[b:An Artist of the Floating World|18144266|An Artist of the Floating World|Kazuo Ishiguro|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1372714599l/18144266.SY75.jpg|2464610] is one of [a:Kazuo Ishiguro|4280|Kazuo Ishiguro|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1424906625p2/4280.jpg]'s earlier works and it shows the sensitivity he has to manners he later shows in his later [b:The Remains of the Day|28921|The Remains of the Day|Kazuo Ishiguro|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327128714l/28921.SY75.jpg|3333111], his most well-known novel due to the successful 1993 movie adaptation.
The story, which takes place from 1948 to 1950, is part family drama part musings of an irrelevant man and has the same elegiac quality of Remains. It captures specific aspects of post-war Japan that now get little attention if they're not forgotten, as the population living in that era has dwindled in number.

Yesterday, as I took the tram down to Arakawa, the carriage was filled with bright autumn sunshine. I had not made the journey dto Arakawa for a little while—in fact, not since the end of the war—and as I gazed out of my window, I noticed many changes in what had once been familiar scenery. Passing through Tozaka-cho and Sakaemachi, I could see brick apartment blocks looming over the small wooden houses I remembered from before. Then, as we passed the backs of the factories in Minamimachi, I saw how abandoned many of them had become; one factory yard went by after another, untidily stacked with broken timber, old sheets of corrugated metal, and often what looked to be plain rubble.