The Woman in the Dunes by Kōbō Abe
"The Woman in the Dunes" by Kōbō Abe is a novel centered around Niki Jumpei, a teacher and amateur entomologist who embarks on a vacation to collect insect specimens. His journey leads him to a peculiar village nestled among vast sand dunes, where he seeks shelter in the home of a young widow. The widow's life is dominated by the relentless labor of shoveling sand to prevent her dwelling from being buried, a task necessary for the village's survival. As Jumpei becomes trapped in this desolate environment, he grapples with his desperate attempts to escape, which ultimately fail, leading him to reluctantly assist the widow in her labor.
The narrative explores themes of isolation, the struggle for survival, and the nature of human relationships under duress. Jumpei's initial horror transforms into a complex relationship with the widow, as they navigate their shared hardships. While he initially sees escape as a tangible goal, he eventually begins to accept his circumstances, illustrating the tension between desire for freedom and the acceptance of one's fate. The novel presents a haunting meditation on the human condition, challenging readers to reflect on the meaning of existence amidst the inevitability of life’s burdens.
The Woman in the Dunes by Kōbō Abe
First published:Suna no onna, 1962 (English translation, 1964)
Type of work: Novel
Type of plot: Allegory
Time of plot: 1962
Locale: A Japanese seaside village
Principal Characters
Niki Jumpei , a teacherThe Woman , a widow living in a small seaside village
The Story
A teacher and an amateur entomologist, Niki Jumpei decides to take a vacation to gather specimens for his collection of insects. He takes a train to a small town near the ocean and, carrying a canteen and a large wooden box, disappears from the urban life he knows. Eventually, he is missed by his mother and by his lover. His mother files a report with the missing-persons bureau, but the authorities can find no trace of her son.
Jumpei’s story is as follows: After arriving in a small beach town, he walks from the railroad station to an area of dunes near the ocean. He comes upon a strange village, where many of the houses are located in pits created by huge sand dunes. As night approaches, he begins to look for a place to sleep; villagers direct him to a building that is little more than a shack, located in one of the depressions in the dunes. It turns out to be the home of a young woman, who offers to accommodate Jumpei. Unenthusiastically, Jumpei accepts the woman’s hospitality.
Jumpei is horrified by the woman’s story. He learns, soon after his stay begins, that she is a widow whose husband and young daughter were both victims of the ever-encroaching sand. Her life now is a constant struggle against the sand, shoveling it to a place from which it can be hauled up for shipment to shoddy contractors for use in making cheap concrete. This industry is the sole economic support of the entire village. The woman makes it clear that Jumpei is expected to help with the work of shoveling sand in exchange for his room and board. Their shoveling is essential; without constant efforts to remove sand and send it to the top, the little house would be overwhelmed by sand slides.
Jumpei soon discovers that he cannot escape from the depression in the dunes in which the house is placed. He attempts to evade the fate to which he has been condemned. He tries to bully and threaten the woman to force her to help him leave, but he fails. He tries to bargain with and to threaten the only other villagers he sees, the men who arrive at the top of the dune, lowering buckets to the pit below to be filled with sand, and raising the buckets on ropes; they do not respond to his overtures. Finally and reluctantly, he gives in and helps the woman with her unceasing labor, but he cannot get used to the constant presence of sand. It is in his clothes, in his eyes, on his skin, and in his mouth; when he sleeps, it coats his entire body.
When he is not shoveling sand, sleeping, or eating his meals, Jumpei continues to spend his time plotting ways of escaping from his prison. He tries to climb out, only to be half-buried by a slide. He threatens the villagers with criminal prosecution if they fail to provide him with a ladder, but they have no reason to fear him; the police do not interfere with the villagers. Even if someone were to report his absence, an investigation would unlikely reach the village, and, if it does, the villagers will simply deny knowledge of Jumpei’s existence.
Jumpei and the woman form a strange kind of relationship. As the days pass, she becomes more attractive to him, and they finally become sexual partners, although their other interactions remain tense and intermittent. She nurses him when he is sick and begins to treat him with some tenderness. She points out that her life is easier, now that he is helping her shovel the sand, and Jumpei shows at least some affection in helping her with the chores. Still, there is no escaping the relentless sand.
Finally, Jumpei finds a way out. Using a rope ladder that catches onto something on the surface, he hoists himself out of the pit. He is free for a while, passing through the village and finding his way to the sea, but this freedom is an illusion. During this attempt at escape, he carries on internal dialogues with the woman, with a friend from his earlier life, and with himself. He is chased by dogs and loses his way several times, and he never finds his way out of the village area. He finds the ocean, but he strays into quicksand and survives only because the villagers, who are aware of his attempts to escape, follow him. They save him from the quicksand and return him to the woman’s care.
Jumpei makes one final attempt to flee. When the workers come to take away the accumulated sand, he pleads with them to help him leave. They laugh at him, but finally an old man offers him escape if he and the woman agree to have sexual intercourse in front of a crowd. Jumpei tries to persuade the woman and, when she refuses, he tries to force her, finally pleading with her to pretend to submit, since he is unable to perform anyway. She beats him, hurting his stomach and bloodying his nose, and the watching villagers lose interest. Finally, Jumpei realizes that they had no intention of letting him go.
In the end, Jumpei accepts the struggle against the sand as a way of life. He does not give up planning to escape, but it becomes an abstraction for him, with no real effect on the way he lives. The woman becomes pregnant, but this seems to affect him very little. When she suffers great pain and a villager (who is related to a veterinarian) diagnoses her condition as an extrauterine pregnancy, Jumpei hardly pays any attention when she is taken away to a hospital in the city. The rope ladder that was used to lift her from the pit remains in place, and Jumpei climbs it, getting a view of the sea. He is tempted to try to escape once again, since the attention of the villagers is on the woman. Rather than try to leave, however, he returns to continue an experiment he had begun. Escape can wait for another day.
Bibliography
Abe, Kōbō . “Interview with Kōbō Abe.” Interview by Nancy Hardin. Contemporary Literature 15.4 (Autumn 1974): 439–56. Print.
Dissanyake, Wimal. “Kōbō Abe: Self, Place, and Body in Woman in the Dunes—A Comparative Study of the Novel and the Film.” Literary Relations East and West. Ed. Jean Toyama and Nobuko Ochner. Honolulu: U of Hawaii P, 1990. Print.
Key, Margaret S. Truth from a Lie: Documentary, Detection, and Reflexivity in Abe Kōbō's Realist Project. Lanham: Lexington, 2011. Print.
Keene, Donald. Five Modern Japanese Novelists. New York: Columbia UP, 2003. Print.
Leithauser, Brad. “Severed Futures.” The New Yorker 9 May 1988. Print.
Pollack, David. “Kōbō Abe: The Ideology of Science in Woman in the Dunes.” Reading Against Culture: Ideology and Narrative in the Japanese Novel. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1992. Print.
Sala, Dana. "Desert as Revealer of Contradictory Truths in Dino Buzzati's The Tartar Steppe and Kōbō Abe's The Woman in the Dunes." Scientific Jour. of Humanistic Studies 2.3 (2010): 56–60. Print.
Van Wert, William F. “Levels of Sexuality in the Novels of Kōbō Abe.” International Fiction Review 6.2 (Summer 1979): 129–32. Print.
Zolbrod, Leon. "Kōbō Abe." Critical Survey of Long Fiction. Ed. Carl Rollyson. Pasadena: Salem, 2010. 1–7. Print.