Abstract
M.A.
This study was prompted principally by two events: reading Kazuo Ishiguro's The
Remains of the Day (1989), and encountering Pico lyer's Time article "The Empire
Writes Back" (1993). lyer argues that the late twentieth century has been witness to
an important event in the world of literature: the emergence of a new generation of
writers writing in English, but not necessarily originating from British-colonial (or postcolonial)
backgrounds. Among the writers lyer mentions are Vikram Seth, Michael
Ondaatje, Ben Okri and - most notably - Kazuo Ishiguro.
Ishiguro was born in Japan but emigrated with his parents to the United
Kingdom at the age of six. This study focuses on his biculturalism and the impact that
his mixed upbringing has had on his style and thematic concerns. This forms the
principal focus of the first part of the study. The influence of Japanese writers, that of
Japanese film and, finally, that of the European literary tradition are looked at in turn.
The core of this study is a comparative analysis of Ishiguro's first three novels:
A Pale View of Hills (1982), An Artist of the Floating World (1986), and The Remains
of the Day (1989). Here certain common pre-occupations are identified and
discussed - chiefly, Ishiguro's concern with memory, with constructions of the past,
and his use of "unreliable" first-person narrators. It is argued that Ishiguro returns
insistently to these thematic concerns in his first three novels, and that they can
therefore be seen as constituting a three-part exploration of the notion of memory, of
"reconstructing" the past.
A separate chapter briefly examines Ishiguro's most recent work, The
Unconsoled (1995), in which these themes are once again present, although they are
bodied forth in a strikingly different style. The purpose of examining this novel is
mainly to illustrate its formal and stylistic divergence from the first three (far more
successful) novels - a divergence which in turn serves to throw into relief the thematic
integrity of the first three novels.
The study concludes by drawing together the discussion of the first three
novels before moving on to a consideration of Ishiguro's place in what has become
known as "New Internationalism". Here it is argued that Ishiguro's work has important
resemblances to that of other writers loosely grouped into this literary movement and
that he deserves his place among this illustrious group of writers who are changing
the face of world literature written in English.