The Box Man

by Kōbō Abe

  But there’s a limit to throwing things away. It takes work to store articles too, but the effort required to throw them away is still greater. If one does not somehow hold one’s possessions down, one is on tenterhooks lest they be blown away by the wind. For example, could a person who habitually used a small radio—a portable FM with quite good sound—dismiss it as trash just because he wanted to make his burden lighter? I, however, was able to do even that.

  Indeed, I would certainly tell her about the radio. If the necessity arose, I should like to tell the fake box man too. Before the negotiations, I would like those two to understand clearly what sort of opponent they are dealing with.

  —You’re wondering what I have come for so early in the morning. (I address myself exclusively to her; as for the doctor, let him stay in the corner of the room with the fake box over his head just as he is.) I’m taking a simple stroll. A morning walk. It would be hard to draw the road up the slope from the soy-sauce factory, it’s so dispersed, but I like it. What’s the name of that ancient tree with the profusion of small leaves on the way? When the triangular hospital roof here came into view beyond the tree leaves, I became strangely nervous. It’s an atmosphere where strange machinations are going on, with the small, high, painted windows in the cracked mortar wall. Don’t you believe me? Then let me put it this way: there is no particular reason, I came just because I wanted to. You still don’t believe me? Do I look as if I want that much? I was born with this face, and there’s nothing I can do about it. It’s a real handicap to have a face with shifty eyes. But look here, these fifty thousand yen … (saying this, I throw them onto the examination table … not too hard, but just hard enough). I took them for the time being, but I have not yet decided to accept them. Right now I’m seriously thinking about it. But don’t worry, I disposed of the box as you ordered. So we’re even … no, I’m the one who’s owed something. How about it … how does it feel living in a box? (As I say this, I suddenly look in the window of the fake box, and without giving him time to answer, I immediately again turn toward the girl.) Now I’ll get right to the point: I’d like for you to listen to a story about a radio so you can know what sort of person I am. Yes, a radio. Actually I was terribly addicted to news for a long time. I wonder if you see what I mean. I couldn’t stand it if there weren’t fresh news reports coming in one after the other all the time. Battlefield situations go on changing minute by minute. Moving picture stars and singers keep marrying and divorcing. Rockets go shooting off to Mars, and a fishing boat sends off an SOS and blacks out. A pyromaniacal fire chief is apprehended. When a venomous serpent escapes from a load of bananas and an employee of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry commits suicide and a little girl of three is raped, an international conference achieves great success and ends by collapsing, a society is formed to breed sterilized mice, a child is discovered buried in cement at the construction site of a supermarket, the total number of deserters from troops throughout the world sets a new record, the world seems to be boiling over like a teakettle. The globe’s capable of changing shape the minute you take your eyes off it for even a second. I took seven different newspapers; I set up in my room two television sets and three radios; when I went out I never let a portable radio out of my hand, and when I went to sleep I left the earphones plugged in. I got different news reports on different stations at the same time, and there could be special news broadcasts at any moment. Timid animals keep too close a watch around them, and gradually like the giraffe their necks stretch or like the monkey they become incapable of coming down out of the trees. Don’t laugh. For the one afflicted it’s serious. He spends the greater part of the day just reading and listening to news. Angry with the weakness of his own will, still with aching heart, he is unable to separate himself from the radio or television. Of course, I was very much aware that no matter how much I went rooting around for news I wouldn’t necessarily come closer to the truth. I realized that, but I couldn’t stop. Perhaps I needed the news form, which is summarized in clichés, not truth or experience. In short, I was thoroughly addicted to news.

  One day, however, I suddenly recovered. A trivial event, served as an antidote, so really trivial that I myself inclined my head in disbelief. It was—where was it indeed?—oh, yes, at one corner of the wide sidewalk between the subway station and the bank. During the day few people pass that way. A middle-aged fellow who at first glance seemed to be a white-collar worker was walking in the most ordinary way right in front of me. Suddenly all the strength left his legs, and he moved as if to sit down, but fell on his side, and lay motionless. I had the feeling he was playing a game of big bad wolf with a child and had been shot. A young fellow with the air of a student, who was passing by, looked at the fallen man amused. “My God, he’s dead!” he said. I remember that he looked up at me shocked with a wan smile on his lips. I paid no attention, but he reluctantly went to use the telephone at a tobacconist’s two or three stores farther on. Being a professional photographer—well, I was, merely to the extent of getting a job once or twice a month making commercial samples of insert advertisements—I at once set up my camera and tried focusing it from all sorts of angles. In the end I changed my mind and did not take a picture, but that was not because I was especially grieving over the corpse. It was because I realized at once that it would absolutely never become news.

  Dying is, of course, a kind of transformation. First of all, the skin suddenly pales. Then the nose thins, and the jaw withers and gets smaller. The half-open mouth resembles the edge of a tangerine skin cut open with a knife, and the red artificial teeth of the lower jaw begin to jut out from the opening. Further, even the clothes that are being worn change. What appeared to be of very high quality turns before one’s eyes into cheap goods, showy but worthless. Of course, such things are not news. But it would seem that for the dead man in question whether it’s news or not has nothing to do with him. Supposing one is the tenth victim, that had fallen into the hands of a much-wanted, fiendish killer, I don’t suppose he would devise a particularly different way of dying. The dead person has changed himself, but the outside world has changed too, and things cannot change any more than they have. It’s such a great change that no news, however big, can match it.

  No sooner had I realized this than my thinking about news suddenly changed completely. How shall I say …? Slogans won’t do the trick: “You too can stop news-watching.” But I think you understand … somehow … why everybody wants news the way they do. Are they preparing for times of emergency by knowing in advance the changes taking place in the world, I wonder? I used to think so. But that was a big lie. People listen to news only to feel reassured. Because however great the news of catastrophe they hear, those listening are still perfectly alive. The really big news is the ultimate news announcing the end of the world, I suppose. Of course, everybody wants to hear that. For then one does not need to abandon the world alone. When I think about it, I feel the reason that I was addicted was my eagerness not to miss this ultimate broadcast. But as long as the news goes on, it will never get to the end. Thus news constitutes the announcement that it is still not the end of the world. The following trifling clichés are merely abridgments. Last night the greatest bombings of North Vietnam this year were carried out by B52s, but somehow you are still alive. Gas lines under construction ignited and eight persons received serious and light wounds, but you are alive and safe. Record rate of rising prices, yet you continue to live. Extinction of marine life in bays by waste products from factories, but somehow you survive everything.

  —Now what were we talking about?

  “You were saying, it seems to me, that you were bored listening to news,” she said, rearranging her legs (apparently she was quite aware of where my interest lay) and lighting another cigarette that she had put to her lips.

  From her side the fake box man added, in a muffled voice, “I don’t understand at all. What’s the use of introducing yourself the way you’re doing?”

&nb
sp; —What I’m saying is that there aren’t any baddies among those who don’t listen to news. (I rejected the doctor’s words highhandedly and did not break my smile in the girl’s direction.) I have no intention of changing things here arbitrarily, for not believing the news is, I think, not believing in change.

  “Nevertheless, isn’t it illogical?” interrupted the fake box man in an unexpectedly abrupt tone.

  “What’s illogical?” I said.

  “I mean the fifty thousand yen. You took the money provisionally to buy a box, because I thought you were on intimate terms with the box man. It would indeed be illogical if you thought you could keep it or not.”

  “Stop twisting things,” I said, flinching from the unexpected counterattack. “You already know very well that I’m identical to a box man.”

  “No, I don’t.…”

  “There’s no use lying. I’ve proof.” I inhaled slowly in order to calm down and then exhaled. “That morning about a week ago when I came to get my wound treated, you already saw very clearly that I was a real box man. My poorly trimmed hair … my sandpaper face covered with razor scars … although I smelled strongly of soap, bits of skin like dandruff continually peeled off on my neck and shoulders.”

  “But they say there are a lot of eccentrics among photographers, don’t they?” she observed lightly as if pointing out a blunder in a game. Could it be that in the last analysis she was in league with the doctor and had simply taken advantage of me?

  “But at the time—you admitted it yourself—it was an air-rifle bullet that was stuck in the wound in my shoulder.”

  “A lot of people around here have air rifles. Weasels apparently have easy pickings in the chicken houses.”

  “When I was hit, a thoughtful witness who happened to be present told me about this place. She even gave me the price of the medical treatment. Three thousand yen, in bills that smelled a bit of disinfectant,” I said, staring deep into her eyes. I could not believe that she would betray me so easily. Hadn’t she clearly promised to be my model? She said that when she modeled and felt the eyes of an artist on her she became supercharged. She had indeed been provocative then, but now she was temporizing in front of the doctor. It would be anything but desirable here to have the doctor get up on his high horse. By pushing her too far it was conceivable that I would worsen her position. “Some girl in a miniskirt riding on a new-style bicycle … perhaps it was a girl. Unfortunately I only saw her retreating figure, but the legs were terribly beautiful. They were legs that once seen were unforgettable. When you go on living in a box for a long time, since you naturally see only the lower half of those going by, your eyes become trained to see legs and only legs.”

  I had the feeling that her cheeks filled slightly with a certain smile. But it was the fake box man who laughed.

  “Surely there’s a big difference between wearing a box and looking at one.”

  “Let me remind you that I haven’t yet completely renounced my rights of ownership.”

  “Indeed. There’s a big difference,” the fake box man repeated reflectively in a calm voice. “Last night for the first time I spent the whole night in the box. I understood the difference very well. No wonder one is ready to become a box man.”

  “I have no intention of holding you back by force.”

  “It’s quite natural that you shouldn’t.”

  A chuckle infected the fake box man’s happy-go-lucky voice. It was both friendly and sarcastic, and I did not like it. It was as if it was out of tune. I felt rather that from the beginning I should have treated him as a fellow box man. Surely there was nothing at all to get excited about. If I were to broach the subject of advice for a box man after he goes out into town, such as methods of procuring foodstuffs, little-known but good places to find slightly used articles in relatively good shape, ways of obtaining long-distance free travel, or the whereabouts of at least seven fierce dogs to avoid within the city, then we should talk this thing over more calmly. But being in his presence was uncomfortable. Even though I realized that he was a copy of myself, I was embarrassed and shrank from doing so. In a situation like this perhaps I should have challenged him with my own box on. I shifted my attack to her.

  “If it were up to you, what would you do? Would you keep him in check or would you let him do as he wished?”

  She looked up at me, leaning lightly as she was against the corner of the examination table. As the corners of her mouth were drawn up, she seemed to be smiling, but her eyes did not smile at all.

  “I simply think that if we suddenly gave out a tab indicating there was no examination, the patients would be inconvenienced.”

  That would be quite true. A sly answer that might be interpreted in a number of ways. But for the time being I suppose I should be content with that much. Now I only had to wait for the fake box man to make a statement.

  The box, making a sound, drew my attention and leaned over as if to show off. The vinyl over the window separated and an eye looked out. An eye that simply looked, expressionless. An insolent eye that forced on me the role of being seen, but of not seeing. I wonder when he learned such a technique. It goes without saying that the model was myself. I was depressed. I was being seen, but was the one seeing too.

  “No matter how much we exchange words, it’s useless,” said the fake box man in a small voice that was ill-suited to his appearance. “Anyway you wouldn’t believe it.”

  “What?”

  “You won’t believe that I am going to leave here instead of you. In your heart you want that to happen, but you won’t believe that I will.”

  “But you have no intention, actually, of leaving.”

  “I’ve prepared a little compromise plan.” Clearing his throat, he continued in a lower, more obsequious tone. “For example, how would it be if we tried it this way? What about you making yourself at home in this house? No matter what relationship you establish with her I will absolutely not interfere. I will not interfere or meddle with you or cause you any trouble. But I want you to accept just one condition. I want you to give me the freedom of watching you. Just watching. Of course, wearing the box the way I am. Exactly the relationship that stands between the three of us now. I’m just asking you to let me watch from a corner like this. When you get used to me, I’ll be just like a wastebasket.”

  Somehow I had the impression that I had had the fake box act in my place and made a proposition that I myself had formulated. When I stealthily stole a glance at the girl, she had begun concentrating on a stringless cat’s cradle, rapidly moving the fingers of both hands. Slowly she shifted her legs. The hem of her pressed white uniform separated and knees peeped out and made me feel as if I should like to touch them with a finger on which saliva had been applied. Perhaps she was naked under the white dress. The rubber balloon I had swallowed, that had some device for making it swell and which I knew nothing about, I suddenly felt expand in my stomach. Nevertheless, I wondered if I would have the courage in front of the fake box man to ask her to strip off her clothes.

  “There’s nothing to hesitate about,” continued the fake box man encouragingly. “If you pay no attention to a box man, he’s just like wind or dust. I myself had an interesting experience in this respect. When I developed a photo I had casually taken, right there in the picture was a close-up of something quite unexpected. A man with a cardboard box over his head was nonchalantly walking by. Since I’m no expert like you, the camera was anything but sophisticated. I wonder just what I intended to take a picture of. This happened some time ago, but I think it was the scene of some funeral. I had decided to take pictures of the funeral of a patient that I had treated myself … as remembrances. Even so, I was surprised. I should have seen him with my own eyes since he was so close. Yet I have absolutely no recollection. If a ghost is something that is not visible, yet which one has the impression of being able to see, a box man is just the opposite. It was since then that I began to be interested in box men. When I keep my eyes open to see if I can
spot any, sure enough I see them roaming the streets, looking just the way the one did in the picture. But on the several occasions while I was observing them, I noticed that no one paid the slightest attention. It wasn’t only my oversight. For example, suppose a box man goes up to a greengrocer’s display. He stretches his arm out from a hole like this and begins pilfering stuff right and left in the area. Of course, only cheaper things without a price like tomatoes or milk or fermented soy beans. However, the clerk, dealing with a customer right beside the box man, far from scolding him, pretends not even to notice—pleasant, isn’t it? You know what they say: ‘Sweep the dust under the carpet.’ Packing oneself up like baggage and walking about is an insult to the world and goes beyond just being strange behavior. Or was it so harmless an existence that one could overlook it by merely wishing to? You should be able to ignore me too if you want to.”