Rushdie and Ishiguro in The World of Tomorrow

“Accordingly, globalization is not only something that will concern and threaten us in the future, but something that is taking place in the present and to which we must first open our eyes.” This is a quote from Ulrich Beck a German sociologist who has written many books on the topic of globalization. The choices that we make everyday have an effect on the spread of globalization, where we choose to shop, or eat can all affect it. Sometimes I find myself questioning whether or not I should go to Starbucks or if I should continue to boycott Wal-Mart. But overall I have found a comfortable place to sit back and watch globalization happen. During this semester in my multicultural literature class we read four authors that all wrote on the topic of poisoning yourself within a society. One book is Kazuo Ishiguro’s An Artist of The Floating World. The second is Salman Rushdie’s East, West. Both provide different, sometimes conflicting ways of looking at how to find your way in today’s world.

In An Artist of The Floating World we get to hear the story of an artist, Masuji Ono that gets involved with a nationalistic political party in Japan. He begins making propaganda paintings for the political movement and through this he becomes more powerful in the group. The rest of the story is about him learning to live with the choices he made during that period. This story provides many parallels to the struggle that people face today with globalization. The nationalistic attitude that Ono came to adopt would have blocked other cultures from integrating into Japanese society, stopping globalization but at what cost? After the war ends Japan begins to adopt American values and pop culture, one relationship that demonstrates Ono’s struggle with this is with his young grandson Ichiro. Ichiro is running around quoting the Lone Ranger “Hi ho silver!”(p.34) and Ono has this to say about it “only a few years ago, Irchiro wouldn’t have been allowed to see such a thing as a cowboy film.” This is the first time in the book that we get to see a glimpse into Ono’s struggle with American pop culture integrating into his Japanese society.

As the book goes on Ono starts to make amends with the decisions he made during the war, and by the end of the book he begins to find a place in the new Japan he is forced to accept. He did this by going back and visiting his fellow party members to see how they feel about what they were involved in. Through these meetings and interactions he is able to find his way. During a conversation with his daughter Setsuko Ono expresses his newly found acceptance “Now Setsuko, There’s no need to be so tactful. I’m quite prepared now to acknowledge there are certain aspects to my career I have no cause to be proud of.”(p.191) Throughout the entire book he feels ashamed for the things he did because of the outcome of the war but at this point he is accepting responsibility for his actions, this is what enables him to find the closest thing he can to inner peace. He doesn’t have to completely accept the new Japan but he does have to live with it. He found his place through a personal struggle over the part he played in the failed movement, and through this he learned to look at the new Japan in a different way. As citizens of the United States we have to decide what is right and wrong for other countries through our political choices. Is McDonalds an appropriate restaurant for post war Iraq?

One man who has without a doubt found his place in the floating world is Salman Rushdie, he went from an author in exile to somewhat of a pop icon. In his short story At the Auction of the Ruby Slippers Rushdie provides a thought provoking story by using the iconic ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz. During this story he talks of all the different people that are present at the auction as well as his own reason for being there. The overall moral of the story is that everything is for sale and nothing is sacred. To me this story brings up two arguments one it makes you think about what is actually important and whether or not it is appropriate in today’s world. At one point in the story the auctioneers are presented with a buyer who only wants to buy the ruby slippers in order to burn them. The auctioneer allows them to bid because “Anyone’s Cash is as good as anyone else’s.”(pg.93) Through this Rushdie seems to be expressing his own frustration about his own exile which was brought on by an extremist Iranian government after his release of the Satanic Verses. The second is should money control everything? Through this story Rushdie seems to think that the answer is no, at least not everything. Not to say that Rushdie does not think that there is a place for money and power when you look at his own life anything more would be hypocritical.

After reading these two books my eyes have been opened to a common theme in the resistance of globalization national pride. The key seems to be to not take it too far like Ono did and get wrapped up in a hate campaign. Or take your satire too far and get yourself pushed into exile like Rushdie did. The only way to find a balance with globalization is to find out where you stand and take it on step by step, an outright denial of it maybe to extreme, but you also do not have to blindly accept it. And after reading these two books it only enforced my belief that we must make educated decisions on what we think is right. And needless to say I will not be going back to Wal Mart anytime soon.