Kazuo Ishiguro: A Foreigner Who Visited Keio University

In 2015, various programs were held to commemorate the 125th anniversary of the founding of the Keio University Faculty of Letters, the first of which was an open interview with the Japanese-born British author Kazuo Ishiguro.

On June 5 of that year, the Mita Campus West School Building Hall was filled with the enthusiasm of Keio University affiliates, representatives from broadcasting stations and publishing houses, literary critics, researchers, and people who had applied in advance. The interview was scheduled for 90 minutes, and I was to speak with him without an interpreter. We had discussed the general direction via email beforehand and had a briefing on the day, but neither Ishiguro nor I knew exactly in which direction the conversation would proceed. This was because we both agreed that a briefing that was too detailed would ruin the "pleasure of the moment." Regarding the content of the interview, which left a strong impression on many people, a Japanese translation was published in Mita Bungaku No. 123 (Autumn 2015 issue), so please do read it.

During our briefing, something impressive happened. Ishiguro had also visited Keio University in 2001 and shared his "personal history" at the North Building Hall. He provided us with a time that conveyed sincerity and warmth, speaking about "current issues and things I want to write about" and carefully answering questions from the audience. He remembered this time from 14 years ago surprisingly well. He may have traced his previous experience as part of his preparation before visiting Keio University again. However, his memory was at a level that exceeded such preparation. It was like this: at that time, I was in charge of the prior preparations and the briefing on the day, but I had asked someone else to serve as the moderator for the actual event. Ishiguro asked, "By the way, where were you in the hall 14 years ago? We were together at the briefing before and the reception afterward." I couldn't recall immediately, but after a while, I remembered the day (albeit vaguely).

I was surprised by Ishiguro, who remembered the half-day at Mita Campus 14 years ago down to the smallest detail. All of his works depict various forms of memory, and he was truly a man of memory. An icon of memory, like a highly complex painting with many puzzle pieces meticulously combined, came to my mind. My location in the North Building Hall in 2001 might have been a single puzzle piece that, if missing, would have marred the perfection of that puzzle-picture of memory. The open interview that followed then unfolded with his memory itself and his thoughts on memory as the central axis.

At this point, I would like to share the world of the works of Kazuo Ishiguro, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2017. "A Pale View of Hills," published in 1982, and "An Artist of the Floating World" in 1986, are set in Japan around World War II and depict people trying to find their own standing amidst violent fluctuations in values, mediated through the past they have lived. These early works are written in precise English firmly based on grammar, and I felt great surprise at his technical narration.

For me, whose job is to read British novels, it was an original English unlike any I had encountered before. Some British critics and readers found exoticism in this English and the Japanese setting. "The Remains of the Day" (1989), which won the Booker Prize, the highest award given to a British novel, is written in a more fluid English, a complete change from the previous two works. Here, set in a large English manor, the lives woven by upper-class people involved in politics and those who serve them from the post-WWI to post-WWII periods are reflected through the narration of a man who continues to work as a butler. This work deals with themes common to the previous two works. That is, it tells of the memories of people who had no choice but to live through histories imposed by others—the external pressure of war and the work forced by the class system—and the traces of their efforts to express those memories.

"The Unconsoled," released in 1995, is a work full of strange charm. This story about the memory, forgetting, and awakening of Ryder, a world-renowned pianist who cannot clearly grasp the purpose of his journey, requires the reader to collect fragments scattered throughout the work to create a single world. In contrast to this highly experimental work, the next work, "When We Were Orphans" (2000), while containing the same theme of collecting fragments of memory, clearly depicts the history of a detective searching for his own past and his missing mother, making it easy to enter the story's world. The charm of Shanghai around World War II is also vividly captured.

"Never Let Me Go" (2005), which was made into a film like "The Remains of the Day" and attracted great interest and acclaim worldwide, is set in England in the late 1990s and depicts the lives and deaths of clones created for the clear purpose of organ transplantation to others and kept alive until they are ready for transplant. The state of the short lives of these young clones creates a quiet but very powerful world. "The Buried Giant" (2015), published ten years later, tells of the harsh journey forced upon an elderly couple searching for their missing son against the backdrop of Arthurian legend. People's memories are lost due to the thick mist, but memories gradually return during the journey. This return from oblivion is, in fact, a device that reveals the cracks in the couple's bond.

While the spaces and eras that serve as the backgrounds for these seven novels are different, all the works take human memory and forgetting as their themes. In the open interview at Mita, the conversation expanded in various directions, but what Ishiguro spoke about consistently was memory and forgetting. What left a strong impression was the idea that even if people experience a war or disaster at the same time, the memory of a collective such as a nation or society is not necessarily the same as the memory of an individual. The idea that one must not push the memory of the private sphere into the distance of oblivion while being conscious of the memory of the public sphere is likely a recognition possessed by a writer with excellent empathy.

His favorite writers and the artists who influenced him, his deep interest in the worlds of music and film, and episodes from when he started out as a novelist—his attitude of speaking carefully was charming. Many people who were there later shared messages that stayed in their hearts, but among them, the words "I wished I could listen to this interview forever" are likely a feeling shared by those who touched the depth of Ishiguro as a narrator who speaks quietly but powerfully. When I visited the University of Cambridge for a seminar on British novels, I had the opportunity to speak with journalists from all over Europe, and I remembered vividly that many of them stated that the most wonderful writer to interview was Kazuo Ishiguro.

Though not during the interview, there was something Ishiguro told me that I found interesting. He said (though the actual words might be slightly different), "The world emphasizes that 'The Buried Giant' is my first work in ten years since 'Never Let Me Go'—that is, my first in a long time—but I myself don't feel that such a long time has passed." It took ten years for that novel, which could be called a new myth, to be completed. Moreover, during this time, the author responded to interviews in many parts of the world and completed a collection of short stories centered on music, "Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall." Those ten years flowed heavily, deeply, and creatively.

Various parts of Britain, Japanese locations such as Nagasaki and Kamakura, Italian cities, and Shanghai. The Middle Ages, the period around World War II, and the present day. These are regions and eras that actually exist, but the writer does not realistically reproduce them in his works. Kazuo Ishiguro has used various spaces and various times as media to create his own unique landscapes in each work, depicting the themes of memory and forgetting, which are the foundation of all human activities. The Mita Campus, which he visited twice, may mature in the novelist's brain and appear in his next work as a new landscape. That possibility cannot be denied. For the world of this man of memory with his fertile words exists deeply and widely.

Finally, I would like to thank Mr. Hiroshi Hayakawa of Hayakawa Publishing, who made the happy encounter between Ishiguro and Keio University possible by saying, "I want to make an interview at his alma mater, Keio University, a reality." And I would like to heartily congratulate Kazuo Ishiguro, the creator of a world of works that radiates a sense of vivid life, on winning the Nobel Prize in Literature.