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Kazuo Ishiguro Trivia

Kazuo Ishiguro Trivia Quizzes

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Kazuo Ishiguro won the prestigious Man Booker Prize in 1989 for "The Remains of the Day", his third book. "An Artist of the Floating World", "When We Were Orphans", and "Never Let Me Go" were also short-listed.
3 Kazuo Ishiguro quizzes and 35 Kazuo Ishiguro trivia questions.
1.
  Kazuo Ishiguro: 'Never Let Me Go'   best quiz  
Multiple Choice
 10 Qns
By the author of 'The Remains of the Day' (1989), this strange and unsettling 2005 novel looks back at an apparently idyllic childhood in an English boarding school - slowly revealing a shocking truth. A film version of the book was released in 2010.
Average, 10 Qns, dsimpy, Apr 29 11
Average
dsimpy
409 plays
2.
  Kazuo Ishiguro: 'Artist of the Floating World'   best quiz  
Multiple Choice
 10 Qns
Ishiguro's novel: 'An Artist of the Floating World', explores - through an old man's memories - how Japanese people deal with the legacy of World War II defeat as they rebuild their society. If you haven't read the book, this quiz may be too tough!
Tough, 10 Qns, dsimpy, Feb 21 11
Tough
dsimpy
211 plays
3.
  Remains of the Day    
Multiple Choice
 15 Qns
So, you think you know the book "Remains of the Day" ? This should be easy, just for fun!
Average, 15 Qns, wsw2, Feb 17 11
Average
wsw2
494 plays
Related Topics
  Contemporary Literature and Fiction [Literature] (22 quizzes)


Kazuo Ishiguro Trivia Questions

1. What is the name of the fictional boarding school that forms the backdrop to Ishiguro's novel?

From Quiz
Kazuo Ishiguro: 'Never Let Me Go'

Answer: Hailsham

Recalled through the narrator Kathy H's eyes, Hailsham is described in idyllic terms as an oasis of culture and respect for the children who attend school there. Only gradually, almost imperceptibly, do we realise the strangeness of this school where students have no family but each other, and where words used casually such as 'guardian', 'donation' and 'completion' have a macabre reality lying behind them. Charterhouse, Alleyn's and Dulwich are real English schools - so Hailsham was the only fictional answer possible.

2. What is the 'floating world' of the novel's title, as described by the narrator, the artist Masuji Ono?

From Quiz Kazuo Ishiguro: 'Artist of the Floating World'

Answer: The night-time world of pleasure and entertainment

The 'floating world' that occupies the novel - and which symbolises the carefree decadence of Japanese society in Masuji Ono's youth - is the 'pleasure district' of bars, geisha houses, theatres and bright lights where men can come to drink, tell stories, and dance with women. For Ono's mentor (sensei), the artist Seiji Moriyama, the subject matter of all paintings should be concerned only with this transitory pleasure - "the best things are put together of a night and vanish with the morning" - rather than with serious subjects like politics. Masuji Ono later on rejects this view of the purpose of art.

3. What is the shocking truth about the students who live at this school, and who never leave its scenic grounds until they reach sixteen?

From Quiz Kazuo Ishiguro: 'Never Let Me Go'

Answer: They are human clones

Ishiguro paints a portrait, through narrator Kathy H's eyes, of students who are alike to other children in almost every respect - teasing each other, making and losing friendships, sometimes happy and sometimes sad. It's well into the novel before we clearly understand that all these children were cloned in a laboratory, and although they're too young to understand the picture perfectly they do know they've each been modelled on another human being.

4. The name given to the little wooden bridge which leads to the 'pleasure district' of bars and geisha houses - with its drinking, singing and dancing - reflects the tension in the book between duty and pleasure. What is the bridge called?

From Quiz Kazuo Ishiguro: 'Artist of the Floating World'

Answer: Bridge of Hesitation

The bridge got its name because it was said that some men - stricken with conscience about whether to cross the bridge for an evening's entertainment in the pleasure district, or return home to their wives - could be seen hovering about the bridge, hesitant and undecided which course to take. The formal and coded manner in which many of Ishiguro's characters tentatively communicate with each other in the novel reflects the importance of hesitation and ambiguity as themes throughout the book, so that the Bridge appears to be symbolic of something wider.

5. What is Stevens' profession?

From Quiz Remains of the Day

Answer: Butler

Very proud about his job.

6. What shared purpose will all these young people achieve once they reach adulthood?

From Quiz Kazuo Ishiguro: 'Never Let Me Go'

Answer: Their organs will be harvested for transplant patients

By the period in which the novel's 'present' is set - the late 1990s - it seems this human organ donor programme has been running for around 50 years. Each cloned young person will donate organs to 'normal' human beings on up to four separate occasions until they 'complete' (die). If the operation is carried out poorly, some may die after only their first or second donation. A recurring fear many of them have is that, at the point of death, they'll still be semi-conscious as their body is being plundered for the remaining organs. As they grow to understand their inescapable role, the young people face it with a combination of pride and acceptance, mingled with fear, pain and depression.

7. For whom does Stevens work in the present?

From Quiz Remains of the Day

Answer: Mr Farraday

He's a nice, generous, American 'gentleman', in every sense of the word.

8. The students' creativity is constantly encouraged by their guardians, but their best artwork is taken away by a mysterious figure known as Madame. What do we learn eventually is the reason for this?

From Quiz Kazuo Ishiguro: 'Never Let Me Go'

Answer: The art shows influential people that the students have a soul

The students at Hailsham are almost obsessively encouraged to produce paintings, poetry, sculpture and other art forms - the best of which are taken away by the silent figure of Madame. The young people endlessly speculate why she does this. Towards the end of the novel we learn that Madame and her lover, the head guardian Miss Emily, used the art in exhibitions staged to persuade powerful figures that these cloned children had souls and imagination, and should be treated as humanely as possible. Successful in this endeavour for a while, eventually the political tide turns against this 'liberalism', and the most humane schools for cloned children - including Hailsham - are closed down and demolished. In the post-Hailsham era, it appears future organ-donor clones will be treated more harshly and clinically, because those who plunder their organs cannot allow themselves to think of the young people as human.

9. The same scene is used twice in the novel to portray rejection of the value of art, and conflict about what is acceptable art - firstly when Masuji Ono is 15, and later when he has become a celebrated painter. What is that scene?

From Quiz Kazuo Ishiguro: 'Artist of the Floating World'

Answer: Paintings being burned

When Masuji Ono's father learns that his son is thinking of becoming an artist instead of following him into his business, he burns Ono's paintings in an earthenware pot. Many years later, Ono denounces his star pupil, Kuroda, to the Committee of Unpatriotic Activities. Kuroda's paintings are burned in a police raid, and he is imprisoned as a traitor and physically maltreated until the end of World War II. Although Ono deplores the burning of Kuroda's paintings as 'going too far', his denunciation of Kuroda which led to this act has ironic echoes of his own father's view that unacceptable ideas can be burned out of existence.

10. Who played Stevens in the film, opposite Emma Thomson?

From Quiz Remains of the Day

Answer: Anthony Hopkins

In the film, Farraday was played by Christopher Reeve,(Superman) if I remember rightly. The film did cut some of the more important aspects out of the book in my opinion.

11. What is the best part of the day?

From Quiz Remains of the Day

Answer: Evening

Stevens only realises this right at the end of the novel.

12. The novel's narrator, Kathy H, aged 31 when the novel opens, reflects back throughout the book on her life at the school. What role has she been doing for the past eleven years?

From Quiz Kazuo Ishiguro: 'Never Let Me Go'

Answer: Carer

After leaving school at 16, and a transition period of a year or two, each young person trains to be a carer - providing counselling and support to the organ donors after their operations, each of whom will die after several 'donations'. Each carer, in turn, will themselves become a donor in due course. Kathy H has been a carer for more than eleven years, an unusually long time - but that is now due to end in a few months, and she too will become a donor - with her own 'completion' to follow within a few short years.

13. Masuji Ono is outraged to learn that the 'Hirayama boy' has been beaten up for singing "old military songs and chanting regressive slogans." Why is Ono so angry about this?

From Quiz Kazuo Ishiguro: 'Artist of the Floating World'

Answer: The 'Hirayama boy' has learning disabilities

The 'Hirayama boy' is around 50 years old but has the mental age of a child. Before and during the war people encouraged him to sing war songs and make patriotic statements, and gave him money and food because of it. Now that the war is over, with defeat and its accompanying sense of guilt, the 'Hiroyama boy' simply doesn't understand that times and sentiments have changed. He continues with the same patriotic behaviour that previously won him praise, but now he gets regularly beaten up as a result.

14. Whom does Stevens fall in love with?

From Quiz Remains of the Day

Answer: Miss Kenton

Technically, she is Mrs Benn, but Stevens can not accept this and refers to her for the most part as 'Miss Kenton'

15. Kathy H's prize childhood possession was a cassette tape which included the song 'Never Let Me Go'. What did the song lyrics mistakenly symbolise for her?

From Quiz Kazuo Ishiguro: 'Never Let Me Go'

Answer: Having a baby

As a young girl, Kathy H often played the song 'Never Let Me Go' while dancing round with a cushion pressed to her chest. She imagined the lyrics were about a woman who'd been told she couldn't have children but who - to her joy - had miraculously had a baby. She is dancing while holding on to the baby tightly, fearing it might disappear. Ironically, since all the cloned students are sterile, none of them will ever have children, and sex becomes an emotionally meaningless function which the young people engage in fairly promiscuously.

16. Where does Stevens work?

From Quiz Remains of the Day

Answer: Darlington Hall

17. Which east coast English county did the students believe was England's 'lost corner', where all possessions that are discarded or lost anywhere in England eventually end up?

From Quiz Kazuo Ishiguro: 'Never Let Me Go'

Answer: Norfolk

After leaving Hailsham at 16, Kathy H, Tommy and Ruth go on a day trip to Norfolk, a county that Hailsham students had grown up believing that if you lost something or threw it away it would end up there eventually. Ruth wants to go because she's been told that a woman in an office there looks like her, and she's curious to see if she could be the human she was modelled on. In the seaside town of Cromer, Tommy and Kathy H wander off and stumble across a copy of the 'Never Let Me Go' tape that she had lost years before, in a second hand shop. It poignantly echoes their childhood fantasy that everything lost ends up in Norfolk. Of the answer options given, only Norfolk is on the east coast of England.

18. The formal negotiations for the proposed marriage between Masuji Ono's daughter Noriko and Taro Saito are a thread running through the novel. What traditional aspect of this negotiation process causes Masuji Ono the most concern?

From Quiz Kazuo Ishiguro: 'Artist of the Floating World'

Answer: Family background investigations

The highly formal marriage negotiations culminate in an interview (miai) between both families held in the Kasuga Park Hotel. Masuji Ono has come to believe that his enthusiastic support before the war for the imperialist 'new spirit', expressed through his paintings, will be highlighted by the Saito family's traditional detective investigations before the 'miai', and that this may prevent the marriage being agreed. He visits his pre-war acquaintances in order to influence what they will say if approached by a detective. Then, to protect Noriko's marriage prospects, he expresses regret at the 'miai' for his earlier enthusiasm for the military government, only to learn that his reputation as a champion of the 'new spirit' was not as well known as he had thought, and the Saito family was unaware of it!

19. How does Miss Kenton describe Stevens' father when she sees him outside the summerhouse shortly after his fall?

From Quiz Remains of the Day

Answer: As though searching for a jewel he had dropped there

20. Kathy H's closest childhood friends, Ruth and Tommy, both inevitably die in the course of the novel. What euphemistic term is used for the death of any of the young people in the novel?

From Quiz Kazuo Ishiguro: 'Never Let Me Go'

Answer: Completion

Terms like 'guardians', 'donation' and 'completion' are used throughout the novel to soften the reality that all of these artificially cloned children have been produced and raised solely to provide essential organs for human transplant patients once they reach early adulthood. Resigned to this role, and even proud of it, the students nonetheless have a largely unspoken fear of the 'completion' which several organ donation operations inevitably brings. A popular rumour among them believes that if two students can persuade their guardians that they truly love each other then they can win a temporary postponement of their donations and so live longer. However Kathy H and Tommy, who become lovers after Ruth's death, discover there is no truth to the rumour - and no escape from their predestined role.

21. What 'rite of passage' event for Masuji Ono's eight-year-old grandson Ichiro, which Ono proposes but which is overruled by his daughters Setsuko and Noriko, symbolises the shift in power from older people to their adult children in post-war Japan?

From Quiz Kazuo Ishiguro: 'Artist of the Floating World'

Answer: Drinking sake at supper

Masuji Ono promises his grandson Ichiro that he can taste his first sake during supper. For Ono, this act has enormous significance for Ichiro, related to his male 'pride', and he believes it is an event Ichiro will never forget. In Shinto custom, tasting sake is part of the Shichi-go-san ceremony undertaken by young boys and girls, and Ono's own son Kenji (killed during the war) had first tasted sake at Ichiro's age. Ono's daughters however, Setsuko (Ichiro's mother) and Noriko (now married to Taro Saito), believe that Ichiro is far too young to drink sake and they defy their father by forbidding it to happen.

22. What is the name of the other butler that Stevens used to enjoy having discussions with by the fire?

From Quiz Remains of the Day

Answer: Mr Graham

23. In the 2010 film adaptation of Ishiguro's novel, which English actress plays the role of Kathy H?

From Quiz Kazuo Ishiguro: 'Never Let Me Go'

Answer: Carey Mulligan

Carey Mulligan began her acting career alongside Keira Knightley in the 2005 film version of 'Pride & Prejudice', and Knightley co-stars in 'Never Let Me Go' as Kathy H's best but selfish friend, Ruth. At Hailsham school, Ruth took Tommy as her boyfriend simply to avoid being alone - even though she knew there was the basis of love between Kathy H and Tommy. Only many years later, shortly before her death, does Ruth set out to redeem her friendship by allowing Kathy H to acknowledge her love for Tommy. This allows them to have a brief love affair before Tommy's death after his fourth 'donation'.

24. Why did Stevens' previous employer ask to have two young, competent maids dismissed?

From Quiz Remains of the Day

Answer: Because they were Jewish

25. What is the name of the small town where Stevens stays because he has run out of petrol?

From Quiz Remains of the Day

Answer: Moscombe

26. What is the profession of Carlisle, who gives Stevens more petrol and drives him to his car?

From Quiz Remains of the Day

Answer: Doctor

27. What does Stevens believe is the reason for his making 'trivial errors'at the start of the book?

From Quiz Remains of the Day

Answer: Nothing more sinister than a faulty staff plan

28. What was the name of the American gentleman who denounces Stevens' previous employer at the big conference at the house?

From Quiz Remains of the Day

Answer: Mr Lewis

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