that book.
Stevens, at his novel's close, is perhaps deluding himself in
12 - CONTEMPORARY L I T E RAT U RE
thinking that he still has time to lead his life in a different way or
become a new person. We sense that he's going to be hopeless at
bantering or joking or whatever. He's never going to be one of the
lads; we can see that he's far too set in his ways. But I wanted to
suggest somehow that even the fact that he finally comes to see
himself clearly is an achievement and a sort of dignity in itself.
There is something noble-even heroic-in his ability to face up
to those very painful things about himself. There is something posi-
tive about Stevens's triumph over that impasse, even though there
is still something sad about him.
To some extent, I think the matter of the relative hopefulness of
the ending is a less relevant question for my later books. As far as
I'm concerned, people like Banks didn't have much of a choice.
They've been handed this broken thing at a certain point in their
lives. They really couldn't get on with their lives because they were
holding this thing and they had to fix it. At the end of When We
WereOrphans,Banks hasn't fixed it, but at least he's kind of gotten
rid of it. He's come to some resolution. The whole agenda of his
life is no longer dictated by trying to sort this thing out, at least.
Christopher Banks doesn't really delude himself. There's talk
maybe he'll get married, but he knows that's nonsense. He knows
he's a certain way. He tries to tell himself that he was dealt a certain
hand by life-he was dealt an orphan's hand-and that it must be
played through to the end. At one point SarahHemmings tells him:
"Let's forget about all this baggage. Let's try and get on with life-
try and love and be loved instead of always trying to fix something
from the past." He probably doesn't know for sure whether he
should have taken her advice or not, but in the end he feels he
didn't really have a choice. I guess that's fairly close to my instinct:
that it's not really a case of whether these people are acting cor-
rectly or incorrectly-that's almost irrelevant-or whether their
lives end on a hopeful note or not. These characters are given a
compulsive task by circumstances, by life. Whatever they may
wish, they have to see this task through to the end, until it's re-
solved in some way.