An Artist of the Floating World characters

Appears from the start

A retired painter in postwar Japan who narrates the novel through four dated reflections. Once respected for work that served nationalist causes, Ono now measures his memories against a society eager to leave the imperial era behind. He takes pride in his influence but repeatedly revises, qualifies, or doubts his own account.

Appears from the start

Ono's younger daughter, whose marriage prospects shape his present concerns. Noriko is lively, teasing, and impatient with her father's habits. A previous negotiation has ended without a marriage, and a new match makes the family attentive to anything in Ono's past that might affect inquiries about them.

Appears from the start

Ono's married elder daughter, visiting with her son. Setsuko speaks tactfully and often indirectly, especially when discussing Noriko's prospects and the changed values of the postwar years. Ono interprets her caution as a warning that he must address his political past.

Appears from the start

Setsuko's young son and Ono's grandson. Ichiro is energetic, fascinated by American popular culture, and eager to be treated as older than he is. His heroes and games display the cultural distance between postwar childhood and Ono's generation.

Appears from the start

Setsuko's husband, a member of the younger postwar generation. His dissatisfaction with older leaders who will not accept responsibility reaches Ono largely through family conversations and contributes to Ono's sense that public standards have changed.

Appears from the start

Ono's former pupil, who continues to paint in a conventional manner and seeks his old teacher's approval. Shintaro is friendly and deferential when they meet in the surviving pleasure district, but his need to distance his career from wartime associations complicates that loyalty.

Appears from the start

The aging proprietor of a bar in the diminished pleasure district where Ono once spent evenings with fellow artists. She maintains an increasingly isolated remnant of the old neighborhood while developers and new habits transform the surrounding city.

Appears from the start

Ono's dead son, killed during the recent war. Kenji's absence remains part of the family's grief and links Ono's private losses to the militarist period whose meaning he is trying to reassess.

First appears in chapter 2

A former pupil whom Ono remembers as exceptionally gifted and serious. Kuroda's relationship with his teacher was destroyed by political conflict before the war, making him central to Ono's attempt to judge both his influence and his responsibility.

Also known as Mori-san

First appears in chapter 2

The accomplished artist under whom the young Ono once trained. Mori-san taught his pupils to capture the beauty and transience of the pleasure district and demanded loyalty to his aesthetic vision. Ono's eventual departure from that vision becomes a model for later conflicts with his own students.

First appears in chapter 3

A nationalist intellectual who encouraged Ono to turn from pleasure-district painting toward explicitly political art. Matsuda treated artistic reputation as a tool for changing the country and helped direct Ono toward the public role he later tries to evaluate.

Appears from the start

The father of Noriko's prospective husband and a respected member of the family considering the match. Dr. Saito's apparent familiarity with Ono's artistic name feeds Ono's belief that his reputation remains consequential.

Appears from the start

Dr. Saito's son and Noriko's prospective husband. Taro belongs to the confident professional generation emerging after the war, and his successful match with Noriko becomes a test of the family's anxiety about Ono's past.