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39 pages 1 hour read

Kazuo Ishiguro

A Pale View of Hills

Kazuo IshiguroFiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1982

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Character Analysis

Etsuko

Despite being the story’s narrator, there is surprisingly little biographical information presented about Etsuko. She is a war orphan, taken in by Ogata-san, her school director. We do not learn anything about her family, except that she lost all of her family members during the bombing of Nagasaki, as well as her love interest, Nakamura-san. The absence of these details reflects the absence of the family itself, but it is also indicative of the trauma Etsuko experienced. The lack of information is almost like a literary dissociative amnesia, as if removing those family members and memories from her narrative, Etsuko removes them from her experience.

Evidenced by Etsuko’s recollections of her first pregnancy, she was a diligent and dutiful wife to Jiro but was not in love with her first husband. She used to be a gifted violinist, but she feels unable to play after her marriage and dedicates her life to taking care of her home and waiting for her first child to be born. Through these actions, we learn that Etsuko is duty-bound to a lifestyle and tradition that many around her now find cloying, including Sachiko and her own husband, Jiro. Etsuko’s apathy and lack of autonomy throughout her time in Japan seem to preclude her decision to move to England and a more modern, Western lifestyle; yet we also learn that, even after she settles into a new country, she still holds fast to traditions of politeness and secrecy, even to the detriment of her own family.

Although she is the narrator, Etsuko seems strangely reticent about her own emotions and thoughts. The novel recalls many of the events and conversations she has the summer of her first pregnancy but does not reveal any of her feelings or opinions. It is possible that, due to the trauma of the bombings and the loss of her family, Etsuko is experiencing a sense of disconnect and is unaware of her own emotions. Alternatively, she is repressing her unhappiness and maintaining a façade of normalcy. The only inkling of what she might be feeling, such as sadness and guilt, comes from small details, such as her disjointed interactions with Mariko, her recurring dreams, and what she imagines Keiko’s body looked like when found by her landlady. However, these visuals leave an open space for the reader to ascribe their own emotions and interpretations on to the scenes. In this way, the protagonist serves as a type of mirror or placeholder for others, rather than a fully developed, three-dimensional character.

The only feelings that Etsuko conveys explicitly are those of foreboding. However, since she is recalling the past, it is possible the narrator experiences them retrospectively; in this case, they are a reflection of her feelings of guilt in the present, rather than an objective element of the past. Once again, we see that Etsuko is an unreliable narrator whose current perspective, shaped by a life of trauma, indelibly impacts her recollections of the past. Through the character and narration of Etsuko, Ishiguro speaks to the temporality and dubiousness of memory. Personal experience taints every memory, and it is impossible to separate the two, yet this fact makes accessing reality impossible—hence the hazy, cloudy presentation of A Pale View of Hills

Jiro Ogata

Jiro is Etsuko’s first husband and her foster father’s son. Jiro is “a small stocky man wearing a stern expression” who is “fastidious about his appearance” (28). He represents the cliched husband who expects his wife to take care of all household chores and his needs while he dedicates himself to his career. Jiro seemingly lacks consideration or affection for anyone in his life, from his employees (as evidenced by the visit from his colleagues), to his father (whom he disrespects repeatedly), to his own wife, with whom he is careless and unappreciative. With his callousness and superior attitude, Jiro represents a type of male, Japanese stereotype, as well as the contradictory nature of such a stereotype in post-war Japan. He assumes he will gain respect, even as he criticizes a similar superiority complex instilled in students via the old education system.

Jiro is a marginal figure in the narrative as he is absent most of the day and does not seem to engage with Etsuko when he is home (again, fulfilling a stereotype of the absent working father). The narrator does not mention any meaningful interactions and, based on her recollections, Jiro simply reads the newspaper in the evenings. If anything, Etsuko has a better and warmer relationship with her father-in-law, with whom she feels comfortable joking around. In contrast, her relationship to her husband—and his to her—seems defined by duty and lacks any warmth, emotion, or humor. This explains Etsuko’s decision to leave Jiro, though she freely concedes he was a good father to Keiko. We never know why, exactly, Etsuko leaves Jiro, and because she never discusses her feelings for her second husband, the reader does not learn if her relationship with her first husband was systemic or reactive—in other words, if she achieved or wanted to achieve a closer relationship with her second husband.

Niki

Niki is Etsuko’s younger daughter, the product of her second marriage to her English husband. She is thin, fashionable, and young-looking. Niki lives a decidedly Western, modern life in London with her boyfriend, David, and has no desire to either start a family or find an occupation. She seems to despise what she sees as the middle-class desire to settle down and have children. Yet her privileged way of life is only possible due to her family’s money and her mother’s decision to settle down and have children. Niki’s rebellion from middle-class cultural norms is, ironically, the product of her middle-class upbringing. She identifies her rejection of social expectations with her mother’s decision to leave Japan, interpreting Etsuko’s immigration as an act of rebellion in search of independence. However, Etsuko disagrees with Niki’s opinion, which is a simplified, idealized, and decidedly Western interpretation of an immigration story. In this way, Niki represents the swiftness of assimilation: Although she is half Japanese, her lifestyle and especially her fetishization of her mother’s story, far removed from reality, are entirely European.

In a conversation with her mother, Niki reveals that she feels no deep attachment to her older sister Keiko, whose appearance she cannot even recall. The younger sister also resents Keiko’s decision to not attend her stepfather’s funeral, prompting Niki’s own absence at Keiko’s funeral. However, near the end of her visit, Niki admits that her father probably did not try hard enough to get along with Keiko. This suggests that the younger sister might harbor some feelings of guilt, despite pretending to be indifferent. Niki’s relationship with Keiko, or lack thereof, is further indication of the totality of her assimilation and the vastness of the gap between their cultures. 

Sachiko

Sachiko is a mysterious character in a mysterious novel. She appears one day in a foreign car—the first indication of her foreignness—to inhabit the dilapidated house by the river. The neighbors think she must be at least 30 years old, as her daughter looks to be around 10 years old, but they also theorize she may be older, despite her youthful figure. She is from Tokyo, rather than Nagasaki, emphasizing her status of an outsider.

Over the course of the novel, we learn that Sachiko comes from an educated, affluent family. Sachiko presents as selfish, ambitious, and remorseless, but her privileged upbringing also leaves her incapable and an outsider. This incapacity is particularly evident in her relationship with her daughter, who she treats as a burden, continuously placing her own desires and comfort above her child’s needs. While she does not intentionally harm Mariko physically, she is criminally negligent of her child’s well-being; it is easier to let the girl run around unsupervised than deal with schools and other institutions. Sachiko’s inability to mother effectively, let alone compassionately, presents a worst-case scenario for the combustion of duty and privilege which define Japanese life at this crossroads. Sachiko’s mothering style also serves as a mirror for Etsuko’s: Despite Etsuko’s blatant judgement of Sachiko, she, too, is negligent of Mariko and eventually her own children, choosing to let Keiko waste away rather than intervene.

It is true that Sachiko herself is in a terrible situation as a skill-less, penniless single mother, but it is one she chooses repeatedly, even when she has with other options, such as her uncle’s offer to take her in. She has no compunction in using her daughter as a pretext to pursue her own ambitions of immigrating to America. She is willing to sacrifice her own child, and everything else, to achieve her dreams, even as her own ambition stands in the way of her success. Sachiko’s idolization of immigration as a panacea is an echo of the predominant perspective, and her failure to immigrate—as well as Keiko’s failure to assimilate—present the hard realities of the idea of immigration.

Many readers may presume that Sachiko is Etsuko, and Mariko is Keiko. The evidence to this is heavily threaded throughout the narrative: Like Sachiko, Etsuko comes from a well-to-do family and maintains an elevated lifestyle, as evidenced by her violin playing and large country home; Keiko was seven years old when they immigrated, about the same age as Mariko in the novel; and Etsuko even reflects fondly on a memory of Keiko on a cable car—a story she recalled earlier with Mariko. However, rather than interpret the connections between Sachiko and Etsuko so literally, one could see their similarities as symbolic parallels that speak to the commonality of their struggles. In a war-torn Japan, womanhood presented a host of duties and challenges, and immigration seemed like an escape, but as both characters learned, immigration presented only more problems and few solutions.

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