The Woman in the Dunes by Kobo
Abe
As Great As Kafka's The Castle
This beautiful novel by one of Japans most important writers is also one of
the most strangely terrifying and memorable books youll ever read. The
Woman in the Dunes is the story of an amateur entomologist who
wanders alone into a remote seaside village in pursuit of a rare beetle he
wants to add to his collection. But the townspeople take him prisoner.
They lower him into the sand-pit home of a young widow, a pariah in the
poor community, who the villagers have condemned to a life of shoveling
back the ever-encroaching dunes that threaten to bury the town. An
amazing book.
Personal Review: The Woman in the Dunes by Kobo Abe
The sand pit in Kobo Abe's The Woman In The Dunes is a completely
artificial construct, but it never feels that way. In reality, sand doesn't
behave the way described in the book. When the director Hiroshi
Teshigahara made the film adaptation ("Woman In The Dunes," recently

reissued by Criterion, and worth seeing), he had a hard time even creating
the sets. But, the film makes the setting seem real through visual trickery,
and the book does something similar. To make the reader believe in the
setting, Abe describes countless minute details and qualities of sand. For
all I know, he could have made them up just like he made up the sand pit,
but his pedantic, academic tone makes it sound like he carefully
researched the issue. Unless you're an expert on sand, it probably won't
occur to you to question his setting.
Even aside from the discourse on sand, Abe goes to great lengths to make
the story seem lifelike. He extensively describes the texture of sand, dirt,
water and wood, and he goes into full physiological detail when describing
Jumpei's thirst and exhaustion. Even Teshigahara's faithful visual
recreation doesn't quite convey the immense tactile detail of the book.
Because of this, The Woman In The Dunes occupies a peculiar place in
literature. It is a photo-realistic account of fundamentally unreal events, a
philosophical novel that distrusts philosophy and emphasizes routine and
physiology. You can read it as some kind of modernist allegory, critics like
to compare it to the Sisyphus myth. But it's that rare modernist allegory
that actually clarifies the underlying issues, instead of obfuscating them.
The sand pit might be artificial, but the heart of the story is real, and leads
to profound conclusions.
Jumpei's life with the woman is the essence of marriage: co-existence.
There is nothing in their relationship other than the habit that comes from
living together. Certainly there is no romantic subtext at all. They have no
"common interests" (whatever that would mean in that setting) and cannot
hold a conversation. Even the physical aspect of their relationship is like a
routine, there's not even much lust in it: "the woman laughed reluctantly,
but it was probably just to be agreeable...[she] was surely thinking that his
actions were sexual advances" (235).
The most striking aspect of the dialogue is the way the woman ignores
Jumpei or changes the subject every time he makes one of his intellectual
speeches. She's a unique character in Abe's work, in that she doesn't
speak in monologues. Jumpei is given to long speeches occasionally, but
the woman's reaction is always uncomprehending. It's a perfect dramatic
counterpoint, but even more importantly, it completely pulls the rug out
from underneath the philosophical digressions. Abe's later work isn't like
that at all, he usually has all of his characters make speeches. But here,
the woman's reaction suggests that these speeches are meaningless.
Crucially, the book doesn't invite the reader to criticize or look down upon
this kind of relationship. On the contrary, Abe's greatest achievement is to
show how it can somehow become comforting and appealing, even in such
a squalid and nightmarish situation. Jumpei's introspective philosophizing
feels like dead weight that is slowly cleared away over the course of the
book. In comparison, his relationship with the woman is the epitome of

honesty. She needs him just because he's there; somehow, that carries
more certainty than if she loved him.
The Woman In The Dunes is maybe the only "existential" novel that
contends that dull anonymous routine, instead of stifling the individual, is
actually the most reliable source of contentment. This simple conclusion
emerges naturally and very convincingly from the story. In flashbacks, it is
revealed that Jumpei had a more conventional relationship with "the other
woman" before he came to the sand pit. But in the sand pit, when he
recalls his old conversations with that woman, they sound tedious and
pointless. And, when the woman in the dunes wishes for a radio, although
it really is pointless, it kind of makes sense -- better to have a way to rest
and pass the time than to engage in endless self-important debates about
the meaning of existence. The ending is terrifying, but also kind of oddly
comforting. The words "thought-provoking" are overused in describing
books, but here one can't help but wonder.
Once you read The Woman In The Dunes, you'll probably become curious
about Abe's other books. Unfortunately, he never wrote anything this good
again. His best novel aside from this one is The Ruined Map. Not
coincidentally, it's similar to The Woman In The Dunes in some ways, and
has a similarly sympathetic female lead. The other novels are superfluous
and very similar to one another. Perhaps a man can only write something
like this once. After that, what else would there be left to say?
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