by Kōbō Abe
But none of these produced any results. I could make nothing of the terribly vague answers I got, which I could believe or doubt as I liked. Since I had anticipated this situation to some extent, I was not altogether disheartened. Wouldn’t it be better to go out and find you myself? There was still a little time before the last train, and if time were short I could get to the station fast by taxi.
Gradually anger welled up within me. I could understand your vexation, but after all wasn’t it merely a question of your pride and your pretense of being humiliated at having been forced to associate with a clown? I did not intend to treat your pride as unimportant, but I could not help but wonder if it was exacerbated enough to make you break off all relations as you had done. I should like to ask you: when the boy kissed his sister in the film, what side did he kiss her on? You probably could not answer. For you did not cooperate with me as much as the boy did with his sister. Even though you recognized the necessity of the mask, it was only a domesticated mask that would never transgress the taboo. So, this time, you had better be careful. The mask that descends on you this time will be a wild animal. Since you have seen through it already, the mask will concentrate on its lawlessness, unweakened and unblinded by jealousy. You have dug your own grave by yourself. I have never had the experience of having anything in writing produce such results as these notes did.
Suddenly I heard the sharp clicking of a woman’s heels. Only the mask remained; I had vanished. Instantaneously and without thinking, I concealed myself in a lane directly at hand, and releasing the safety catch of my pistol, I held my breath. What was I doing this for? Was it only play acting to test myself, or was I plotting something in earnest? I probably will not be able to answer the question myself until the final, decisive instant, until the woman comes into my range of attack.
But think a minute. I wonder if I shall become a swan with an act like this. Can I make people feel guilty for me? It is useless to think. What is amply clear, at least, is that I shall be lonely and isolated, that I shall only become a lecher. There will be no other reward outside of being freed from the crime of being ridiculous. Perhaps that’s the difference between movies and actuality. Anyway, I shall have to go through with this, for doing so is the only way to conquer the face. Of course, I do know that the responsibility is not the mask’s alone, and that the problem lies rather within me. Yet it is not only in me, but in everybody; I am not alone in this problem. True, indeed, but let’s not shift the blame. I shall hate people. I shall never admit the necessity of justifying myself to anyone!
The footsteps are coming closer.
So nothing will ever be written down again. Perhaps the act of writing is necessary only when nothing happens.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
E. Dale Saunders, translator of Kobo Abe’s The Woman in the Dunes and The Face of Another, received his A.B. from Western Reserve University, his M.A. from Harvard University and his Ph.D. from the University of Paris. He was Professor of Japanese Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, having previously taught at International Christian University, Tokyo, and at Harvard. Among his publications are Mudra: A Study of Symbolic Gestures in Japanese Buddhist Sculpture and Buddhism in Japan.
ALSO BY KOBO ABE
THE BOX MAN
In this eerie and evocative masterpiece, the nameless protagonist gives up his identity and the trappings of a normal life to live in a large cardboard box he wears over his head. Wandering the streets of Tokyo and scribbling madly on the interior walls of his box, he describes the world outside as he sees or perhaps imagines it, a tenuous reality that seems to include a mysterious rifleman determined to shoot him, a seductive young nurse, and a doctor who wants to become a box man himself. The Box Man is a marvel of sheer originality and a strangely fascinating fable about the very nature of identity.
Fiction/Literature/0-375-72651-9
THE RUINED MAP
Mr. Nemuro, a respected salesman, disappeared over half a year ago, but only now does his alluring yet alcoholic wife hire a private eye. The nameless detective has but two clues: a photo and a matchbook. With these he embarks upon an ever more puzzling pursuit that leads him into the depths of Tokyo’s dangerous underworld, where he begins to lose the boundaries of his own identity. Surreal, fast-paced, and hauntingly dream-like, Abe’s masterful novel delves into the unknowable mysteries of the human mind.
Fiction/Literature/0-375-72652-7
THE WOMAN IN THE DUNES
One of the premier Japanese novels of the twentieth century, The Woman in the Dunes combines the essence of myth, suspense, and the existential novel. In a remote seaside village, Niki Jumpei, a teacher and amateur entomologist, is held captive with a young woman at the bottom of a vast sand pit where, Sisyphus-like, they are pressed into shoveling off the ever-advancing sand dunes that threaten the village.
Fiction/Literature/0-679-73378-7
SECRET RENDEZVOUS
With Abe’s characteristically nightmarish vision of modern medicine and modern life, Secret Rendezvous chronicles the bizarrely erotic and comic adventures of a man searching for his missing wife in a mysteriously vast underground hospital. From the moment that an ambulance appears in the middle of the night to take his wife, who protests that she is perfectly healthy, her bewildered husband realizes that things are not as they should be. His covert explorations reveal that the enormous hospital she was taken to is home to a network of constant surveillance, outlandish sex experiments, and an array of very odd and even violent characters.
Fiction/Literature/0-375-72654-3
KANGAROO NOTEBOOK
In the last novel written before his death in 1993, Abe proffers a vision of Japanese society that manages to be simultaneously fearful and jarringly funny. The narrator of Kangaroo Notebook wakes one morning to discover that his legs are growing radish sprouts, an ailment that provides the patient with the unusual ability to snack on himself. In short order, he finds himself hurtling in a hospital bed to the very shores of hell. There he encounters an officious child demon, a hairy American marital arts expert, and a sexy nurse who is trying to collect enough blood to win the “Dracula’s Daughter” medal.
Fiction/Literature/0-679-74663-3
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