The shame of being on the wrong side of history: this is what Kazuo Ishiguro's first three novels have been about. It is not a condition that has been written about a great deal in English, because the English language, ever since 'literature' was created and taught, has been on the winning side; and the once-colonised, who have been writing in English for about the past forty years, have always had the moral rightness of their exploitedness, and the riches of their indigenous cultures, to fall back on. But for the story of the personal implications of national shame or guilt in English, one has to turn to a Japanese writer, Ishiguro, and to his mentors, the Japanese filmmakers; not the flamboyant Kurosawa, but the equally gifted Ozu.

LRB 8 June 1995 | PDF Download