Abstract
In this chapter, Hiromi Nagara, referring to the archives of the Ishiguro Papers, clarifies the process of the establishment of the narrative techniques Ishiguro has applied to his fiction under the influence of other writers. Charlotte Brontë was once referred to by Ishiguro himself as one such writer, but their relationship has not been closely verified. Nagara identifies the characteristics of Ishiguro’s narrative in his early works using such phrases as ‘inner feelings reflected in the eyes of others’, ‘oozing of private feeling’, and ‘spikes of words’, and she compares them with those of Jane Eyre and Villette by Charlotte Brontë. She then picks up Ishiguro’s undergraduate essays about Brontë’s narrative technique. Among young Ishiguro’s profound considerations about Jane Eyre and Villette, Nagara finds his preference of ‘understatement’ to ‘the straight reveal of emotions’, which is the primal interest of the later Ishiguro as a writer.
This paper builds on the ideas of Nagara’s 2019 chapter in the book Mutual Encounters of Texts: The Legacy and Influence of Brontë Literature (in Japanese), adding new information, including material from ‘Kazuo Ishiguro Papers’, to further develop my discussion and consideration of Ishiguro’s work.
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Notes
- 1.
Cf. ‘As for Brontë, well, I owe my career, and a lot else besides, to “Jane Eyre” and “Villette”’ (Ishiguro 2015a); ‘I think the moment when I thought actually maybe fairly soon I might write a novel was when I kind of fell in love with Charlotte Brontë. Not just Jane Eyre, but the other great Brontë novel, Villette. In some ways, that perhaps made more of an impact on me … I re-read them both relatively recently, I realised how much I’d ripped off from those books…’ (Ishiguro 2015b); ‘I’ve loved Jane Eyre and Villette, but when I reread them three years ago, I certainly realised how much I had ripped off from those two books’ (Ishiguro 2015c).
- 2.
This similarity in the technique of reflecting the narrator’s unstated inner feelings in the eyes of a conversation partner seen in both Jane Eyre and The Remains of the Day was discussed in Nagara 2019.
- 3.
‘A Certain Kind of Gentleness: An Examination of Charlotte Brontë’s Treatment of Her Love Stories in Jane Eyre and Villette.’ Kazuo Ishiguro Papers at the Harry Ransom Center. Copyright © Kazuo Ishiguro. Reproduced by permission of Kazuo Ishiguro c/o Rogers, Coleridge & White Ltd., 20 Powis Mews, London W11 1JN. Box 79.14.
- 4.
Cf. ‘Archive Notes: Undergraduate Essays from the University of Kent’. Kazuo Ishiguro Papers at the Harry Ransom Center. Copyright © Kazuo Ishiguro. Reproduced by permission of Kazuo Ishiguro c/o Rogers, Coleridge & White Ltd., 20 Powis Mews, London W11 1JN. Box 79.14.
- 5.
‘…when he admits to being “tired”, he really means “sad”, “disappointed”, or “defeated”’ (Shaffer 1998, 81).
- 6.
‘A Certain Kind of Gentleness’.
- 7.
This is aptly demonstrated in the setting of the narrator in his early works who suffers from deep regret over his/her memories. There is also a narrative dilemma: only the first-person narrator, who is reluctant to speak, knows the full details of the hidden memories, and there is no external figure who can reveal the whole story on his/her behalf.
- 8.
‘A Certain Kind of Gentleness’.
- 9.
‘A Certain Kind of Gentleness’.
- 10.
The term ‘turning point’ often appears in Ishiguro’s narratives. It is only by retracing memory hindsight from the present perspective that the meaning of past events becomes clear. If the facts of these memories remain unchanged, their selection and interpretation can change in any way, depending on the current state of the narrator.
- 11.
John Graham Bretton also turns out to be Miss Ginevra Fanshawe’s admirer ‘Isidore’ as Ginevra playfully ‘baptized’ him, which makes the story more multi-layered.
- 12.
‘Why should the writer use the first-person?’ Kazuo Ishiguro Papers at the Harry Ransom Center. Copyright © Kazuo Ishiguro. Reproduced by permission of Kazuo Ishiguro c/o Rogers, Coleridge & White Ltd., 20 Powis Mews, London W11 1JN. Box 79.14.
- 13.
Ishiguro states that his experience as a songwriter has influenced his technique of using gaps since, as a songwriter, he believes in leaving spaces within his lyrics for each singer to fill in. (Ishiguro 2015d, 188) On the other hand, it is well known that he loved to watch Japanese films in the 1950s, by Ozu or Naruse, which reminded him of his mother’s conversations in Japanese with her acquaintances in Nagasaki. It is probable that his memory during his five years in Japan remained in the deep layers of his unconsciousness and gradually emerged as his characteristic ‘voice’ without awareness, just as he noticed his unconscious use of the device of Jane Eyre in his work over 20 years later.
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Nagara, H. (2024). ‘The Remains’ of Charlotte Brontë in the Early Novels of Kazuo Ishiguro. In: Shonaka, T., Mimura, T., Morikawa, S. (eds) Japanese Perspectives on Kazuo Ishiguro. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24998-3_11
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