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The Woman in the Dunes

by Kōbō Abe, E. Dale Saunders (Translator)

3.89 of 5 stars 3.89 · rating details · 5,501 ratings · 432 reviews

The Woman in the Dunes, by celebrated writer and thinker Kobo Abe, combines the essence of myth, suspense and the existential novel.

After missing the last bus home following a day trip to the seashore, an amateur entomologist is offered lodging for the night at the bottom of a vast sand pit. But when he attempts to leave the next morning, he quickly discovers that the lo...more

Paperback, 256 pages

Published April 16th 1991 by Vintage (first published 1962)

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Feb 18, 2013 Mary rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, japanese-authors, 2013

This book is horrifically claustrophobic and eerie.

How much of our lives consist of frantically trying to stay afloat? Life can be as fruitless as a man trapped under sand dunes digging to live...or living to dig. Do we work to live or live to work? If you think being held hostage in sand is fantastical, what do you think your life is, anyway?

This book wears you down. It gets into your skin, your hair, under your fingernails. The sand is everywhere. The wind, the salt air, their eyes always wat...more

19 likes · like · see review

Mar 24, 2008 Michael rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: japan, slipstream

A novel of erosion - erosion of resolve, erosion of morality, erosion of sanity. Delightfully surreal.

12 likes · like · see review

Mar 23, 2013 [P] rated it 4 of 5 stars

Kaf•ka•esque
adj.

1. Of or relating to Franz Kafka or his writings.
2. Marked by surreal distortion and often a sense of impending danger: "Kafkaesque fantasies of the impassive interrogation, the false trial, the confiscated passport . . . haunt his innocence" (New Yorker).

Kafkaesque is such a well-known term that even my computer recognises it. However, it is applied so randomly, seemingly in relation to almost anything that is a bit weird [Murakami, for example], that it has thus become essent...more Kaf•ka•esque
adj.

1. Of or relating to Franz Kafka or his writings.
2. Marked by surreal distortion and often a sense of impending danger: "Kafkaesque fantasies of the impassive interrogation, the false trial, the confiscated passport . . . haunt his innocence" (New Yorker).

Kafkaesque is such a well-known term that even my computer recognises it. However, it is applied so randomly, seemingly in relation to almost anything that is a bit weird [Murakami, for example], that it has thus become essentially meaningless. Kafka’s work is like the stars; one can, apparently, see anything in it if one tries hard enough.

I don’t know exactly how many times Kafka has been cited in relation to Kobo Abe, but my guess is that if one drop of rain fell on each such occasion I’d be captain [P], writing this from my cabin aboard the Ark, and you would all have been drowned. Yet, in terms of this novel, at least, there is something in the comparison [men caught up in absurd circumstances beyond their control yada yada yada], although it reminded me more of early Nabokov.

The Woman In The Dunes is an almost self explanatory title, in that it involves a woman who lives in a sand dune [like, duh], and a man, Junpei, who is tricked into living there with her. Junpei, as one would expect, is not happy about this turn of events, but is not able to escape as the banks of the dune are too high. Likewise, there is no way of fashioning a ladder, or similar instrument of emancipation, nor is he able to climb out as the surface is too soft. To add a further level of misery and misfortune to the proceedings the couple must spend their day emptying the dune of the sand that is gradually encroaching on them, to avoid being buried alive and suffocated. It is essentially like being trapped in a giant egg-timer. Sounds like fun, don’t it?

Abe’s tale is a clear allegory for life itself: with no say in the matter man is thrust into an absurd situation and has to make the best of it; he is forced to labour at a meaningless, repetitive, task during most of his waking hours in order to survive and his only small solace is to be found in the company and body of another. So, The Woman In The Dunes is hardly joyful, firm-affirming stuff, but, in its favour, it is an original, claustrophobic, and evocative novel, so much so that while reading it you can almost feel the sand in your throat. (less)

4 likes · like · see review

Apr 05, 2010 Lavinia rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, 2010

I don’t remember how I first came to read this book a few years ago, since I’m neither into Japanese authors nor into Existentialism. Anyway, being an e-book, I dropped it almost immediately, but (again, I don’t remember how) I ended up watching the film, about 3 years ago. And boy was it rewarding! The plot, the cinematography, the music, the resemblance to Fowles’ "The Collector", everything seemed to be perfectly bonded and hallucinating, I dare recommend it. But because I sort of hate leavin...more I don’t remember how I first came to read this book a few years ago, since I’m neither into Japanese authors nor into Existentialism. Anyway, being an e-book, I dropped it almost immediately, but (again, I don’t remember how) I ended up watching the film, about 3 years ago. And boy was it rewarding! The plot, the cinematography, the music, the resemblance to Fowles’ "The Collector", everything seemed to be perfectly bonded and hallucinating, I dare recommend it. But because I sort of hate leaving books unfinished, I gave it another chance, aaand:

I’m more tempted to say I didn’t like the book. And I’m pretty much incapable of seeing why I would like it. Of course, it’s a matter of taste, or it might be me not getting into it. First of all, I hated Niki Jumpei. He didn’t actually give me any reason to, but he’s not a hero, nor is he an anti-hero. You don’t like him, because he’s not brave, he’s not a genius, he doesn’t have charisma or anything, but you can’t hate him either, because he didn’t do anything wrong, he’s held captive against his will, and he basically can’t do anything to save his ass. He’s dull, incapable of outdoing himself or even understand the situation he finds himself in. The only quality I could recognize in him was being human. That should suffice, I guess, but it didn’t. OK, he was also funny at one point, when he told the villagers that he really should be going, because otherwise he’d miss work! So, no family, no human rights, WORK! I so love these dutiful Japanese guys! :)

As I said, I’m not much into Existentialism, and the little connection I have with it is basically recognizable in my film preferences (Bergman, Antonioni or Truffaut, for instance). But, of course, as many others before me have already observed, it’s quite impossible not to compare Abe with Kafka or Camus – the human condition, man’s futile search for meaning, the philosophy of the absurd, or the Sisyphean labor of shoveling off the sand and preventing the house from being eaten by it. Speaking of sand, which is a ubiquitous character in itself, you find it in every little hole, inside, outside, on the floor, on your body, in your mouth, in your eyes or mixed with all human fluids, leaving you with a dry sensation and a bad taste in your mouth.

Some final thoughts: sometimes the geographical, entomological and geological details are a bit boring, the relationship with the woman (did I mention the woman?) is pretty much (well, a lot!) weird (there’s no love, and the sex is brutal, necessary and mechanic), the ending sucks but suits the existential side of the story and, though I normally don’t, this time I prefer the film.
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Oct 25, 2012 Asma rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: japanese

The author's birthday March 7, 1924, is the same as the main character's birthday. And, the year of the novel's publication is the year that the teacher Niki Jumpei is officially declared missing.

In Part One, a thirty-something man takes a three-day holiday without giving anyone info as to his destination. His hobby is entomology, leading him to look for new species of sand insects, such as beetles, with which his name will be given. Instead of the egotistic seeking, he wanders into a remote vi...more The author's birthday March 7, 1924, is the same as the main character's birthday. And, the year of the novel's publication is the year that the teacher Niki Jumpei is officially declared missing.

In Part One, a thirty-something man takes a three-day holiday without giving anyone info as to his destination. His hobby is entomology, leading him to look for new species of sand insects, such as beetles, with which his name will be given. Instead of the egotistic seeking, he wanders into a remote village among the dunes along the seacoast and is deceitfully detained to accompany a woman in the nightly task of shoveling the sand hole in which is her house. He thinks that he will stay only a night, but the story of "Woman in the Dunes" goes on for six months, inferring at the story's end his remaining in the village at least into the seventh year of his disappearance. Amazing are the descriptions of the sand's effects on humans in contact with it: "The sand, combined with the perspiration, formed a mustard plaster that made his skin smart and tingle, swelling it into a rubber raincoat." The imagery and observations of nature are as interesting as the story's human interest. When Niki discovers that he is "illegally detained", he devises and carries out a number of plans for escaping his wrongful imprisonment even while he sympathizes with the village's predicament: "If they could get free from the concept of stationary houses, they wouldn't have to waste energy fighting the sands. A ship--a house--which flowed along, borne up by the sand...shapeless towns and cities." He lays a plan for escape. [vocabulary: "sabulation"]

In Part Two, he initially believes that the villagers will bring back the rope ladder. Then, he tries a number of measures to take his predicament into his own hands. All of his actions to escape by design prove unworkable. He even risks his and the woman's lives by his refusal to shovel the sand at night by causing an avalanche on and around the wooden, weather-beaten dwelling. He has not given up yet: "It was not yet a foregone conclusion that he had lost the game. In any case, he was the one who held the fuse to the time bomb." While he is grappling with reality, his human connection with the woman evolves. He notices a repetition in the nightly ritual of the sand's removal into drums which a team hoists out of the pit and in the weekly deliveries of cigarettes and saké. He wonders why the village just doesn't ask for his cooperation rather than just enslaving him and suggests what economic alternatives the poor village can try. He makes a ladder and calculates when he will be unobserved by the lookout in the tower. Believing he is home free, he actually is at the nadir of all, sinking into something like quicksand.

In Part Three, he devises a contraption in the sand with hopes to catch a crow which will rise to the bait. Then, he will tie a message to its leg. He names the device Hope. The woman and he consider how hard life is anywhere one lives: "It's not anybody can make a living once he gets out of here." "Anyone who stays here is not living much of a life either." He contemplates new means to escape the hole. The epiphanic Chapter 31 gives him an unexpected reward as a result of his scientific experiments and indicates his desire to share it with the villagers.

Overall, the story has a highly unusual setting in which the author's scientific training in medicine is evident in the way Niki Jumpei observes nature and calculates how moisture, temperature, quantity and sand interact. Besides the setting, the human psychology of a man's soul is bared. The protagonist's grappling with himself and with the world outside himself makes me see the novel as an allegory in which he escapes from his thinking that he holds a "round-trip ticket".

Review from 2009:
The Woman in the Dunes is described as an existential novel. A widow and a entomologist struggle to control the blowing sand inundating their village. The plot shows how the kidnapped protagonist adjusts to his circumstances and becomes absorbed by them. The back cover of a second-hand paperback calls the story existential; another descriptor is avant-garde. The lonely setting along a sand-driven Japanese seacoast parallels the main character's singular plight. Lovely is the discovery of manifold properties in sand a casual seer does not perceive.(less)

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Dec 27, 2008 Yulia rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: by-and-of-japan, i-thought-i-hated-you

I began this book with such hope. How had I not read this before? Abe is amazing, he's a master, he's the inspiration for Haruki Murakami certainly, he's the original Japanese Kafka. Ah, what promise it held. And then the book continued . . .

"There was a woman . . . there was sand . . . there was an empty water jar . . . there was a drooling wolf . . . there was a sun" (p. 125). Don't ask about the drooling wolf. He lost me there.

I should note that I've never cared for sand or for beaches, so t...more I began this book with such hope. How had I not read this before? Abe is amazing, he's a master, he's the inspiration for Haruki Murakami certainly, he's the original Japanese Kafka. Ah, what promise it held. And then the book continued . . .

"There was a woman . . . there was sand . . . there was an empty water jar . . . there was a drooling wolf . . . there was a sun" (p. 125). Don't ask about the drooling wolf. He lost me there.

I should note that I've never cared for sand or for beaches, so the thought of a man being stuck in a sand pit with a sweaty coat of sand on his body, eye lids and tongue really is a nightmarish image for me. But that is where our narrator finds himself on his search for an elusive sand beetle. (Be forewarned: if you don't care for sand, don't hunt for sand beetles.)

"One could not do without repetition in life, like the beating of the heart, but it was also true that the beating of the heart was not all there was to life" (p. 177). Yes, and one could no do without sand in life, but sand is blessedly not all there is to life, either. But as escape from the dunes becomes more and more elusive to the narrator and he begins to rant about sex--if all sex is spiritual rape, why not sleep with everyone and not just your partner, whom you'll certainly end up hating, since all sex is all a brutal lie--I began to wonder why I was torturing myself with this idiocy, whether this book was going anywhere and why it was trying to make me a sex addict in the meantime. I was sure I wanted nothing to do with it by page 122, but my damn curiosity kept me going and, thankfully, it does redeem itself in the last 20 pages. I'm glad it did, yet I resent it for having so many unnecessary tangents on the narrator's frustrated sexuality.

Hmm, is this a recommendation? If you've found yourself starting it, it's worth finishing if only for the end. But do beware that it doesn't maintain its promise and dumps the reader in a sand pit where we're seemingly forgotten about for some 100 pages. Enjoy! (less)

6 likes · like · see review

Jun 03, 2008 Savvy rated it 2 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Niki Jumpei Leaves the city for an adventure and to pursue his hobby of collecting rare insects near the ocean sand dunes.
He never returns.
Jumpei is engulfed in a captive nightmare from which he plots his escape from a place where no-one has ever yet escaped.

The setting is Japan where conformity is perhaps the ultimate value in Japanese society and the individual is expected to work toward the good of the group.

Although suffocatingly bizarre, the writing is amazingly lucid and communicates t...more

3 likes · like · see review

Mar 01, 2008 Chilly SavageMelon rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: japanese, beat-and-beat-related

An amatuer entomologist goes to a remote seaside village for specimens and finds himself involved in a bizarre nightmare scenario with the people there. I’m not sure how else the title might be translated from the Japanese, and though the “woman” mentioned is very much central to the novel, I think Mindfuck in the Dunes would have also been an apt title. It was so exciting to be pulled into this tale, and while it isn’t entirely about PLOT, I’m not going to say too much more along those lines. W...more

5 likes · like · see review

Feb 16, 2008 Andrea rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, japan

This story is about a quiet entomologist who is visits a small seaside village to collect bug specimens. But his peaceful holiday turns sinister when the villagers deceive him, trap him in a sand-surrounded hole, and force him into daily manual labor with no hope of escape. Oh yeah, he's trapped with a timid woman also, hence the book's title. Since I'm a little claustrophobic, this book scared the crap out of me. Finishing it felt like waking from a nightmare--just because of the subject matter...more

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May 20, 2011 AC rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: japan, novels-japanese-writers

Drowning in the sands of time.... Some magnificent writing here -- .

Richie reports a conversation with Abe where the author complained of constantly being compared to Kafka - 'It's Lewis Carroll who was the influence!', Abe said.

But it really does feel more like K.

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Jan 07, 2013 umberto rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, japan

There are a few points I liked after reading Kobo Abe’s “The Woman in the Dunes” first published in 1962 and translated into twenty languages (p. v); arguably, the book’s plot has exposed the psychologically-tormented man and woman hopelessly entrapped in a lodging under the dunes near the shore somewhere in Japan.

First, the 240-page book was enjoyably readable due to its appropriately large fonts and drawings related to its narrative. Like I commented on some books before, we readers should hav...more

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Jan 25, 2008 Fritz Misteli rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

stole it from a shelf at Camp Hope. Decent read, Japanese post-war novelist. bit misogynistic. cool illustrations.

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Sep 17, 2010 Rowland Bismark rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The construction of The Woman in the Dunes includes many instances of irony. The overall ironic structure of the novel is that of the tables being turned on the protagonist. He hunts down and traps bugs for a hobby. And then he becomes like a bug, trapped in a hole in the sand. “He was lured on by the feeling that in all probability his prey was there, and he made his way down the gentle slope,” the narrator relates in the beginning of the story. There are also many other examples of irony, most...more The construction of The Woman in the Dunes includes many instances of irony. The overall ironic structure of the novel is that of the tables being turned on the protagonist. He hunts down and traps bugs for a hobby. And then he becomes like a bug, trapped in a hole in the sand. “He was lured on by the feeling that in all probability his prey was there, and he made his way down the gentle slope,” the narrator relates in the beginning of the story. There are also many other examples of irony, most of them on a much smaller scale. A little later, the protagonist states that he was in “no special hurry,” as he makes his way through the dunes before his capture. This is ironic because as soon as he realizes he is trapped, time weighs down on him almost to the point of his breaking. Then a few lines later, the protagonist sums up the village people with the words: “With their sense of caution appeased, they were merely good, simple fisherfolk.” He will soon learn the irony of his own words. These people were neither simple nor merely good. Once he is lowered into the woman’s house, the protagonist looks around himself and sees what a dilapidated condition the house is in, and the narrator states: “He would have thought they were making a fool of him and would doubtless have gone back at once.” This is ironic on two fronts. First, they were making a fool of him and second, there was no way he could have gone back even if he had realized how foolish he was. At a later point, he misjudges the woman’s actions, then he corrects his interpretation, stating to himself that “he certainly wouldn’t be taken in again.” Of course, at this point, he still does not have any realization that he already has been taken. And so Abe creates one ironic statement after the other. The reader knows what is going on and can laugh at the protagonist’s continual naïveté.

Abe also uses foreshadowing, allowing the reader to sense what is coming as well as to create a dramatic sense of foreboding. Examples of foreshadowing include some of the protagonist’s ironic thoughts before he is captured. For instance, there is the statement he makes as he wanders through the sand dunes, searching for insects. He says, at one point, “There was really nothing yet that foretold danger.” In using this statement, Abe implants the sense of danger in the reader’s mind even if it was not yet in the protagonist’s thoughts. Then a few sentences later, Abe has the man thinking: “What in heaven’s name could it be like to live there? he thought in amazement, peering down into one of the holes.” Again, this is a mix of irony and foreshadowing. The protagonist’s question, although he does not yet realize it, will soon be answered. He will be given a first-hand experience of what it is like to live in a hole in the sand. Yet later, as he continues to wander through the sand dunes, the protagonist concludes that the dunes represent “a disturbing and unsettling landscape.” He has no idea, at that point, how true his feelings are. And when he contemplates a fly, he makes an interesting statement about the insect’s adaptability. “The fact that the fly showed great adaptability meant that it could be at home even in unfavorable environments in which other insects could not live—for example, a desert where all other living things perished.” Much like the fly, the protagonist will also have to learn to adapt and to live in a hole in the sand.

Continuing his hunt for insects, the protagonist comments on the tactics of an entomologist, who “must concentrate his whole attention within a radius of about three yards around his feet.” In a short time, that will be almost all the space that he will have, as the narrow space of the house in the hole will be all that is granted to him. And finally, just before he is captured, he makes the observation: “No matter what they did, he mused, there was no escaping the law of the sand.” That law, the constant motion of the sand, and the inability to climb a steep cliff of sand, will also entrap him.

The Woman in the Dunes has been a popular favorite all over the world, sometimes bringing readers to their first experience of Japanese literature in translation. Abe’s works, in general, are more easily translated because of their lack of allusions to traditional Japanese themes. The Woman in the Dunes focuses instead on problems that people all over the globe must face. Oliver continues her article on Abe by describing the protagonist, Niki Jumpei, as a man who “is first obsessed with the loss of his identity and with escape, but comes to realize that his sand prison gives him intellectual and spiritual freedom.”

When The Woman in the Dunes was made into a movie, Brent Kliewer, of the Santa Fe New Mexican offered these comments. He wrote that it “is a haunting allegory probing the fundamental questions of existence and the meaning of freedom.” Kliewer continued by stating: “Its in the man’s surrender to his circumstances that captured the imagination of the existential thinkers of the 60s.” Existentialists believe that life is purposeless, a point that is at the heart of the novel.

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Jan 25, 2008 Joshua rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: For fans of Kafka, Beckett and Satre

Shelves: quote-literature-unquote

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I remember late one night when I was a sophomore in college. I sat awake at night unable to sleep and was mixing through the tv channels- fox, espn, scrambled porn. When a flash of black and white on the IFC channel streaked across my tv screen. I was suddenly drawn to a black and white film titled Woman in the Dunes . Immediately entranced, I watched it from beginning to end, fixated on the ever shifting sands of the movie. To my surprise later, I found that it was based on a Japanese novel wr...more

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Jan 09, 2008 Dustin added it Recommends it for: good friends that you kind of hate a little

Shelves: crappy-books

My first year at SFSU, me and my roommate decided to recommend books to each other, books we loved, in order to get to know each other better. It was the kind of quasi-homoerotic, pseudo-intellectual buddy activity which has since become the staple of our relationship.

The first book he recommended was "Woman in the Dunes". I struggled with it and felt intellectually inferior. He was my friend and I wanted to like it. I tried really hard. I fell asleep reading it at least three times. I remember...more

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Oct 25, 2011 Robert rated it 4 of 5 stars

Do we work to live, or live to work? What would happen to our sense of Self & Meaning if we realized that all work is essentially nothing but reorganizing piles of sand? What would happen if we came to that realization, but ultimately choose to accept it and keep working anyway? Is that heroic, or tragic?

Abe draws inspiration from Kafka and Beckett, and grounds his surreal exploration of existentialist themes in agonizing detail. It is a gripping, if at time disorienting, narrative. We feel...more

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May 01, 2012 Robin rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is, for me, one of those books that - if someone had told me how great it is - I might have expected something that would blow the top of my head off. In that case I would have been disappointed, because the experience of this story was subtle and different and is probably more to do with being receptive to it's atmosphere than being led by the plot. This book had me in an altered state, I wish I could forget it entirely so that I could read it for the first time again.
As a nice afterthough...more

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Oct 29, 2012 Haaze rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: lit-japanese, literature-20th-century, nobel

The story of an entomologist that gets trapped in a nightmarish sand pit with an unknown woman as a companion brings one's thoughts to Kafka, entrapments and a severe bout of existentialism. I never really enjoyed neither the writing nor the narrative, but was curious enough about the story line to complete the book. The story seems to be an analogy of life shaping an entrapment in its multitude of circumstances making it impossible to escape except by accepting the world. There is a dreamlike q...more

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Jan 25, 2009 Richard Stuart rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites, japanese

Trapdoor spider! This is a very good book. If you like Camus, you will like this. If you don't know anything about sand, you will after reading this! haha

3 likes · like · see review

Jul 04, 2012 rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: made-in-japan

Il miglior romanzo a mandorla che abbia mai letto.

1 like · like · see review

Dec 29, 2008 Dhini rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: from-japan

Alur ceritanya mungkin sedikit membosankan, tapi sebenarnya lumayan menarik..

Menceritakan tentang seorang pengumpul serangga bernama Niki yang perburuannya pada serangga membuatnya "terdampar" di sebuah daerah di Jepang yang terkenal dengan bukit2 pasirnya (dunes).

Penduduk di daerah tsb, menunjukkan padanya sebuah rumah tempat ia bisa bermalam.. rumah itu milik seorang perempuan yang suami dan anaknya meninggal karena tertimbun longsoran pasir...

Niki memasuki rumah tsb - yang posisinya itu seper...more Alur ceritanya mungkin sedikit membosankan, tapi sebenarnya lumayan menarik..

Menceritakan tentang seorang pengumpul serangga bernama Niki yang perburuannya pada serangga membuatnya "terdampar" di sebuah daerah di Jepang yang terkenal dengan bukit2 pasirnya (dunes).

Penduduk di daerah tsb, menunjukkan padanya sebuah rumah tempat ia bisa bermalam.. rumah itu milik seorang perempuan yang suami dan anaknya meninggal karena tertimbun longsoran pasir...

Niki memasuki rumah tsb - yang posisinya itu seperti berada di dalam "perut" bukit pasir, karena sekelilingnya benar2 pasir - dengan sdikit prtanyaan dlm hati. Keramahan yang sedikit canggung dari wanita pemilik rumah akhirnya bisa sedikit menghapus keraguannya, "lagipula cuma semalam aja kok" begitulah kira2 yg terlintas di benaknya..

Tetapi.... semalam itu ternyata berubah jadi bermalam-malam sampai lewat bulan dan tahun! Karena pada pagi harinya, dia tidak menemukan tangga tali yang dipakainya untuk turun memasuki rumah perempuan itu...! Saat dia mencari2 tangga tsb, dia melihat si perempuan sedang bekerja menyekop pasir di halaman rumahnya dan menampungnya di ember2.

Dia berusaha berbicara dengan orang2 yang sudah menunjukkan rumah itu dan barulah dia menyadari bhw orang2 tsb memang sengaja mengantarnya ke sana agar mereka bisa memperoleh pasir lebih banyak dari yang selama ini sudah dikerjakan oleh perempuan itu. Dan dengan pasir2 itulah, kebutuhan hidup perempuan tsb bisa terpenuhi, sekedarnya. Gila!..

Berbagai cara dilakukan Niki utk melarikan diri tapi selalu gagal. Perempuan itu sendiri ga pernah berusaha keluar dari tempat itu karena kenangan pada suaminya..

Setelah berbulan2, akhirnya Niki keluar juga dari tempat itu, tapi itu karena perempuan tsb harus melahirkan bayinya..!! Hik..hik...hik...

Yang menarik adalah membayangkan kita makan dengan ditutupi payung, supaya pasir2 itu ga masuk ke makanan kita.. Belum lagi klo harus "memenuhi panggilan alam ke toilet". Kebutuhan air aja yah.. harus nunggu orang2 itu mengantarkannya..

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Apr 24, 2013 Charlie Canning rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

An existential page-turner recalling the work of Franz Kafka and Jean-Paul Sartre

Writer Abe Kobo (1924-1993) was born in Tokyo but grew up in Mukden, Manchuria where his father was a doctor at the medical school. The young Abe led the privileged life of an expatriate child. He spent a lot of time alone and was a voracious reader of the stories of Edgar Allan Poe.

After the war, Abe received his medical degree from Tokyo Imperial University but never practiced medicine. He was set upon becoming a...more An existential page-turner recalling the work of Franz Kafka and Jean-Paul Sartre

Writer Abe Kobo (1924-1993) was born in Tokyo but grew up in Mukden, Manchuria where his father was a doctor at the medical school. The young Abe led the privileged life of an expatriate child. He spent a lot of time alone and was a voracious reader of the stories of Edgar Allan Poe.

After the war, Abe received his medical degree from Tokyo Imperial University but never practiced medicine. He was set upon becoming a writer from the very beginning and published his first book in 1948 - the same year that he graduated from medical school. Three years later, he won the Akutagawa Prize for his novel The Crime of Mr. S. Karuma.

The Woman in the Dunes, published in Japanese in 1960 and translated into English by E. Dale Saunders in 1962, was the novel that first brought Abe international acclaim.

Niki Jumpei, teacher and amateur entomologist, leaves the city for an overnight trip to the seaside to collect insects. He hopes to find a rare beetle that lives in the sand so that he can give it his name and earn a measure of fame. But his hobby is little more than a stopgap: "In fact, his involvement with sand and his insect collecting were, after all, simply ways to escape, however temporarily, from his obligations and the inactivity of his life."

After spending the late afternoon of his first day tramping around the dunes, Jumpei accepts an offer to stay at the house of a widowed woman who lives at the bottom of a wind-sculpted pit in the sand. The next day, he notices that the rope ladder he had used to climb down to the house has been removed and that far from being a guest, he is a prisoner. The town is short of manpower and the widowed woman needs help removing the sand from the pit. He has come along just at the right time.

Jumpei tries to escape before realizing that his only way out may be in simply not drawing any attention to himself: "He adjusted himself to the life of the hole, as if it were a kind of hibernation, concentrating his efforts on making the villagers relax their vigilance. Repetition of the same patterns, they say, provides an effective form of protective coloring. If he were to melt into a life of simple repetition, there might possibly come a time when they could be quite unconscious of him."

A parable for the ages. (less)

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Jan 03, 2013 Will rated it 4 of 5 stars

"He grasped the rope and slowly began hoisting himself. Suddenly it began to stretch as if it were rubber. He was startled, and the perspiration gushed from his pores. Fortunately the stretching stopped after about a foot. He tried bringing all his weight to bear, and this time there seemed to be no further cause for worry. He spit on his hands, fitted the rope between his legs, and began to climb hand over hand. He rose like a toy monkey climbing a toy coconut tree. Perhaps it was his excitemen...more

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Dec 29, 2012 Danielle Meier rated it 5 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Dec 08, 2012 Benjamin rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A young man takes a few days off of work to catch beetles by the seaside. As the day turns to dusk, he asks a local from the nearest village if there's a place he can stay for the night. The man guides him to a sand pit; a shack sits at its bottom. The insect-collector thinks he's just there for the night, but it soon becomes clear that the villagers have no intent on letting him leave the hole. He's stuck there with a kind, but quiet, young woman and forced to dig at the always shifting sand.

I...more

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Nov 15, 2012 Miike rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I have always been interested in all things Japanese but this was my first exposure to more serious literature. I initially thought it would be way over my head, pretentious and hollow. Luckily I was was wrong on all three counts.
The prose moves in a slow and menacing way like the dunes of the title, I also felt a constant undertone of threatening excitement which kept me hooked into the plot. The real enjoyment of the book comes from the author's ability to describe sensations and emotions rela...more

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Oct 31, 2012 Kkinugawa rated it 3 of 5 stars

Perhaps many of you have already heard of the name of this book as this is one of the representative works of Kobo Abe, who is one of the most famous Japanese author. What I first impressed by reading this book was allegorical setting that the story is based on. The story has its setting at overhead small but very sandy village in Japan. What is also unique about this setting is that village folks are managing the village by imprisoning people who have visited the village to force them to do sho...more

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Sep 06, 2012 Ugh rated it 4 of 5 stars

I had been getting the urge to reread The Face of Another, but when I made an idle visit to Foyles at the weekend and decided to have a bit of a browse, beginning at A, I discovered that they have quite a good selection of Abe on offer at the moment, and in fact all of the books of his they had appealed to me. I'd also been wanting to watch the film of The Woman in the Dunes for quite a while, but not quite worked up the courage to stump up the £17 or so being demanded for the DVD. And so...

Look...more I had been getting the urge to reread The Face of Another, but when I made an idle visit to Foyles at the weekend and decided to have a bit of a browse, beginning at A, I discovered that they have quite a good selection of Abe on offer at the moment, and in fact all of the books of his they had appealed to me. I'd also been wanting to watch the film of The Woman in the Dunes for quite a while, but not quite worked up the courage to stump up the £17 or so being demanded for the DVD. And so...

Looking back at my review of The Face of Another, such as it (the review) is, I'm surprised that I only gave it 2 stars. I remember being unsatisfied with it, but I thought I'd given it at least 3 stars. The quote I pulled from it for my review - "People like me who lack something are liable to become spiteful critics" - is a suggestion I think of very often, and that fact alone seems to suggest there was more to TFoA than I was then able to appreciate.

Anyway, I did enjoy TWitD. I liked the main character's scientific interests and philosophical outlook, and how they came with a nicely rounded baggage of rage, despair, determinination, lust, violence, shame, pity, fear, and resignation. I loved Abe's own scientific knowledge, and how he was able to combined it with both beautiful descriptions and genuine wisdom. I liked the pacing and the compulsiveness, and thought there was just about the right amount of ambiguity (although admittedly I did find some parts baffling: sections where the main character engages in - presumably heat-and-frustration-deranged - imaginary conversations with unassigned co-dialoguees).

Ultimately I suppose it wasn't terrifically satisfying - perhaps because of the ambiguity - but in a strange way that just makes me want to go right back to Foyles now (I can't: it's nearly ten) and pick up a couple more of Abe's intriguing, beguiling, - to hell with it - downright enjoyable offerings.

Maybe I'll reread TFoA first...

Favourite quotes:
Sex, of its nature, was not defined by a single individual body, but by the species. An individual, finished with his squalid act, must return at once to his former self. Only the happy ones return to contentment. Those who were sad return to despair.

Suddenly a sorrow the colour of dawn welled up in him. They might as well lick each other's wounds. But they would lick forever, and the wounds would never heal, and in the end their tongues would be worn away.(less)

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Jun 04, 2012 Charlie Zoops rated it 5 of 5 stars

Kobo Abe was born in Tokyo in 1929, his father was a doctor and kobo went to medical school but chose not to practice. To note this is important when reading certain details of his carnal descriptions and reflections on visceral accounts of his characters. His prose is often scientific and deals with methods of experimentations and results. A reoccurring theme in his stories is a detective-like investigation of self actuality, and the individual's situational drowning into inescapable circumstan...more

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Dec 18, 2011 Frederick Glaysher rated it 5 of 5 stars

The Woman in the Dunes by Kobo Abe[return][return]The Shifting Sands of Modernity…., June 24, 2000[return][return]Shortly after the Meiji Restoration of 1868 narrative writing became heavily influenced by Western literature. Although there are many excellent early fiction writers and those who, like Junichiro Tanizaki and Yasunari Kawabata, tend to reflect more traditional aesthetics, or those of the “I-novel,” Kobo Abe (1924-1993), a Marxist, is the first significantly modern Japanese novelist....more The Woman in the Dunes by Kobo Abe[return][return]The Shifting Sands of Modernity…., June 24, 2000[return][return]Shortly after the Meiji Restoration of 1868 narrative writing became heavily influenced by Western literature. Although there are many excellent early fiction writers and those who, like Junichiro Tanizaki and Yasunari Kawabata, tend to reflect more traditional aesthetics, or those of the “I-novel,” Kobo Abe (1924-1993), a Marxist, is the first significantly modern Japanese novelist. His childhood in Manchuria helped him to look harder and more objectively than other writers at modern Japanese life, particularly in Tokyo, where Abe lived the rest of his life, while his growing up in Manchuria surely added to the sense of alienation that pervades his work. His early stories following World War II already express a profoundly existentialist angst and absurdity that has often led to his being compared to Kafka, Camus, Sartre, or Samuel Beckett. To my mind, though, it is precisely the fact that Abe is Japanese that is important and to view him as a mere imitator of the West would be a mistake. Rather than casting his experience into Kafkaesque terms, he is responding to his own experience of modern Japanese life. I believe Westerners need to think deeply about what that means for modern Japan, especially those dreamy Westerners who romantically idealize the traditional image of medieval Japan, as though it still exists.[return][return]In the short story “Magic Chalk” (1950), Abe tells the tale of “a poor artist named Argon.” Flat broke and starving, Argon discovers in his shabby apartment a piece of red chalk with which he mindlessly draws pictures of food and dishes on the wall. Falling asleep, he groans, “I’ve got to eat!” Suddenly, he is awakened by the sound of food and crockery crashing to the floor: “The pictures he had chalked on the wall had vanished.” Seeing food all around, he eats his fill and reflects, “the laws of the universe have changed.” He then draws a bed, since he lacks one, as well as other furniture and food. The realization hits him that he can create an entirely new world and spends four weeks contemplating just how to do it. Driven to despair by the burdensome responsibility, he finally decides merely to draw a door to the new world, but upon opening it finds, “an awesome wasteland glaring in the noonday sun.” He would have “to draw the world all over again” and begins with Eve, “stark naked,” to whom he identifies himself as Adam and “also an artist, and a world planner.” Eve, however, borrows his chalk, draws a gun, and shoots him. Other people in the building hear the gunshot: “By the time they ran in, Argon had been completely absorbed into the wall and had become a picture”:[return][return] “After everyone left, there came a murmuring from the wall. ‘it isn’t chalk that will remake the world . . .’ A single drop welled out of the wall. It fell from just below the eye of the pictorial Argon.” (tr. Alison Kibrick)[return][return]Writing shortly after World War II, Abe understands modern Japan has lost something of immense value, and a mere artist can not replace it.[return][return]In Kobo Abe’s masterpiece The Woman in the Dune (1962), the protagonist Niki Jumpei, an amateur entomologist, travels to the seaside to collect specimens. He happens on a village built in the midst of the dunes with houses at the bottom of huge craters or cavities of sand. Peering down into one of the cavities at a small house “submerged in silence,” he muses, “no matter what they did . . . there was no escaping the law of the sand.” This “law” soon becomes clear when village men trick him into going sixty feet down in a cavity to spend the night at an old woman’s house. Before long, he realizes that there is probably no way to get back out. The “ceaselessly flowing sand,” “this shapeless, destructive power,” which “had no form” of its own, was continually pouring down on the little house threatening to destroy it and bury its occupants alive. Every night the woman shovels sand into baskets which the village men haul up by rope and carry away, just enough to prevent their suffocation. Watching her, Niki Jumpei remarks, “you’ll never finish, no matter how long you work at it.” Later, the narrator explains, “the only certain factor was its movement; sand was the antithesis of all form.” Despite his many appeals for help from the village men, the village benefits from the sand being fought back and they refuse to permit him to leave.[return][return]The men, however, are careful to provide the woman and man with the necessities of life as long as they continue to perform the nightly work of clearing back the everdrifting sand of reality, for the sand is manifestly symbolic. Upon his request, they even give Jumpei a newspaper. Reading the usual headlines of political, business, and domestic crimes and intrigues, Jumpei thinks,[return][return] “There wasn’t a single item of importance. A tower of illusion, all of it, made of illusory bricks and full of holes. . . . And so everybody, knowing the meaninglessness of existence, sets the center of his compass at his own home.”[return][return]This “illusion” is not the illusion of Buddhism, the floating world of Genji symbolizing a world of spiritual import. It is the illusion of everyday life through which the nihilist sees “the meaningless of existence,” at last confronted, the real truth of human experience. “The world,” Abe has Jumpei say in a simile, “is like sand.” Modern Japanese writers have found the transition easy to make from the illusion of samsara to the illusion of nihilism which is quotidian reality. Similarly, the old woman turns out not to be so old after all, and Jumpei learns social customs are merely illusions too, as he rapes her brutally and repeatedly while she at times enjoys or submits to it. When the opportunity for escape finally comes, drained of all inner meaning, strength, and purpose, he no longer has the will to leave.[return][return]In the story “Beyond the Curve” (1966), Abe writes about a man who, while climbing up a hill, comes to a halt before a curve in the road:[return][return] “For the life of me, I couldn’t visualize what lay beyond the curve. . . . I knew perfectly well that beyond the curve was the town on the hilltop where I lived. My temporary lapse of memory in no way altered the fact of its existence.”[return][return]He stands there agonizing in his mind about what might or ought to be around the curve until he is overcome by anxiety, fearing “the town’s very existence would fade away and then vanish.” He considers, “I myself was no longer myself, but some mysterious other.” Nausea overtakes him. He manages to turn around and walk back down the hill. His “old confidence was gone.” Taking refuge in a coffee shop, he wonders, no longer sure, who he is since he has forgotten his name and where he works. Frantically fumbling with the contents of his wallet and pockets, looking for clues, he realizes, “I had mislaid . . . myself.” Abe expresses here not only the universally modern sense of existential void but especially the Japanese fear of the loss of traditional identity under the onslaught of modernity. Abe’s persona significantly and desperately says, “Until I found that town beyond the curve, there could be no resolution.” And so it is for modern Japan. He takes a taxi up the hill, beyond the curve:[return][return] “Spatially, the town had a solid physical existence, but temporally, it was a vacuum. It existed–yet horribly, it had no existence whatever . . . the town I knew was gone.”[return][return]Though seeking answers from others, he “alone was lost, uncomprehending.” Physically, materially, like the West, Japan exists; in terms of social or psychological time, the “vacuum,” quintessentially the same as in the West, has swallowed everything: “The town I knew was gone.” What lies beyond the curve, if anything, remains to be seen.[return][return]Frederick Glaysher [return]http://www.fglaysher.com (less)

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About Kōbō Abe

Kōbō Abe, pseudonym of Kimifusa Abe, was a Japanese writer, playwright, photographer and inventor.
He was the son of a doctor and studied medicine at Tokyo University. He never practised however, giving it up to join a literary group that aimed to apply surrealist techniques to Marxist ideology.

Abe has been often compared to Franz Kafka and Alberto Moravia for his surreal, often nightmarish explora...more

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Quotes from The Woman in the Dunes

“There wasn't a single item of importance [in the newspaper]. A tower of illusion, all of it, made of illusory bricks and full of holes. If life were made up only of imporant things, it really would be a dangerous house of glass, scarcely to be handled carelessly. But everyday life was exactly like the headlines. And so everybody, knowing the meaninglessness of existence, sets the centre of his compass at his own home.” — 24 people liked it

“Loneliness was an unsatisfied thirst for illusion.” — 22 people liked it

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