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"you"), or when the woman who is closest to him delivers sentences
like, "Is that so, Mr. Stevens?", his narrative might almost be translated
from the japanese; and sometimes, when he reveals, in all naivete, the
discriminating assumptions on which his life is based - "But life being
what it is, how can ordinary people truly be expected to have strong
opinions on all manner of things?" - one can almost hear the uncon–
scious snobbery of Sei Shonagon, or a hundred other ancient Kyoto
courtiers.
Yet part of the skill of Ishiguro's plot is that, by placing us inside
the butler's voice, and mind, he makes his most distant qualities accessible
to us and almost touching. He lights up the japanese mind from within,
and then shows how it is all about us: the rococco periphrases, eu–
phemisms and litotes, the life so provincial it could be almost pre–
lapsarian, the unfailing self-surrender that seems so alien, so japanese to us
- all are alive, and not so long ago, in the quiet hills of Oxfordshire.
When Stevens reminds a colleague, "Our professional duty is not to our
own foibles and sentiments, but to the wishes of our employer," it
sounds perfectly natural, even normal, in the context of their lives; and
when he reminds himself, "There was little to be gained in growing de–
spondent," his stoicism makes all the practical sense in the world. Seen
from afar, he might seem cold or prudish; seen from within, he is a pro–
foundly decent man trying to do his best. In perhaps the novel's central
scene, the bespoke butler dutifully goes about his job, tending to the feet
of a distinguished guest, while his own father dies of a stroke upstairs. In
most lights, this kind of self-denial would strike us as unnatural to the
point of heartlessness. But in the context of Steven's high-minded code
of service, it becomes the crowning achievement of his career - grace
under intensest pressure - and one can almost see how he can recollect
the night of his father's death "with a large sense of triumph." Here is
the heroism of Benkei at the Bridge, here the self-transcendance of Shinji
Hasegawa at the Seoul Olympics, robbed of a gold medal after four years
of practice, yet refusing to indulge himself in protest.
Stevens's life, as he sees it, has no meaning save in self-subordination.
He is only as great as the man he serves, and he can best serve king and
country, he believes, by waiting, quite literally, upon history, keeping the
silver polished on behalf of the
I~inisters
and ambassadors who visit his
house to change the world. "A 'great' butler can be only, surely, one
who can point to his years of service and say that he has applied his tal–
ents to serving a great gentleman - and through the latter, to serving
humanity," he opines (not so different from "[ work for Mitsubishi,
therefore I am"). And, as befits a classic retainer, Stevens does indeed
shine in the reflected glory of his lord: on those infrequent occasions
when he ventures outside the manor gates, he is taken by nearly everyone
