The Woman in the Dunes

The Kobo Abe novel "Woman in the Dunes" is a strangely evocative novel that sketches, with devastating accuracy, the feeling of being alienated from society. Junpei is a typical salaryman in Tokyo, and typically as well, he has a hobby, collecting insects. Lest this sound esoteric, it's not--bug collecting is a hobby as popular as collecting baseball cards is here. In other words, Junpei is "everyman."However, Junpei seems to be undergoing, subtly, some kind of personal dissolution. He heads for vacation on the coast to pick up more specimens and presumably clear his head so he can go back to work and act as he's expected to act. The reader is left to fill in much of Junpei's state of mind and even Americans, not tuned into Japanese culture, can imagine his struggle.Somehow, Junpei finds himself trapped, physically trapped in a village that is constantly threatened by extinction under the shifting dunes. Each night, the entire village shovels sand to reclaim their tiny foothold. The village headman lodges Junpei with a widow and he is expected to take up the shovel with the other villagers. Not to participate is not an option; Junpei at first struggles with his captivity. He goes on strike. Soon, however, like the bugs he once anaesthetized in a jar, he ceases to flutter and becomes a part of the village life--though constantly mindful he is an prisoner.As in Kafka's "The Metamorphosis" from which Abe clearly is drawing, Junpei becomes more and more distanced from his previous life in Tokyo. Shamefully, secretly, he becomes sexual entangled with the young widow, in a way that seems almost as if he is unaware of the impact this will have on their lives. He is finding a home and a purpose and he's needed. And wanted. Is he still a prisoner, if he needs the village in return?The metaphor for Japanese society, where utter conformity is the ultimate value, and for the inevitable alienation individuals must feel, is magnificent. Even our own society, which allows for magnitudes more individuality and freedom, is reflected strangely in this masterpiece of a novel.This book never gets old to me, and seems as timeless as the sands that Abe uses to stand for life's inhuman struggles and how we meet them together. A must-read.

Kobo Abe's excellent novel "The Woman in the Dunes" examines the nature of how man relates his responsibilities to his sense of freedom. The protagonist is a schoolteacher named Niki Jumpei who collects insects as a hobby and, on a holiday, goes to a sandy seashore in search of rare specimens. Near the shore he finds a most curiously constructed village -- the houses are sunk into individual sand pits. When he misses the last bus back to civilization, the villagers assign him to spend the night in a house at the bottom of one of the pits. Dwelling in the house is a nameless woman who must shovel sand out of the pit constantly to keep the entire village from being buried in the encroaching sand dunes. Soon Niki learns that the villagers have no intention of letting him out of the pit and that he must help the woman with shoveling. Faced with the prospect of spending the rest of his life imprisoned and forced to labor in the sand pit, he must accustom himself to his new environment and become the woman's sexual mate.Some of the images, especially the strange village and the sand formations, are difficult to envision, but Abe rises to the challenge with beautiful, vivid descriptions. Similarly, Niki's daring schemes to outwit the implacable villagers who grimly supervise the work are written with the skill of an author who understands and masters the delicate balance between thought and action. The novel is not merely a retelling of the myth of Sisyphus because Niki and the woman's task has a practical, if unrealistic, purpose. Rather, I see it as an allegory of man's complacency with his existence in the world. He is not born of his own will, but once alive, he has personal, familial, and communal responsibilities that he must fulfill or else risk physical and social deprivation (starvation, loneliness, societal reproach). He must consign himself to these responsibilities, and usually he finds something that interests him and makes life more bearable -- for some, this may be a chosen profession; for others, a hobby. (Note how Niki's hobby shifts from collecting insects to discovering a new method of drawing ground water as he assimilates himself to life in the pit. His interests adjust to fit his environment.) In fact, our personal interests are the only things by which we individuate ourselves from others in a world where we are all shoveling the same sand out of our own little pits.

Kobo Abe's Woman in the Dunes in both an existential allegory as well as a masterpiece of sensual terror.The story begins when teacher and amateur entymologist, Jumpei Niki, decides to get away from things for awhile and searches for insects in an isolated desert region of Japan near the sea. When he realizes he's missed the last bus back to a "real" town, the local villagers offer to find him a place to stay for the night.Although there are no hotels available, Jumpei is escorted to a rope ladder extending down into a pit in the sand. At the bottom he finds a ramshakle hut and a lone woman living in a bizarre situation; she spends the entire night, every night, shoveling sand away from her home in order to stave off her own burial and the subsequent destruction of the village. The sand is given to the villagers in return for water and other necessities, something the woman views as "community spirit."To his horror, Jumpei awakens to find the rope laffer gone and discovers he's been targeted as the woman's new partner and "helper." Jumpei resists and even makes a futile attempt at escape, to which the woman says, "I'm really sorry. But honestly there hasn't been a single person to get out yet."Inevitably, Jumpei and the woman engage in a series of sexual encounters that have more to do with an affirmation of life than with physical or emotional attraction. This book is many things, but a love story is definitely not one of them.When the woman (who remains nameless) suffers an ectopic pregnancy, Jumpei suddenly finds himself alone in the pit and free to go, yet enigmatically (or so it may seem), he refuses to do so.Obviously, this shattering and gorgeous story is open to many levels of interpretation; only a few are obvious.Jumpei clearly represents the "new, Westernized" Japan, while the woman personifies "traditional" Japan and tate mae. Rather than buying into the futility of life, the woman calmly accepts the role life has assigned to her with dignity and patience.Although she is often treated unfairly (and even abused) by Jumpei, the woman in the dunes still bathes him regularly and cooks his dinner every day, accepting him without anger or scorn.Westerners may view the woman in the dunes as complacent and weak, but in reality, she is anything but. Her ability to carry on day after day, in the face of overwhelming odds, as well as her seeming peace of mind personify the maxim that suffering exists only in the eye of the beholder.At times, the message of this book may seem to be that life is futile; that no matter how much you struggle, you'll simply be forced to struggle again and again, so much so that when opportunity does come knocking, a useless existence may seem safer than an uncertain freedom.The real problem, however, and the crux of this book, is one of perspective. Although Jumpei's "old" life may seem to be the better and the more fulfilling (as well as the more free), is it really?

This is one of those extraordinary, kafkaesque novels which gets right beneath your skin. On the surface, the story sounds faintly ridiculous. An insect collector goes off to the dunes in search of, well, insects, but ends up caught in a hole in the sand with no way of escape. To add an uncomfortable eroticism to the story he is stuck together with a woman who spends her days moving sand just in order to stop her home in the dunes becoming engulfed by sand. A pointless existence or symbolic of our routinized unthinking lifestyles? What follows shows incredible insight into human psychology. The man's will power, his wish to escape, battles with the temptation to resign himself to his fate and the woman. Whatever I write here I will not be able to give any idea of the agonizing psychological torture of this novel. It will leave you exhausted but amazed. For the brave only! And if you want more of the same, watch the film based on this novel. It is absolutely remarkable, and is one of the classics of Japanese cinema. I have never felt so shattered at the end of a film.

This had to be one of the most bizarre pieces of literature I have ever read -- but that's a good thing, really. It's a very claustrophobic work -- the setting is ultimately very very small and limited. I think this was a really cool effect -- it made us feel more "at home" with where the characters were. To think that, according to Abe, sand -- only 1/8 mm in diameter -- can so oppress us... Maybe, he is saying, life is sometimes beyond our control. The themes of living amidst even the worst circumstances are quite apparent, I think, and the sand pit being representative of the mind-numbing simplicity of every day life is a nice pessimistic vision for us all. This book is the story of a man who wants to escape from this mundane existence which he is forced into against his own will, like we all have no choice but, whether we earn an education or not, to work, every day, with little consolation or reward. This is a story of a man who lives out a pure human existence, though in captivity. He works, he eats, he sleeps. Abe's point must be that there is no more to life than this. We should never expect too much from our lives. Like Jumpei does in this novel, we simply have to come to terms with our existence and find something worth devoting our time to -- like his little discovery in the end, which spurs him on in his work. A note: in this translation, we are lead to believe that Niki Jumpei is single and living with a woman. This isn't true. In the Japanese version, Jumpei is married to Niki Shino. The author uses a Japanese pronoun to mean "woman" which is most commonly used by married Japanese men to refer to their wife. This novel is written in a very traditional Japanese manner, believe it or not, so the translator had to take a few liberties, I would assume. Since the story is told in third person, the use of this particular pronoun would confuse any transltor, really. Also, in the "missing person notice" at the end, the claimant is Jumpei's WIFE, not his mother. That final passage is translated word-for-word -- except for some reason the translator felt the need to put the word "mother" in parentheses as an attempt to clarify Niki's family life. I think this might help the reader, because reading the Japanese version, one gets the impression early on that Jumpei left on his little trip partly as a result of a marital conflict.