Change: Good or Evil?

            The idea of change is indeed most crucial to all acts of life.  However, it is a slippery slope when change is brought about regarding anything.  Some people resent change altogether while others welcome it all too readily.  Indeed, there is a fine line with the idea of change in any circumstance that must be carefully thought out.  Currently, the Democratic Party is turning out record numbers of voters in their primaries with their promise of “change”.  Current Democratic hopeful Barack Obama has rode an immense surge among voters with his promise of “change”.  Much of the same was going on in post war Japan following World War II.  Indeed, change was needed in the country of Japan as the old regime had failed its people.  Stuck in the middle of the whole ordeal is that of Masuji Ono in Kazuo Ishiguro’s book, An Artist of the Floating World.  He realizes change is needed but struggles with the new youth’s ideas and the degree of change needed.

            Masuji Ono struggles with many of the youth of Japan in how “Americanized” Japan is becoming.  He worries that people are forgetting Japanese culture, history, and heritage.  American ideals such as democracy are replacing ones that Ono grew up with and has known all of his life.  At the same time, he knows change is needed due to the fact that the old system failed during the war.  His own grandson is imitating American culture in the fact that he imitates the Lone Ranger and Popeye.  He does not understand this and wants Ichiro to pretend to be certain Japanese role models.  Ono is very concerned about the Japanese youth as he only wants the best for them.

            Ono finds it very difficult to adjust to the new times.  He became so wrapped up in what was going on before the war and he has a certain level of regret for what happened.  Matsuda tells him, “I realize there are now those who would condemn the likes of you and me for the very things we were once proud to have achieved” (Ishiguro, 94).  This level of change between pre and post war Japan is what is so troubling to Ono in his attempt to deal with the “Americanized” Japan.  This attitude is reflected when he tells Taro, “Indeed, sometimes Japan has come to look like a small child learning from a strange adult” (185).  It is hard for him to fathom how he once was a decorated artist and that same art is now looked upon in a negative light.  Ono is just very concerned with how Japan is jumping on the coattails of American ideas as a result of losing the war.  He wants the youth not to forget about the elders and what happened during the war.  If Japan had won the war, Ono would still be regarded as a successful artist.  Overall, Ono is handling change with the right amount of skepticism while also opening his arms to new ideas.