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Reconnaissance of Japanese Culture and the Orient by Kazuo Ishiguro in a Pale View of Hills

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Reconnaissance of Japanese Culture and the Orient by Kazuo Ishiguro in a Pale View of Hills International Journal of Advanced Science and Technology Vol. 29, No. 03, (2020), pp. 8801 - 8804 Reconstruct History: Reconnaissance of Japanese Culture and the Orient by Kazuo Ishiguro in A Pale View of Hills Meenakshi Rana Department of English, Lovely Professional University, Phagwara, Punjab (India) Abstract The present discussion portrays the Japanese Culture as well as the Orient by A Pale View of Hills’ characters. A Pale View of Hills gives a medium to explore the attitudes between the East and the West. The present study gives details of Western culture’s impact on the culture of Japan. Kazuo Ishiguro represents how the characters are affected by the other culture with the help of their memories. The novel travels around after the World War II period by the main protagonist, Etsuko. The present research explains the situation of the characters that they feel they are displaced from their country. They live in an atmosphere of a western culture where values are changed. The main notion emphasizes on how Etsuko reconstruct history by making changes in their lives after the war. Furthermore, how reconnaissance of Japanese culture and the Orient is explained by the main character in the context of memories. Keywords: Japanese culture, Memory, Orient, Reconnaissance, Reconstruct history. INTRODUCTION The globalization is increasing in today’s world because of new technology. People move one country to another country without any difficulty. They share their surroundings with multiculturalism and become familiar with the different cultures of different countries. They express their feelings and thoughts in the context of cultural values. They find out their own culture according to their imagination in other countries. The life of a person who shifts to a new country is different from the other person who lives in his own country from his childhood. Kazuo Ishiguro reconstructs history with the help of the main protagonist’s memories. He wants to explain his situation, by the Etsuko, when he shifted from Japan to England. He explains his imaginative Japan by his first novel A Pale View of Hills. Ishiguro wrote his first novel in 1982. The novel explains the pain and suffering of Etsuko who shifts from Japan to England. There are two parts in the novel and the narrator is the main protagonist. The first part shows the meeting of Etsuko with Sachiko and Mariko. She lives with Jiro, who is the first husband, in the East part of the city. She is pregnant with daughter Keiko. In the second part, she is a widow and lives in England. Her second husband Mr. Sheringham passed away as well as her elder daughter Keiko commit suicide. The novel looks at war circumstances and their impact on the character. The study represents the notion of historical events, Japanese culture, and the orient through memories. Kazuo Ishiguro is a contemporary British writer. He has received the Nobel Prize in 2017 in Literature. On 8 November 1954 he has born in Nagasaki (Japan). His parents went to England when he was nine years old and left Japan forever. Ishiguro is the most famous writer in the United Kingdom. Many works of Ishiguro were chosen for the prestigious Man Booker Prize. His novel A Pale View of Hills (1982) is awarded by Winifred Holtby Prize and An Artist of the Floating World for Whitebread Book of the Year Award. The novel The Remains of the Day In 1989 has won the prize. Ishiguro’s other novels like An Artist of Floating Words in 1986, When We Were Orphans in 2000 and Never Let Me Go in 2005 selected for the Man Booker Prize. He was awarded for the Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1998 by the government of France as well as he is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. A Pale View of Hills has been translated into eleven languages. In 2015 he has published his novel The Buried Giant after ten years. He has written screenplays like: A Profile of Arthur J. Mason in 1984, in 1987 The Gourmet, The Saddest Music in the World in 2003 and The White Countess in 2005. His writing affects his background. Rob Butron in Artists of the Floating World: Contemporary Writers between Cultures says that: ISSN: 2005-4238 IJAST 8801 Copyright ⓒ 2019 SERSC International Journal of Advanced Science and Technology Vol. 29, No. 03, (2020), pp. 8801 - 8804 Ishiguro’s biography illustrates a recurring theme in his work: an oscillation between ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ status. His narrations are invariably from the middle or upper middle classes of British and Japanese society; yet rather than endorsing an idealized image of the establishment, Ishiguro turns a quizzical eye on its foundations, the very discourses that underpin it, and the way these discursive strategies – or tracks as I will call them – are manipulated by narrators in search of self-justification and redemption. (Burton 20) In the above lines, Burton gives details about the ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’. He explains the society that is divided into British and Japan. He represents two different societies in which people’s mindset works according to their culture. He explains Ishiguro also suffers from his inner and outer world where he faces difficulties in adjusting to a new country. Ishiguro is liked and read by everyone in Japan broadly. Ishiguro in an interview, The novelist in Today's World: A conversation, with Oe Kenzaburo says about Japan: “Well, I think the Japan that exists in that book is very much my own personal, imaginary Japan. This may have a lot to do with my personal history” (Ishiguro 110). The novel is about a Japanese woman who lives in England after the suicide of her elder daughter. She shifts to England with her second husband. After her second husband’s death, she is alone in England. A Pale View of Hills represents how Etsuko looks back to Nagasaki’s life and reconstructs history with her memories. A Pale View of Hills gives importance to history to understand the present situation of the character. The novel explores the feelings of suppression of the characters. History is reconstructed by the main character to understand the present life. Etsuko suffers through other cultural impacts of her elder daughter. She loses her family in the bomb attack of Nagasaki. The main protagonist tries to adjust or survive in a new country, England, with her memories. Etsuko’s life in England is not easy in the context of finding out her new identity. The suicide of the elder daughter gives her a shock because she is not able to adjust to the new atmosphere in new country. She tries to survive with different languages and cultures in a new country rather than Japanese but she was not able to adopt the new culture so she commits suicide. The starting lines of the novel represent the cultural impact where Etsuko gives an English name to her second daughter. She gives the name Niki because of the cultural impact and postwar effects. She says: “Niki, the name we finally gave my younger daughter, is not an abbreviation; it was a compromise I reached with her father. For paradoxically it was he who wanted to give her a Japanese name, and I --- perhaps out of some selfish desire not to be reminded of the past--- instead on an English one” (Ishiguro 9). Keiko commits suicide because she is not able to fit in a new society with her stepfather. She wants to remain with the values of Japanese culture and not able to learn the language or Englishness so she ends her life. Etsuko thinks she is responsible for her daughter’s death. She says: Keiko, unlike Niki, was pure Japanese, and more than one newspaper was quick to pick up on this fact. The English are fond of their idea that our race has an instinct for suicide, as if further explanations are unnecessary; for that was all they reported, that she was Japanese and that she had hung herself in her room. (10) The above lines explore the concept of two cultures. The character of Keiko represents how it is difficult to live in a new country with new customs and culture. She represents the concept of the orient in the novel because she feels herself alone in the new country. She seems herself fix in other country’s cultures and does not share her feelings with her mother. Etsuko wants to give Keiko a better future by moving to England from Japan. But she did not give her the same atmosphere of Japan in a new country. In Japanese culture suicide is considers superior and does the ritual of suicide in a glorified way. Etsuko feels very sad after finding the stereotypical attitude of the English people. The news of the suicide of Keiko comes in the newspaper in the way that Japanese people are race keen to suicide. They explain that Keiko is Japanese that is why she commits suicide. Etsuko recalls the character of Mrs. Fujiwara who is a neighbor of Etsuko. She experiences a personal loss because of bombing in Nagasaki. She lost her husband and four children. She opens a restaurant to live her life with Japanese food. She always tries to adjust in a new atmosphere. Etsuko reminds the characters of Sachiko and Mariko who represent the mother and daughter’s relationship. Sachiko explains her grief after the death of her husband to Etsuko. She wants to go to America with her boyfriend Frank whereas Mariko wants to stay in Nagasaki with her friends. Ishiguro represents the cultural impact on the characters like Sachiko in the novel.
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