Introduction
Kobo Abe's novel The Woman in the Dunes appeared in 1962, to spontaneous acclaim, was translated into 20 languages and adapted for a Cannes festival award-winning film directed by Hiroshi Teshigahara and scored by Toru Takemitsu. Suna no onna[1] is one of Abe Kobo's masterpieces.
Kōbō Abe, pseudonym of Kimifusa Abe was a Japanese writer, playwright, photographer and inventor. Abe has been often compared to Franz Kafka and Alberto Moravia for his surreal, often nightmarish explorations of individuals in contemporary society and his modernist sensibilities (Iles, 2000). Among the honors bestowed on him was the Akutagawa Prize in 1951 for The Crime of S. Karuma, the Yomiuri Prize in 1962 for Woman in the Dunes, and the Tanizaki Prize in 1967 for the play Friends. Kenzaburō Ōe stated that Abe deserved the Nobel Prize in Literature, which he himself had won (www.MediaWiki.com). Abe was born in Kita, Tokyo and grew up in Mukden[2] in Manchuria. His father was a physician who taught at a local medical college. Abe returned to Japan in 1941 and began studies at Tokyo Imperial University in 1943. He graduated in 1948 with a medical degree, on the condition that he would not practice. He was first published as a poet in 1947 with Mumei shishu[3] and as a novelist the following year with Owarishi michi no shirube ni[4], which established his reputation. Though he did much work as an avant-garde novelist and playwright, it was not until the publication of The Woman in the Dunes in 1962 that he won widespread international acclaim.
In this novel, the protagonist, Niki Jumpei, visits a village while out collecting insects and is tricked by villagers, who take him to a house situated in a deep hole in the dunes. Being unwilling to stay there, he struggles to escape. He refuses to help and even attempts to escape from the hole on five occasions. His first attempt involves repeatedly scooping out sand from underneath the cliff that surrounds the hole on the assumption that the ground level under his feet will gradually rise and he will ultimately reach the level of the top of the hole. His second attempt is to restrain the woman and threaten the villagers. The third attempt is to escape from the hole while the woman is asleep by using a rope that he has made himself. His fourth attempt involves attempting to capture a crow and use it as a carrier pigeon. The fifth attempt is to try to negotiate with the villagers to allow him to climb up the cliff and momentarily look out over the sea. This story may appear to be portraying a surreal world (Kato, 1999). Within the story, there veiled a number of themes which readers can obviously perceived upon reading such as love, solitude and the mystery of life. But the most vivid is the isolation of man from the society that in later part man is eased in the turbulence he experiences not missing his left friends whosoever did not look for Niki Jumpei too. The story depicts an unusual scenario of life as man is subjected to an unwanted isolation.
Discussion of the Theme
Man can be eased with a certain situation, crucial or not, if there are reasons to stay.
The novel pits the man's will to escape this sun-fried nightmare against the villagers' will to keep him where he is, and it is never less than compulsive (Mitchell, 2006). Jumpei had spent part of the afternoon musing in a rather clinical way about sand and in a slightly more animated way beetles. His ambition in life is maybe to find a new type of beetle that will be named after him. He is a man of modest ambition, which makes the situation he is now in even more terrible (Mackey, 2011). As Jumpei is eager to escape, he plotted many ideas to get out of the barren area and go back to his own place wherein he cannot be a captive of some ridiculous and frustrated villagers of an intriguing community. Things fail to go as planned, and the woman reveals a more chilling face. She tells the man how the village union sells sand illegally to a concrete manufacturer. The man fulminates that this would endanger the lives of those entire dependent on dams not bursting and bridges not collapsing (Mitchell, 2006). The woman replies, accusingly, "Why should we worry what happens to other people?" All of his plans failed, this leads to the acceptance of his isolation from his real world. Eventually, he learns to live with the sand and also the woman living to gather the sand out.
The Woman in the Dunes reads much like a fable. Its characters are eccentric and somewhat grotesque. The landscape is beautifully rendered, but extraordinary, and its architecture calls to mind the intricate designs of the insect kingdom Niki Junpei so lovingly studies (Bailat-Jones, 2009). The Woman in the Dunes also revolves around Niki’s developing relationship with the village woman. She needs him to help her survive in the harsh atmosphere of the dunes. This is his only purpose and each day the two must work together to fight back the encroaching sand. But their constant interaction and the near-complete solitude of the setting bring these two strangers into an unusual affair (Bailat-Jones, 2009). Months go by, and the man and woman evolve a working accommodation that one might find in an unsatisfactory but indissoluble marriage. They obtain piece-work to save money and buy a radio (Mitchell, 2006). As a result of their love affair, the woman in the dunes got pregnant. This event also added up to the reasons why Niki Jumpei does not have to escape from his isolation. The man's reaction to the reappearance of the rope ladder in the final scene is as bleak as the conclusion: an individual's will to freedom have been crushed, and with it, his soul. The woman's extra-uterine pregnancy is a symbol of sterility and desolation (Iles, 2000). Hence, this adds to the theme formulated as man can be eased with a certain situation, crucial or not, if there are reasons to stay.
Abe is an accomplished stylist. He was apt to frame his novels in "found" notebooks or other written artefacts, and The Woman in the Dunes closes with the missing persons report mentioned on its first page. It includes a page or two of its protagonist's jottings to himself; a dream, a hallucinatory flashback here and there, but the structure is simple and linear (Mitchell, 2006). This is present in the book of Kobo Abe, Woman in the Dunes copyrighted 1964 by Alfred A. Knoft, Inc.
Conclusion
The theme of the story has been unveiled in the main subject of isolation and freedom. In detailed, man can be eased with a certain situation, crucial or not, if there are reasons to stay. Man will learn as Niki Jumpei learned to cope up with his new environment. Man will stay if there are reasons to stay but man will not stay if there is much reason to leave – man thinks. It is part of being a logical, rational and critical man. Right decision making is important as much as time. Remember that decisions are made in the ticktock of the clock.
Abe’s modern fairytale examines the structure and functioning of contemporary society, asks difficult questions about our role in that society and yet accomplishes this from within an engaging and complex human story. This is classic Japanese literature at its best (Bailat-Jones, 2009). The Woman in the Dunes is not an easy read. Pondering and reading between the lines is needed. Thought diving is also undeniably crucial.
[1] Woman in the Dunes in Japanese.
[2] Now called Shen-yang.
[3]“Poems of an Unknown Poet”
[4]“The Road Sign at the end of the Street”
Works Cited
o Abe, Kobo (1964). Woman in the Dunes. United States of America: Vintage Books Edition.
o Bailat-Jones, M. (2009, April 19). Review of The Woman in the Dunes by Kobo Abe. Retrieved March 14, 2011, from Suite101: http://www.suite101.com
o Iles, T. (2000). Abe Kobo: an Exploration of his Prose, Drama, and Theatre . EPAP.
o Kato, S. (1999). Nihon bungakushi josetsu. Tokyo, Japan: Chikuma shobo.
o Mackey, M. (2011, January 13). The Woman in the Dunes, by Kobo Abe. Retrieved March 14, 2011, from Suite101: http://www.suite.com
o Mitchell, D. (2006, October 7). No Escape. Retrieved March 14, 2011, from Guardian News and Media Limited 2011: http://www.guardian.co.uk
o www.MediaWiki.com. (n.d.). Retrieved March 13, 2011, from www.wikipedia.com: http://www.wikipedia.com/kobo_abe
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