Tracing the Origin of Kazuo Ishiguro Through His Early Song Lyrics

In this chapter, Takayuki Shonaka analyses fragments of songs Ishiguro had written before he became a novelist, which were influenced by American popular culture. In particular, Shonaka discusses how the songs of Bob Dylan strongly affected Ishiguro’s song writing. Furthermore, he scrutinises Ishiguro’s lyrics within a framework of categories such as ‘religious songs’ and ‘nostalgia for Japan’ to discuss the possibility that some factors contained in these song fragments would later be featured in his works as a novelist. Shonaka’s argument, based on an analysis of the use of words, probes the lively details of Ishiguro’s apprenticeship as a songwriter that had been known only as one piece of his biographical record and reveals the feelings and ideas of young Ishiguro living between two cultures. This offers important insight into the development of his mind in the 1970s as a precursor to his later career.