Citizens of the Floating World: Responsibilities and Rules to Live By

The floating world.  This phrase evokes a kind of mystique; a fantasy world filled with dreams and possibilities.  In my Multicultural Literature class, this is a world we have analyzed and delved deep inside of, figuring out what exactly makes a person part of the floating world. 

The floating world is a term combining two different definitions.  The “floating world,” or “ukiyo-e,” is the school of art from Japan in the Seventeenth Century. According to Robert Burton in Artists of the Floating World, that is an art “committed to celebrating life’s passing pleasures with a brush-stroke technique that, paradoxically, suggested permanence of form and indestructibility” (10). Along with this aspect of the artistic world, it also refers to people floating between different ways of life or being.

Everyone that can call themselves a citizen of the Earth can also call themselves a citizen of the floating world.  No matter who you are, you most likely “float” between different aspects of your life.  Personally, I float between my identity as a student at CSU Chico, a daughter of my parents in the Bay Area, and a friend for many people located throughout the world.  While these identities sometimes overlap, they are all unique “selves” that are contained within my character. 

As citizens of the floating world, we have certain responsibilities.  Along with other responsibilities mentioned in Burton’s novel, we must also be aware of the narrative we live by, and to embrace the subaltern in both ourselves and the world we live in.  These lessons are illustrated in Kazuo Ishiguro’s An Artist of the Floating World and Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine.  The characters in both novels learn the responsibilities that are carried by citizens of the floating world.

In Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel An Artist of the Floating World, he tells a story from the perspective of Japanese artist Masuji Ono. Ono, once condemned for his propaganda created for military plans that ended in tragedy and immoral actions, changes his own narrative when reflecting on his life as an older man.  For most of his life, he has felt remorse for his part in creating propaganda for Japan.  He is ashamed for his actions, yet does not seem to admit these feelings to anyone. However, as an aging man, he lets go of the narrative he previously held in his life, choosing to see the past in a different light.  Looking objectively at his previous work, he feels a sense of pride.  He admits his past feelings to his former colleague Matsuda, saying “‘But then I for one never saw things too clearly.  A narrow artist’s perspective, as you say” (199). Ono owns up to the way he used to view his life, admitting that he had a narrow, subjective point of view.  Putting his life into a broader, objective perspective helps him see the good aspects of his actions. 

Ono’s last lines in the novel illustrate his new point of view, as he says “Our nation, it seems, whatever mistakes it may have made in the past, has now another chance to make a better go of things” (206). Using the nation of Japan as a metaphor, Ono describes his philosophy of thinking.  He knows he has made mistakes in his life, but he also knows that he still has the option of letting go of his remorse and changing his perspective for the better.  Ishiguro’s story of Masuji Ono’s lifetime personal struggle is a perfect example of “…seeing ourselves as a character in a novel…we come to realize the extent to which our choices are compromised both by values consciously or unconsciously adopted by ourselves and by the communities to which we belong” (Burton, 131). Ono changes the narrative of his life after objectively analyzing the events that had occurred over the years.  His narrative of guilt and shame has been changed into one of acceptance and pride.

Bharati Mukherjee teaches the reader that one must embrace the subaltern in her novel Jasmine.  The main character, Jasmine, struggles throughout the story with multiple selves, including mainstream and subaltern aspects of her personality. Jasmine’s first job in America is as a nanny for a New York couple.  Taylor, the husband, is the only man with whom she can trust to be herself.  One afternoon she tells “…him everything: the marriage, the bombing, the murder. I had been until that time an innocent child he’d picked out of the gutter, discovered, and made whole, then fallen in love with” (189).  Taylor is the only man to accept her binary identities: her mainstream, Americanized self and her subaltern, Indian self.  All of the other men in her life, including her previous husband in India and her Iowan husband, have only accepted one part of her personality.  Taylor sees every aspect of her being, and loves her for who she truly is, mainstream and exotic, American and Indian. 

At the end of the novel, Jasmine has an epiphany when Taylor arrives to take her away from her life in Iowa.  She realizes, “It isn’t guilt I feel, it’s relief. I realize I have already stopped thinking of myself as Jane. Adventure, risk, transformation: the frontier is pushing indoors through un-caulked windows” (Mukherjee, 240). Jane represented the assimilated, Americanized version of Jasmine. At the end of the novel, she discards her “Jane” personality to be an individual who has both mainstream and subaltern identities within herself. When she accepts this subaltern identity, she feels a sense of happiness and freedom.  Jasmine, like every citizen of the floating world, “recognizes and acknowledges that the subaltern is actually a part of themselves, that when they are listening and talking to the subaltern, they are actually listening and talking to parts of themselves that may have been ignored for a long time” (Burton, 131-32). She can be who she wants to be, and knows that she does not have to lose the exotic aspects of her character. 

To transcend the negative narratives that surround me both locally and globally, and be a responsible citizen of the “floating world,” I treat others as I would like to be treated.  I feel that is the most important thing a person can do, no matter who they are.  It is difficult not to get sidetracked by the drama that surrounds you, but I try to treat everyone the way I would like to be in different situations I come across in my life. After learning more about the responsibilities that an artist of the floating world must carry, I feel more aware of the effect my own thoughts have on my personality. It is easy to blame the events of the world around you on the negativity in your life. However, by taking an active part in shaping your own narrative and embracing the subaltern identity within yourself, you can take control of the course of your life.  You can make the floating world your own.