Bridge of Hesitation (symbol)
This bridge is the most familiar landmark in An Artist of the Floating World, mentioned at the beginning of the novel and regularly throughout. On one level, its symbolism is fairly clear. Ono has to cross the bridge to get home physically, while emotionally he is hesitant, torn between his memories and his future, his ego and the truth. In fact, one of the reasons that it takes so long for us to figure out what happened in his past is because Ono is so hesitant as a narrator. He shares something and then obscures something else, or insists that he cannot recall the exact event in question, revealing his entire story with painstaking slowness. The presence of a bridge with such an evocative name lets us know that Ono's crossing is as metaphorical as it is literal. The bridge's symbolism is deepened, however, when Ono shares the story of its name. Men, he tells us, hesitated before either going home or crossing the bridge to the city's pleasure district. Therefore, we understand that the bridge is both a site of Ono's own attachment to that old district, and a lost communal symbol of that district, part of the vocabulary of a now-nonexistent subculture.
Fire (motif)
Three times during this novel, a certain scene repeats itself, almost exactly. An older man, usually a father figure, discovers that his son or protegé has been making art of a variety that the older man deems disagreeable. The older man then destroys the art, or creates circumstances allowing for the destruction of that art. Such a scene occurs between Ono and his father, between Ono and Moriyama, and between Kuroda and Ono. In each of these scenes, fire is present. Ono's father burns his son's paintings, and the police burn Kuroda's on Ono's orders. Moriyama does not burn Ono's paintings, at least not in front of his student, but he insists that Ono light lanterns while making it clear that he plans on destroying the paintings. Fire, then, is a motif signaling to us that an artist's principles are becoming tyrannical. Notably, Moriyama is obsessed with the accurate portrayal of lantern-light. In his case, then, the benign-seeming portrayal of beauty edges into near-violence when it becomes a form of artistic orthodoxy. Though all three of these scenarios are different, taking place in different times and with slightly varying motives, the presence of fire in all three reminds us to focus on their similarities.
Samurai (symbol)
Samurai were Japanese warriors in the Medieval and Early Modern ages. Here, they are symbols of Japanese sovereignty and patriotism. When Ono catches his grandson pretending to be a cowboy, he presents a list of more Japanese alternatives which he believes are more exciting. Samurai are featured on this list. To Ono, samurai recall a version of independent Japan, free of American occupation. Later, while working on his painting "Complacency," Ono portrays a group of desperately poor boys in poses evocative of samurai. His implication here seems to be that such children could be impressive, powerful, and worthy of respect, but for Japan's lack of military might and national pride. The samurai, then, are not merely symbols to the reader, but are in fact symbolic within Ono's consciousness. They arise whenever he seeks a shorthand for his vision of an ideal and venerable Japan.
Reception Room (symbol)
Reception rooms in An Artist of the Floating World are places where intimacy and formality converge in strange ways. They essentially symbolize the unknowability of people, or the unknowable aspect of people, even one's own loved ones or oneself. Ono's first association with reception rooms comes from his father. Though he was taught to act reverently around reception rooms and to avoid entering them, his father begins to insist that they have "business meetings" in their household's reception room. It is also in this room that Ono's father burns his paintings. Their conversations in these moments are full of conflict and emotion, but they communicate with euphemistic language, unable and unwilling to say what they mean. Later, Ono has other conversations in other reception rooms with important figures in his life, such as his daughter Setsuko. This conversation, too, hints at each character's deepest concerns, but neither character states his or her meaning directly. Ono mentions at one point that some of his artistic imagination may have been rooted in the long-forbidden reception room of his childhood: its mysteriousness ignited his curiosity, prompting him to imagine the inside of the room. This idea gets at the heart of Ishiguro's project in this novel. He shows us glimpses of people, including his main character, and allows us to construct a vivid image of that person's internal and external life. Yet, all throughout, Ishiguro works through implication rather than direct information. Much of this book's satisfying tension comes from the gulf between what the narrator states and what the reader infers. Therefore, the symbol of the reception room is useful for understanding not only Ono's character, but the novel's form as a whole.
Sake (symbol)
Sake, a wine made from rice, crops up repeatedly in conversations between Ono and his grandson Ichiro. Ono wishes to give Ichiro sake, which he sees as a symbol of a specifically Japanese kind of adult masculinity. When Ono's daughters disagree with him over whether to serve Ichiro sake, the symbolism of the drink becomes even clearer. As he and Ichiro agree, women cannot understand or appreciate sake themselves, since it is linked to masculinity. As he often does in this novel, Ishiguro introduces this symbol via his main character only to pull back and make us question whether we, too, speak to that same symbolic language. While sake stands for one thing in Ono's eyes, his daughters clearly disagree, and even Ichiro seems to have a more literal understanding of the beverage. He seems interested in trying it out of curiosity, but when his grandfather becomes emotionally invested, Ichiro reassures him that there is no need to worry. Ichiro, it seems, recognizes that sake is an important symbol to Ono—but Ichiro himself has detached the sake from its symbolic resonance.
Cowboys (symbol)
Ono is upset when he discovers that his grandson likes to pretend to be the Lone Ranger. Cowboys in general symbolize the encroachment of American power, not only in the form of military occupation but in the less-obvious form of cultural hegemony. Ono, therefore, feels offended and bewildered that his grandson takes an interest in these icons of American culture, while more or less ignoring Japanese culture. Moreover, cowboys themselves are historically and symbolically linked to the American frontier. Therefore, they embody American ideals of expansion, self-sufficiency, and attachment to land. It makes sense, then, that they are particularly fraught for Ono. At this moment in Japanese history, Japan's goals of expansion are thwarted, and Japanese people are unable to have a self-sufficient and independent government. Therefore, Ichiro's choice of cowboys as an object of fascination adds insult to injury for his grandfather.
