Reconstruct History: Reconnaissance of Japanese Culture and the Orient by 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 80 | P a g e

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 In 1989 has won the prize. Ishiguro‘s other novels like An Artist of Floating Words in 1986, in 2000 and 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 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 in 2005. His writing affects his background. Rob Butron in Artists of the Floating World: Contemporary Writers between Cultures says that:

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

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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. Sachiko does not care 82 | P a g e

about her daughter‘s emotions. Etsuko tells Sachiko that for children adjustment is very difficult in the new culture of a new country. She asks her: ―But it would still be an enormous change for her. Is she ready for such a things?‖(44) Sachiko replies to Etsuko that she is leaving Japan for her daughter‘s welfare. Sachiko and Mariko symbolize a different perspective. The new culture‘s impact is very strong on Sachiko while in contrast, Mariko wants to remain with Japanese culture. The character of Ogata-San also represents the Japaneses values and culture. He always complains about the impact of American culture on the education system but Jiro does not support his father. The change that comes in Japanese culture becomes a tension between the old and new generations. The new generation admits new culture in Japan but the old generation does not wish to change the old values and culture with new ones especially in their homeland Japan. Etsuko reconstructs history with her past life in Nagasaki. She takes care house and Jiro is the main head of the family. The behaviour of Jiro towards Etsuko expresses his personality. He always wants that Etsuko takes care of his house without any complaint. He does not want to see her sit with his friends in a group. At the tea time Etsuko serves tea to his friends and one of them says her to please sit down with them. Etsuko expresses her feelings by saying that: ―I was about to obey him, but then I saw Jiro give me an angry look‖ (62). Etsuko goes to make more tea. These words explain the stereotypical thinking of Japanese families before the war where man is the head of the home. The western thinks of the housewives of Japan stereotypically. The people of the West see housewives with stereotypical aspects where the wives work without any payment and depend on their spouses. Marika Mäkinen‘s thesis, Representation of Japan in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Novels gives the notion of how the characters of the novel are linked to Japanese culture and consider as orient in other countries. The thesis also represents the thinking of Western people towards Japanese people especially females. Marika Mäkinen says that: ―Because of this stereotypical image, Westerners will think the same of the Japanese housewives which is not necessarily close to the truth‖ ( Marika Mäkinen 20). Sachiko is not like other Japanese women who have thinking of stereotype means Japanese women are family-oriented. Sachiko wants to go to America for her new beginning and freedom. Etsuko and Sachiko discuss Sachiko‘s leaving Japan:

―I‘ll be leaving Japan very shortly. You don‘t seem very impressed.‖

―Of course I am. And I‘m very pleased, if this is what you wished. But won‘t there be…various difficulties?‖

―Difficulties?‖

―I mean, moving to a different country, with a different language and forgive ways.‖(Ishiguro43) Etsuko recalls the memories of Nagasaki when Niki visits at home for some days from London. Niki also presents the concept of the orient because like Keiko she lives in a new country. Etsuko reconnaissance of Japanese culture by recalling the Nakagawa district and the memories give her feelings of pain and pleasure. She says: ―In those days

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returning to the Nakagawa district still provoked in me mixed emotions of sadness and pleasure. It is a hilly area, and climbing again those steep narrow streets between the clusters of houses never failed to fill me with a deep sense of loss‖ (23). Etsuko recalls other memories of Japan and compares the Japanese cities and culture with England. She says:

In Japanese cities, much more so than in England, the restaurant owners, the teahouse proprietors, the shopkeepers all seem to will the darkness to fall; long before the daylight has faded, lanterns appear in the windows, lighted signs above doorways. Nagasaki was already full of the colours of night-times as we came back out into the street that evening; we had left Inasa in the late afternoon and had been eating supper on the restaurant floor of the Hamaya department store. . . Since it was never my habit to indulge in Kujibiki and since it has no equivalents here in England—except perhaps in fair-grounds—I might well have forgotten the existence of such a thing were it not for my memory of that particular evening. (120)

Ishiguro represents the cultural difference between Japan and America in the above lines. The lines show the old methods of life in Japan when the seniors taught the children how to respect. In that particular time, women follow the instruction of the husband. On the contrary American culture shows the intensity of Americans for their large cars and restaurant. The ending part of the novel also gives details on how Etsuko reconstructs history with her memories of Japan. Niki leaves for London and leaves Etsuko with her past. She explores the Japanese culture and recollects past and says: ―It is possible that my memory of these events will have grown hazy with time, that things did not happen in quite the way they come back to me today‖ (41). Ishiguro explains the cultural difference by the characters as well as the concept of the orient. Justin Baillie and Sean Matthews in History, Memory, and the Construction of Gender in A Pale View of Hills explain that:

Universal themes of love and loss are so interwoven with historical events that any distinction between private and public trauma is collapsed, the narrator struggle against processes of misremembering, forgetting, and repression, to construct for themselves a story that draws together either the fragmented elements of their own identity, or a coherent account of the traumatic historical events. (Baillie and Matthews 45)

The above lines explain the importance of historical events in a person‘s life. Historical events give personal and civic trauma to the individual. Etsuko reconstructs history by exploring Japanese culture and the notion of the orient. In the process of reconstructing history or past, she goes through the process in which she remembers some incidents of Nagasaki. There are also some incidents of Nagasaki that she does not want to remember. The feeling of oppression in another country gives her loneliness. She tries to reconstruct the past by her fragile memories that

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represent her identity as a Japanese woman. As well as the impact of the historical events on her life gives detail of the traumatic situation of her.

CONCLUSION

In concluding part the novel gives detail of Japan as the Oriental country. Ishiguro explores the notion of the West and the East by the characters of A Pale View of Hills from every aspect like cultural, religious, social and political. The western people dominate on the oriental because their culture is not more exist due to western impact. Ishiguro exhibits western attitudes toward the people of Japan and considers them the orient. Etsuko recalls her memories of Nagasaki after the death of her elder daughter Keiko and feels alone in a new country. Etsuko recalls the memories with her second daughter Niki who arrives at her house. She feels that she is responsible for Keiko‘s death. Niki tries to convince her not to take the blame on herself of Keiko‘s death. Etsuko explores how culture and country are important by her elder daughter Keiko‘s character. Keiko becomes a target of the depression due to the impact of other cultures and commits suicide. The character of Mariko also displays the significance of historical events and culture. She is affected by the events and wants to live with her Japanese culture. Setsuko wants to go to America because she wants to live her life freely. Chu-chueh Cheng places it, ―Japanese women of Etsuko‘s generation wish for something other than the material comfort that American products give; they seek the freedom and opportunities that America promises‖ (Cheng 164). Jiro and Ogata –San represents the conflict that comes into their lives because of cultural differences. Ishiguro illustrates the damage by historical events in the people of Nagasaki who suffers emotionally and tries to live with their culture in another country.

REFERENCES

[1] Burton, Rob. ―Artists of the Floating World: Contemporary Writers between Cultures‖, Lanham, 2007. [2] Ishiguro, Kazuo, and Oe Kenzaburo. ―The Novelist in Today's World: A Conversation‖, boundary 2, vol. 18, no. 3, Autumn1991, pp.109-122. [3] Ishiguro, Kazuo. A Pale View of Hills, Faber and Faber, 1982. [4] Mäkinen, Marika. Representation of Japan in Kazuo Ishiguro‘s Novels, Feburary 2018, pp. 1 -69. [5] Baillie, Justine, and Sean Matthews. ―History, Memory, and the Construction of Gender in A Pale View of Hills‖, Kazuo Ishiguro: Contemporary Critical Perspectives, 2009, pp. 45-53.

[6] Cheng, Chu-chueh. The margin without centre: Kazuo Ishiguro, Peter Lang, 2010. [7] Guo, Deyan. ―Kazuo Ishiguro‘s Narratives of the ―Other‖, Canadian Social Science vol. 11, no. 2, 2015, pp. 32- 38.

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