The Woman in the Dunes

Rating:
Summary: One of my favorites
Review: I read this book over and over. It is mesmerizing. I also love sand which I collect. There is a lot I don't understand in the book. The woman is a total mystery. I would like to know what she is thinking sometimes. Another thing I don't understand is the water trap the man makes. Is such a thing physically possible?

I read another book called The Stones Cry Out by Hikaru Okuizumi. In it a Japanese soldier dying in the Philipines in WWII says "Even the most ordinary pebble has the history of this heavenly body we call earth written on it." I think this book reflects this idea too. Its just the nature of the world which is so mysterious. That big things can become grains of sand and little grains of sand can erode things and burry things.
I suppose that the man gradually learns to accept the true nature of the world and is then no longer unhappy.

Rating:
Summary: sand sticks to everything
Review: In Kobo Abe's "The Woman in the Dunes," a teacher and amateur entomologist sets out on a vacation to find rare insect specimens near a remote sea-side village. After missing his bus back to town, the man is led into the strange village and given a place to sleep by the villagers. Oddly, the house he is taken to is at the bottom of a vast sandpit where a mysterious woman lives, bereaved of her husband and child. It isn't long before the man realizes that the woman is nothing more than an obsequious servant to the villagers of the town, forced to shovel off the inexorably advancing sand dunes in order to protect herself and the village from its baneful effects.

And this is the beginning of the story, in which the man is now a slave himself, and must reconcile himself to the morbidity of living the rest of his life in exile, banished from society into a hole where he fights everyday a perpetual and ultimately fruitless battle with the ever-encroaching dunes.

The story is beautifully rendered, and depicted with an equal amount of hope and tragedy. Kobo Abe has given us a transparent picture of what it is like to be a pariah in society; and shows the reader the racing emotions and flailing plans in the mind of a trapped man who is inevitably linked to the precipitous pit, maybe even was before he left for the village. A true masterpiece of modern literature.

Rating:
Summary: Sand. And more sand.
Review: Just a caveat: I found this book incredibly tiresome. I agree with certain of the reviewers here on the depth of its metaphors and its poignancy. Nevertheless, this book was task to finish. I believe the comparisons to Kafka are quite deserved, except that Kafka did it much better. Still, if you found Kafka tedious, do yourself a favor and don't read this.

Rating:
Summary: Bizarre, ends bleak
Review: Kobo Abe came highly recommended to me by a good friend, and so I touched on the first of his books that I found: The Woman In The Dunes.

I was disappointed.

While it was well crafted, the sudden, abrupt ending left me scratching my head, wondering just what the point of the novel was. Perhaps it's a cultural difference, but it simply left me wondering why he bothered with this novel at all. It has a very unfinished feel, and despite the riveting descriptions of the ordeal within the dunes, the sudden turnaround at the end left me completely cold.

Rating:
Summary: A trip you will never return from
Review: Kobo Abe takes the reader into the sand dunes somewhere along the Japan Sea coast and then plunges this unsuspecting victim into one of the most suffocating, futile and bizarre predicaments ever conjured on paper. The main character, some office worker out on a lark pursuing rare insects, finds himself sharing a house enclosed by sand. His companion is a woman who works every night literally digging the house out of the sand to prevent it from collapsing under it's weight. He's puzzled by the woman's lack of desire to leave, and eventually he succumbs to his lust for her. He also finds himself succumbing to the place and to the futility of escape.

Through Abe's sparse prose, the reader feels equally engulfed and the story takes on new meaning. Existential questions arise. What do we give up when we give in? Do we even have a choice of breaking free?

I found this book marvellously rich and suggestive. The uniqueness of the story's premise and the real questions the book raises, make this an offbeat masterpiece for the ages.

Rating:
Summary: Fantastic Idea, Poor Execution
Review: Kobo Abe's "The Woman in the Dunes" is about a professional teacher, amateur entomologist, who wanders into the desert seeking subjects for his work. He finds a village, but is tricked into a large sand pit when he asks for a place to stay the night. He finds an old woman already living in the pit, in a small home. He discovers the village is constantly fighting the sand advancing against them, and he has been engaged involuntarily in the Sisyphian task of shoveling the sand in order to keep the village clean. The old woman is also engaged in this task, and they form an unwilling team. They struggle against each other, the younger man being forceful and brash, the older woman being passive and generally helpful. The man continually attempts escape, but continually fails. At the end, the reader will learn whether the man stays or leave, and whether it voluntary or involuntary.

The story is an allegory of Japan's post-WWII struggle with modernization and Westernization, as well as the relative merits of classical Japanese culture versus modern Western culture. Then again, so is just about half of all Japanese literature from the 20th century. The old woman represents classical Japan, passive but steadfast, the younger man represents modern Japan, trying to run away, and trying to be different from those in his past. The sand which encroaches on the pit is the rest of the world, the Western world in particular, encroaching upon Japan, and against which the Japanese must constantly struggle.

The problem with this story is that a reader would probably never know the point if they did not know the history of Japan, or the fact that half the Japanese literature of the last century agonized over this topic. The story does not stand on its own. The allegory of the sand pit is forced, the characters are as unidimensional as match-sticks, unsympathetic entirely, and the cultural conflict is invisible, as though the author expected everyone to know exactly what he was talking about, and fill in the details themselves. The sand pit is the worst part. The author is preaching to us that Japan is in a horrible pit, fighting off the rest of the world, encroaching on them, in a fight of "us versus them".

The biggest problem with this book is that its idea is just so wonderful. An imaginative writer could turn this story into a spectacular opera. The tableau is dramatic, the situation rife with possibility. Unfortunately, Abe assumes the reader already knows the details, and does not satisfactorily unfold the drama, flesh out the characters, bring sympathy to the deeper meaning, or communicate the intended principle. It's as though Abe were speaking at a cocktail party, and said, "you know how Japan is struggling with the west, it's like a young man and an old woman in a sand pit," causing all his like-minded colleagues to nod their heads. If you're familiar with Japanese culture, especially of the 20th century and the post-WWII era, you'll love it.

Readers less knowledgeable of this period in Japanese history, but interested in exploring this topic further, will enjoy Mishima's short novel "The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea". The east/west cultural struggle is limned much more clearly in that work, in fact quite explicitly. The plot is more powerful, the characters more interesting, the meaning much deeper, and the import more philosophical. The ending of that book is also much more wrenching, and will force the reader to reflect on this struggle between Japan and the west with great interest. Mishima has been derided as an "export" writer, i.e., the Japanese writer the west seems most to enjoy, but if the purpose of a writer is to communicate, Mishima succeeds, where Abe does not. Abe is content to complain, but Mishima seeks to explain.

Rating:
Summary: Freedom versus responsibility
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Sinking into the sands of psychology
Review: Kobo Abe's heros are usually outsiders, and they also have a tendency to lose their way (for an interesting city-based version of Abe's lost hero, see "The Ruined Map"). These outer characteristics are clever reflections of the inner psychology of the hero, and nowhere are they more clearly described than in "The woman in the dunes". Led astray by his determined hunt for an original breed of insect, the hero finds himself hunted, and trapped in a strange village by the sea at the bottom of a sand shaft with no means of escape. At first his reaction to his captivity is disbelief - he assumes that being stuck at the bottom of a deep sand shaft as he is is some mistake, or some elaborate joke. When he realises this is not the case he focuses much of his venomous reaction on the hapless woman who lives at the bottom of the same shaft. Ironically, the more scorn he pours on her and the crazy world she lives in, the more he becomes adjusted to it in spite of himself. As he gives in gradually to his own new daily habits living at the bottom of the sand shaft, he enters into sexual relations with the woman. At first sadistic, even this form of contact with another person proves disturbing for our unsettled hero. Finally however, these relations become normalized and only when the woman becomes pregnant (and possibly miscarriages - though the writing does not make this explicit), does our hero accept his place in this new (weird) world. - Well that's a brief rundown of what happens, but what I can't explain is just how swiftly I found myself sinking into this book! It was just too strange at first to really grasp what was going on. Who are these people with no names? Why doesn't the woman even have a name? AND JUST WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE??? Excellent stuff - sci-fi fit for non-sci-fi fans (like me). READ.

Rating:
Summary: Profoundly Poetic
Review: 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? If you were to ask the woman in the dunes, I think she might smile, turn her head shyly and suggest you get back to work.

Rating:
Summary: Bizarre, intimate, moving experience
Review: Let me state at the outset that I think this is one of the best short novels I have read.
Presaging the narrative with a news-clipping style write-up about a person's disappearance, Abe introduces us to protagonist Niki Jumpei, an amateur entomologist who goes on a secret weekend trip to a remote coastal region to look for insects. Jumpei comes across a village that is increasingly encroached upon by the surrounding sand. Looking for a night's rest, he is led by a scatter of villagers to a hut that appears to lie in a sandpit. A woman, the owner of the hut, gives him dinner and board, before getting on to her job - shoveling the engulfing sand to be hauled away. It is the net morning when Jumpei realizes that he has been tricked into the sandpit by the villagers who expect him to pitch into the shoveling efforts; a neat analogy to the hunting style of the sand spider. Niki's annoyance with the situation grows into rage, then fear and desperation, trying to come to terms with his helpless situation while he devises ploys to escape from it.
Kobo writes brilliantly throughout linking bizarre and philosophical threads in a skilful yarn. But this is not just a technically good story; we are immersed in it on a very personal level, identifying completely with Jumpei, from his moment of initial shock over his bizarre predicament to a heart-gripping conclusion where...I think I'll leave you hanging on that, save to say that it makes for a wonderful sister companion to Vilas Sarang's mind-blowing 'In The Land of Enki'.
This book is a must-have.