Kazuo Ishiguro has been widely praised for his ‘Japanese’ virtues as a writer: delicacy, subtlety, quiet irony, watercolour tones, etc. The fact that he was born in Japan and set his first two novels there makes such ethno-critical diagnosis easier. On the other hand, the listed qualities could just as easily be seen as typical of a line of English writing. Ishiguro, after all, writes in English; he left Japan for England at the age of six, and has yet to revisit his native land.

So the coarse opening question when we discover that his third novel is set in England is this: how ‘Japanese’ is he after all? And can we finally draw some bead on the fellow now that he’s taken to writing about something we locals are familiar with? Well, no. Gratifyingly,