Haunted by the Past

In the ambit of contemporary literature, Sir Kazuo Ishiguro is one of the most prominent, distinguished, and influential voices. He was born in Nagasaki, Japan but his father’s vocation moved his family to Guildford in Surrey, England in the United Kingdom when Ishiguro was still five. His father, an oceanographer, was invited to work at a research institute. Initially, it was not literature that caught the young Ishiguro’s fancy. He wanted to be a musician but nevertheless studied English and philosophy at the University of Kent before a master’s degree in creative writing at the University of East Anglia in 1980. He initially piqued the interest of the literati when he contributed three short stories to the anthology Introduction 7: Stories by New Writers (1981). A year later, Ishiguro published his debut novel, A Pale View of Hills (1982). It was an immediate literary sensation that immediately established Ishiguro as a household literary name.

He has since published more works which earned him more accolades and recognition across the world. Among the prestigious literary prizes he earned include the Whitbread Prize for An Artist of the Floating World, and the Booker Prize for The Remains of the Day, considered by many literary pundits as his magnum opus. For his works, he earned a total of four nominations for the Booker Prize. His works have also been shortlisted and nominated for major literary awards. He was also awarded as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire and the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. The accolades he accrued over the years for his works speak for themselves. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. In 2017, he reached what can be surmised as the zenith of his literary career when he was chosen by the Swedish Academy to be the awardee for the Nobel Prize in Literature for his works that “uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world.”

Ishiguro’s oeuvre boasts eight novels, among them When We Were Orphans which was one of his four books shortlisted for the Booker Prize. The novel opens: ”It was the summer of 1923, the summer I came down from Cambridge, when despite my aunt’s wishes that I return to Shropshire, I decided my future lay in the capital and took up a small flat at No. 14b Bedford Gardens in Kensington.” This is the voice of Christopher Banks whose fortune the novel charts. His narrative started in the 1920s in England. After graduating from Cambridge University in the 1920s, he returned to London where he caught up with his friends and even made new acquaintances. However, Christopher has long been solitary by nature and while he frequents high society parties, he often finds himself bored. All the while, he was preparing himself to become a successful detective.

For gradually, from behind his cheerful anecdotes, there was emerging a picture of myself on that voyage to which I took exception. His repeated insinuation was that I had gone about the ship withdrawn and moody, liable to burst into tears at the slightest thing. No doubt the colonel had an investment in giving himself the role of an heroic guardian, and after all this time, I saw it was as pointless as it was unkind to contradict him. But as I say, I began to grow steadily more irritated.”

Kazuo Ishiguro, When We Were Orphans

When the opportunity to pursue his dream came, he did not hesitate. He worked hard and eventually climbed the professional ladder by solving all kinds of crimes. He, however, earned a reputation for being able to solve crimes no one – even the most capable detective – was able to solve. He worked on cases long considered cold and impossible to solve. With persistence and indomitable spirit, he managed to decipher these cases and bring the victims to justice. He relished being able to solve them but solving these complex crimes also consumed him, especially when he started on this career. For his upbringing, being a detective was an unusual career choice, and, as the story moves forward, one’s curiosity is piqued. One can’t help but ask what was Christopher’s motivation in wanting to become a detective. As it often does, the answer lies in the past, and without ado, Ishiguro soon takes the reader there.

Through flashbacks, Christopher’s childhood was painted by Ishiguro. In the 1900s, Christopher was born and raised initially in Shanghai where he lived with his parents in the Shanghai International Settlement, a safe haven for foreigners in what is otherwise a turbulent city. His father was employed by a prominent European company notorious for importing opium to China. On the other hand, his mother was a staunch advocate against the opium trade albeit the young Christopher was unaware of her advocacy. He develops a friendship with their next-door neighbor, Akira, a Japanese. Together, the two boys explored nicer parts of the city. When Christopher was ten, his father disappeared. The young Christopher believed his father was kidnapped. A couple of weeks later, his mother also went missing. Stepped in Uncle Philip, Christopher’s mother’s business partner; they had no biological connection. Uncle Philip sent Christopher to England to live with his aunt, leaving his only friend Akira behind.

During his father’s mysterious disappearance, Akira started a game of detectives; it was his effort to help his friend cope with the situation. This, however, would leave a deeper impression on the young Christopher and the main catalyst for his desire to become a successful detective. Back to the present and after building his reputation as a successful detective, the mystery surrounding his parents’ disappearance lingers. Despite the level of success he achieved, he was haunted by his past. When his career eventually stabilized, he felt the need to find out what happened to his parents. He has also adopted Jennifer who, like him, was an an orphan. Despite the distress caused by the thought of abandoning her albeit temporarily, the detective in Christopher was coaxing him to solve his parents’ mysterious disappearance nearly three decades ago. Upon his arrival in Shanghai, it was on the brink of war.

Shanghai was embroiled in a power tug-of-war between Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists and Mao Zedong’s Communists. The tension and the tumult were exacerbated by the recent invasion of the Japanese. War loomed not only in Asia but also over in Europe. While the pre-Second World War Shanghai was a far cry from the city of his childhood, Christopher was undeterred. He was a man on a mission. Despite his top-caliber detective skills, Christopher’s mission faces an uphill climb, rife with uncertainty and failure at every turn. On top of the war, corruption has plagued the local institutions whose cooperation he needs. All the clues that he received led nowhere. A promising lead provided by an old detective allowed him to locate the house at which his parents may have been held. For decades, Christopher held on to the belief that his parents were kidnapped and were still locked up in a house in Shanghai by an opium warlord. Will Christopher finally be able to unravel the puzzle of his parents’ disappearance?

What I saw was a small, rather elf-like young woman with dark, shoulder-length hair. Even though at that moment she was clearly wishing to charm the men she was talking to, I could see something about her smile that might in an instant turn it into a sneer. A slight crouch around her shoulders, like that of a bird of prey, gave her posture a suggestion of scheming.

Kazuo Ishiguro, When We Were Orphans

When We Were Orphans is, on the surface, Ishiguro’s attempt at the detective novel. Christopher’s sleuthing was the novel’s centerpiece. Mystery and suspense permeate the story. Having ventured into fantasy fiction (The Buried Giant), speculative fiction (Never Let Me Go and Klara and the Sun), historical fiction (A Pale View of Hills), and even romance fiction (The Remains of the Day), it is fascinating how Ishiguro pushes the boundaries of his storytelling. His oeuvre soars because of its diversity and When We Were Orphans provides a different dimension upon which to appreciate and understand the Nobel laureate in literature’s body of work. When We Were Orphans, however, is no typical detective novel. For all its detective fiction elements, the novel does not fall strictly within the definition of a detective novel.

The mystery was just one of the many layers comprising the story. While it was his memories of his parents that haunted Christopher, the novel explores the subject of cultural displacement. Having moved from Japan to England when he was still young, it is a subject that Ishiguro knows a thing or two about. His experience also allows him to provide a unique perspective on identity and belonging. His protagonist, having been part of two distinctly different worlds, struggles to find a sense of belongingness. Neither Shanghai nor England provide him a sense of the home he yearns for. He tried to mingle with the upper echelons of London society but it was for naught. Shanghai also did not provide that sense of hospitality that embraced him when he was younger. This was despite his having strong ties with both cities. As an alternative, Christopher crafted a world where he battles his childhood trauma.

This could be a factor in Christopher’s skewed view of himself and the world. With this as a catalyst, Ishiguro further delves into the nature of memory. Memory, by its very nature, can be unreliable. How we remember an event in the past is influenced by different factors. At several points in the story, Christopher feels frustrated because of the unreliability of his memory. For instance, Christopher’s recollections of his English childhood contrast with his friends’ perceptions. This is interesting because Christopher prides himself on his memory. He was seemingly in command of his memory. However, the gaps in how he remembered the past, which he admitted candidly, made him doubt himself. Nevertheless, memory plays its tricks. It can distort reality as we choose details we want to remember and blot the rest out. For instance, Christopher vividly recalls details of his parents, holding onto these immaculate images. Was it his parents who were trapped or was it Christopher who was trapped in a hole of nostalgia?

This dissonance between reality and memory produces an unreliable narrator who Ishiguro subtly describes at the onset as an odd bird. Glimpses into his oddness manifested as the story moved forward but it became more palpable when he traveled to Shanghai where his composure was unraveled. Christopher’s judgments deviate from what can be gleaned as normal. He held on to the belief that his parents had remained trapped in Shanghai. But to get to the bottom of the mystery, Christopher had to face harsh realities, of the image of Shanghai of his childhood and the war-ravaged metropolis before him, of his memories of his parents and the events that wrecked their family, of the skewed reality he created for himself. The self-delusion Christopher possesses echoed the same self-delusion of characters Ishiguro deftly painted in his earlier works like An Artist of the Floating World, The Remains of the Day, and The Unconsoled. Ishiguro has the uncanny ability to craft the portrait of such characters.

It was indeed a concept that fascinated me, this notion that he was in some mysterious way connected to various of the higher walks of life, even though he looked and behaved no differently from the rest of us. However, I cannot imagine I ‘mercilessly interrogated’ him as he had claimed. It is true the subject was something I thought about a lot when I was fourteen or fifteen, but Osbourne and I had not been especially close at school and, as far as I remember, I only once brought it up with him personally.

Kazuo Ishiguro, When We Were Orphans

The prominent male voice was balanced by Sarah Hemmings. Like Jennnifer and Christopher, Sarah was an orphan; orphans populate the story. Christopher first came across her during the infancy of his career. He would again meet her in Shanghai, the most unsuspecting of places. She is depicted as a shameless and evasive social climber who married the much older Sir Cecil Medhurst. However, her depiction as a social climber masks her ambitiousness and her vulnerability. She eventually emerges as Christopher’s antithesis; she provides a more intelligent and even more well-rounded image. Both Jennifer and Sarah also provided Christopher with the prospect of stability and even affection. However, his quest for answers about his orphanhood kept him from committing to any relationship.

Christopher’s journey to finding the answer to the past was juxtaposed with rich historical contexts. Ishiguro vividly painted an evocative portrait of Shanghai, rich with the details of the opium trade that threatened China when it was on the brink of imperialism at the turn of the 20th century. This also underlines the evils of imperialism and colonialism. The heritage of colonialism reverberates on the novel’s fringes. Ishiguro even captures the world of well-off colonialists in the earlier chapters, living the life they felt they deserved. However, Ishiguro soon dismantles this image. The corruption that permeates bureaucracy in Shanghai underscores the colonialists’ failure to impose order even though they benefit from colonial activities. This condition further manifested once Shanghai descended into chaos as it found itself at the heart of the Second Sino-Japanese War.

The novel’s various elements were woven together by Ishiguro’s capable writing. He endeavored to provide his readers a different dimension of his storytelling while working on familiar elements. When We Were Orphans, like the typical Ishiguro novel was evocative. However, in an oeuvre that boasts classics like The Remains of the Day and A Pale View of Hills, When We Were Orphans pales in comparison. While the effort to venture into other literary worlds was commendable, the execution failed to live up to the story’s premise and promise. Some plotholes undermined the story. The story was brimming with one too many memories only for the conclusion to be anticlimactic. The revelation toward the end of the story was unexpected but it was strange and not cathartic either. Ishiguro redeems himself by keeping the readers on the edge of their seats.

When We Were Orphans is the story of orphanhood. It is the story of Christopher Banks, a man whose adult identity is anchored on his early life experiences and is shaped by events that occurred when he was younger. The past lingers and he is haunted by the disappearance of his parents and the mysterious circumstances surrounding them. But is also an evocative story about the unreliability of memory and the lengths we will go to to ensure that the image we created in our minds goes unchanged and unchallenged. As we distort our memory, we create false narratives that reinforce these ideas and images. It produces a unique self-delusion that also distorts the way we view ourselves and the world. Beyond this subject, the novel explores the complicity of colonialism and also the follies of cultural displacement. For all its faults, When We Were Orphans is an interesting addition to Ishiguro’s diverse body of work.

Perhaps there are those who are able to go about their lives unfettered by such concerns. But for those like us, our fate is to face the world as orphans, chasing through long years the shadows of vanished parents. There is nothing for it but to try and see through our missions to the end, as best we can, for until we do so, we will be permitted no calm.

Kazuo Ishiguro, When We Were Orphans
Book Specs

Author: Kazuo Ishiguro
Publisher: Vintage International
Publishing Date: October 2001
Number of Pages: 336
Genre: Historical, Detective Fiction, Literary

Synopsis

Renowned London detective Christopher Banks was born in Shanghai at the beginning of the twentieth century, and lived there relatively happily until he was orphaned by the disappearances of his father and mother. Now, more than twenty years after leaving Shanghai, he is a celebrated figure in London society; yet the criminal expertise that has garnered him fame has done little to illuminate his understanding of the circumstances of his parents’ alleged kidnappings. Banks travels back to the seething, labyrinthine city of his memory in hopes of recovering all he has lost, only to find that the Sino-Japanese war is ravaging Shanghai beyond recognition – and that his own recollections are proving as difficult to trust as the people around him. Masterfully suspenseful and psychologically acute, When We Were Orphans offers a profound meditation on the shifting quality of memory, and the possibility of avenging one’s past.

About the Author

To learn more about Nobel Prize in Literature-winning novelist Kazuo Ishiguro, click here.

What has quietly shocked me, from the moment of my arrival, is the refusal of everyone here to acknowledge their drastic culpability.  During this fortnight I have been here, throughout all my dealings with these citizens, high or low, I have not witnessed – not once –  anything that could pass for honest shame.  Here, in other words, at the heart of the maelstrom threatening to suck in the whole of the civilised world, is a pathetic conspiracy of denial; a denial of responsibility which has turned in on itself in the sort of pompous defensiveness I have encountered so often.

Kazuo Ishiguro, When We Were Orphans