1

HUMAN GARBAGE: Objects & the Body in Abe Kōbō 's The Ark Sakura and Kangaroo Notebook

by

Patrick Chimenti

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Program of Bachelor of Arts in the Program of International Literary and Visual Studies 2

Table of Contents

1. Acknowledgments...... p.3

2. Introduction...... p.4

3. Chapter I: Humor...... p.7

1. A World of Objects, Anecdotes, & History...... p.8

2. Sexuality & Bodily Impotence...... p.20

4. Chapter II: Vanity...... p.30

1. Pathos of the Postmodern...... p.31

2. The “Eternally-Slipping Identity”...... p.43

Notes...... p.52

Bibliography……………………………………………………p.56

Appendix A: A Translation of Laughing Moon by Abe Kōbō.....p.57

Translation Notes……………………………………………….p.141 3

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Dr. Charles Inouye for his guidance and kind assistance over the course of this project and my undergraduate career. I would also like to thank Professor Shiori Koizumi and Kiyoko Morita of Tufts University; without their teachings, this thesis would have been impossible. Finally, I would like to thank all of my editors, especially Meg Sinnott Rubin, for all of their help in editing this analysis. 4

INTRODUCTION

Abe Kōbō has often been referred to as the Franz Kafka of Japan.1And, indeed, this idea has colored much of the criticism concerning Abe's work. Abe's background as a Japanese born in Manchuria during the Second World War places him in the fascinating position of a born expatriate, alienated from his nation before even having set foot in it. As a result, much of Abe's work eschews the aesthetics traditionally espoused by the Japanese literati in favor of a sparse style based heavily on examining the structures of societal labyrinths and human interaction. Criticism of Abe2, too, has given little attention to Abe's aesthetic creations and focuses more on the language and interaction of Abe's characters. This focus on Abe's language has often led critics to paint Abe in a heavily modernist light, identifying him more often with Western modernist and absurdist writers like Franz Kafka more than with his Japanese contemporaries like Kenzaburō Ōe.

While it is tempting to relegate many of Abe's images as modernistic constructs of the absurd, painted as hypercritically bizarre in order to shock his readers, this reading diminishes their status as internal to Abe's personal experience. Most of Abe's most famous images are derived from his own dreams and experiences3, intrinsically linking the failure of his protagonists to parse their lives' meaning with his own struggle with the failure of logical systems. Abe's leading men are isolated in a world composed of “nothing” objects, constructs of societal convenience which serve only as a thin veil over the unreliable absurdity of the individual experience. What this amounts to, is the view that

Abe's vision of the world was materialistically informed, relying on the phenomenological experience of the body and the objects of its environment rather than a belief in a consistent or pervasive

“essence.”4 Though Abe's works are filled with a tendency to intellectualize and digress, these manipulations of language are purposefully structured within the context of failing efforts to parse the 5 physical and graphic realities built up in the heart of his artifice.

This thesis will focus primarily on the works: The Ark Sakura (Hakobune Sakura Maru, 1984) and

Kangaroo Notebook (Kangaroo Nōto, 1991), the two final completed novels of Abe's career. The reasoning behind this choice is twofold. First, both of these novels were completed following the end of

Abe's theatrical career and thus, arguably, hold differences to his prior works based on the influence of techniques and insights developed during his time as a director. Notably, Abe's focus on the development of the theatrical techniques of “neutral position” and “rubberman games” both of which gave laborious attention to the positioning and the impact of the actor's body to the perception of the audience, arguably impacting the presentation and critical nature of the human form and the physiological experience to his works later on.5 Second, both The Ark Sakura and Kangaroo Notebook have received little critical attention in comparison to Abe's early works, due in part to their lack of comparable popularity, but also because of the complexity of the plot and structure of the novels, which focus less on the exposition of the characters and more on the visually-oriented aspects of the plot than his previous pieces. In this analysis, I will endeavor to elucidate the importance of Abe's fascination with these images in his later works as a signal of a powerful postmodern sentiment vital to the development of these later pieces. To this end, this thesis will examine these images in the context of two central thematic elements of Abe's pieces which gained greater significance with his later work: humor and vanity.

Appended to this analysis is a translation of one of Abe's collections of short stories and essays,

Laughing Moon (Warau Tsuki, 1975), which, though not among one of Abe's later works, provides unique insight into Abe's creative process as well as his development of images used in a number of his creative pieces, taken from his dreams and personal experience. Abe himself had mixed feelings about literary criticism. In an interview with Nancy Shields, Abe noted that, “If I had to write a book of 6 literary theory I could write one, but I wouldn't want people to read my novels in terms of literary theory.”6Abe's primary concern in this opposition to literary theory was likely due, in part, to the possibility that the authors may be misunderstood completely through systematic approaches to their work (a concern he expressed about dramatic theories developed by Brecht and Stravinsky).7

Indeed, in novels like Abe's, with such simultaneous dramatic complexity and simplicity in interactions of characters, pursuing a course to elucidate all of Abe's writings through a single system of thought is likely to be rather misleading. Many critiques of Abe's work have sought to categorize his works in the context of artistic movements of the West, including the Theater of the Absurd, Latin-

American Magic Realism, and the French nouveau roman. While the influence of these movements on

Abe's development as an artist are undeniable, I feel that to attempt a categorization of Abe in the context of these works presents a vast oversimplification of his evolution as a writer, overlooking his distinct collection of works which saw his transition from reticent Communist writer8 to social critic to absurdist-modernist prose writer to playwright and beyond. While Abe's masterful arrangements and use of language make a drawing of Western parallels tempting, that is not the focus of this study, which is to attempt an approach of Abe from an understanding of his imagery and transformations of the human body. Thus the essays and stories in Laughing Moon, many being candid and often entertaining insights from Abe into his own process of writing, offer an invaluable perspective in understanding both the thought process underlying both the technique and the origin of the imagery so critical to his pieces.

It is the aim of this project to expand on the understanding of Abe Kōbō's later works and to attempt to offer new alternatives in considering the importance of imagery to his work, an aspect of his novels that has been widely ignored in established criticisms preceding this one. 7

CHAPTER I: HUMOR

While there exists a somewhat natural sense of gloom and doom within Abe's writings, there is also an undeniable element of humor that pervades his work. Dreams of being transformed into a gramophone, the transformation of men into plants, or a dream of an object, Tab, which serves no known purpose and which no one knows how to make, are all filled with a strange sense of amusement.

Indeed, the “lightness”9 of Abe's images invites a natural sense of play, and a there is a clear sense of humor in the absurd as the “natural” objects of Abe's world quickly transform into the non-sensical.

There is also no doubt either that humor was incredibly important to Abe on a personal level. Abe once noted in an interview with Nancy Shields that his rejection of Sartre was not based on the trajectory of his philosophic views, but simply that “I don't like Sartre at all. He doesn't have any sense of humor,”10 and would later famously say himself that “Without humor, we cannot bear reality.”11 Reading Shields' interviews with Abe, the complexity of his personal life shines through. To Abe, the world presented a limitless source of humor and dread, and at no point could the two be clearly distinguished. In Abe's novels, stories taken from the evening news blend seamlessly with constructed digressions intended to both horrify and entertain. The human body, too, holding limitless potential for manipulation, transformation, and self-destruction, naturally inspires bemusement as one considers the image of the warped human form as Abe carefully details the phenomenological experience of characters stretched and pulled by invisible hands. This chapter will focus on the humorous elements of Abe's writings to more clearly elucidate the interaction of horror and humor that pervades his works. Specifically, this chapter will seek to examine Abe's humorous digressions (which, though a feature common to a great number of Abe's novels, occur especially frequently in The Ark Sakura and Kangaroo Notebook) and his depiction of the body's impotence, which readily expresses itself in his characters' often clumsy encounters with the sexual. 8

A World of Objects, Anecdotes, & History

New readers of Abe's novels are likely to immediately notice one point of Abe's style: he simply can't seem to stay on topic. While The Ark Sakura and Kangaroo Notebook both follow the distinct journeys of a central character, Abe's characters themselves are always prone to digression, pulling in a seemingly endless list of fragments from history lessons, scientific journals, and televised news stories in order to provide context to their current situation. As it happens, many of these stories are also bizarrely funny, presenting some essential corruption of reason that leads members of the story to their untimely doom. An early example occurs at the beginning of The Ark Sakura in which the insect dealer explains to Mole the origin of the eupcaccia's nickname as a “clock-bug.”

There was a charm to the unassuming eupcaccia that went beyond mere practical concerns. Perhaps its

almost perfectly closed ecosystem was somehow soothing to troubled hearts. Guests at the Hotel

Eupcaccia, the only such facility on Epicham, would come across the insects lying on flagstones

(thoughtfully provided by the management) and become riveted to the spot. There were reports of a certain

businessman who had sat day after day in the same spot, magnifying glass in hand, and finally died raving

mad, his cheeks bulging with his own excrement. (He seems to have been either a Japanese watch

salesman or a Swiss clock manufacturer.) All of this was doubtless more sales talk, but I chose to take it at

face value.12

The brilliance in passages like this is their simultaneously graphic and ambiguous nature. While some details of the past are obscured (e.g., whether the victim was Japanese or Swiss), others shine through with incredible specificity and vividness (the clockmaker's demise, the thoughtfulness of the management). In a nonsense world of con-men and circumstantial truth like The Ark Sakura, however, this makes perfect sense. The characters are not only informed by the uncertain anecdotes of the past, 9 they are sold on them. Mole, on hearing about the eupcaccia's enigmatic history, is not only convinced to buy one, but is whipped into a patriotic frenzy as he adopts the standard of the eupcaccia to determine who is worthy to survive and who is not in his new post-apocalyptic world. Naturally, Abe's choice of the scatological and immobile clockbug as a potential new symbol of survival is quite funny in and of itself but, in another sense, the vulnerability of Mole to these specious narratives, his eager willingness to “take it at face value,” speak to a grim vulnerability of the mind to the construction of systemic narratives. Abe highlights this point in the contradictory nature of facts and values presented within these narratives. While the clockbug is, to Mole, a potential symbol for the hope of the future, the insect salesman can only express disappointment in them as they don't sell nearly as well as stag beetles. In other words, one man's trash is another man's treasure, a theme that is quintessentially Abe, as we will see.

Fragments of superstition and the incredible emerge from a blurred past; all truth is anecdotal, sold by the vivacity of its imagery rather than its potential veracity. And yet, all is presented with a nonchalant objectivity that is almost inflammatory in its self-assurance. The tales of the Japanese clock maker choking to death on his own feces like the clockbug, or the office worker driven to madness by catching a glimpse of a flying man13, are filled with a concrete power that simultaneously invites disbelief and dares opposition. Abe's construction of history is deliberately elusive, robbing us of the power to verify not only the solidity of the facts predating our present condition, but also the solidity of our condition as we inhabit it. The stories of the past are crafted with a deliberate mixture of detail and disorder, allowing us to slip into the mental position of the experiencer, but preventing us from separating our own identity from theirs. The effect is a non-symbolic evincing of unsteadiness and instability in which the reader is drawn into the void of the past, the image of comedy and horror their anchor. A similar incident occurs in Kangaroo Notebook, when the protagonist, in severe pain from the 10 catheter attached to him, recalls an incident of horror and humor from his childhood.

My bladder had received a severe jolt too. While the intravenous fluid in the bag was steadily decreasing,

the bag of urine was swelling like a bullfrog's belly and about to burst. Had my urine reversed course? The

discomfort of wanting to urinate but being unable to is no laughing matter. When I was in junior high

school I had a homeroom teacher who suffered from an enlarged prostate. One time, a sudden morning

attack of anuria sent him to a clinic. He rushed around the building frantically waiting for it to open, and

finally, beside himself with agony, he stuck his head into a Y-shaped iron decoration on top of the fence and

killed himself. Cruel youth that we were, we treated the incident like a huge joke, a memory that now fills

me with shame.14

Here, the physical sensations of the body once more serve as the gateway to the narratives of the past; we see the humor of the protagonist's youth transform into a very real and palpable source of dread with the whims and transformations of his own body. Abe's nameless protagonist could have any number of such memories surrounding him, waiting to be triggered and brought to consciousness by the most simple of bodily changes. Perhaps they will be sources of positive identification or, as in the example above, sources of personal dread and shame. Abe destabilizes our internal perception of self by directly tying the emergence of these hidden narratives to the seemingly random and uncontrollable alterations of the physical body. Reading these discourses in Abe, it quickly becomes clear that we cannot hope to find a consistent understanding of ourselves or our situation from any narrative, even those formed within our own memories. Much like the dreams Abe describes in Laughing Moon, these blurred visions of the surrounding world are fickle and, as Abe himself writes, “Triggers are the same in typical dreams; even if it is a very simple physiological sensation, that stimulation can easily cause a chain reaction, the course of which can affect one in so many ways: in a situation like mine in which one is engaged in the manipulation of words on a daily basis, there is even the possibility that networks 11 of words without images will be formed.”15

And yet, the backdrop of personal history in Abe remains a powerful wellspring of motivation for his characters. In The Ark Sakura, the protagonist, Mole, is constantly pursued by the specters of his own past, who take on an almost farcical magnitude as their associated images build them into an amalgam of the old and unclean junk of the world-refuse he wishes he could flush away in super-large toilet forming the center of his “ark.” Indeed, much of Abe's talent is in his ability to build up a sense of accumulation in his imagery. In listing the endless components of the trash heap, the architecture of the bunker, and every unseemly feature of the aging horde, a type of non-direct symbolization occurs in which the image finds actualization on several levels of meaning simply by reason of its sheer weight.

While we can easily draw symbolic conclusions from the significance of the whole image, Abe's meticulous breaking down of greater collections of objects into individual items invites the reader's own “experiencing” of it: looking over every single bizarre curio (each a veritable paradox unto itself) and experiencing the object in its most unadulterated form, an item removed of any traceable context.

By establishing detail in the image, Abe deletes the perception of the individual, crushing it beneath the massive volume of hollow and meaningless facets of our neglected reality.

To reiterate, much of the strength of these digressions comes from their sheer number. Abe's mastery is in overwhelming the reader with a litany of half-truths and circumstantial evidence. The imagery in

Abe's stories is often purposefully graphic as it is intended to shock or puzzle the reader into awareness. Rather than shedding light on the situation, anecdotes in Abe can only mislead, leaving both the characters and reader to wonder at the mass of detail they have just been handed. The act of deriving meaning (a meaning which more often than not turns out to be nothing more than an essential misattribution) from a sea of ahistorical discourse and objects can end in nothing but confusion. The piles of junk littering Abe's novels destabilize these discourses and shake those who cling to them. 12

After all, in what universe could meaning exist when such overwhelming void lies just on the periphery of human existence?

The Ark Sakura begins with just such a list of junk items, a pile of bizarre objects at a bazaar Mole attends.

Among the items available were these:

Key chains made of owl talons.

A “bear's ass-scratcher,” looking something like dried seaweed. This was apparently a kind of parasitic

plant; the seller himself had no idea what to do with it.

A cardboard box filled assorted springs and cogwheels.

Three sets of horses' teeth.

An old fashioned inhalator, heated by using an alcohol lamp.

A sharpener for bamboo gramophone needles.

Two whale turds, each a foot in diameter.

Glass nails.

Ointment to rub on the trunk of an elephant with a cold; made in Singapore.

A bloodstained signal flag claimed by its owner to have been used in the Battle of the Japan Sea.

An adjustable ring with plastic ballpoint pen attached.

A sleep-inducing device to plug into your home computer; worn around the ankle, it applied rhythmic

stimulation tied to the user's heartbeat.

A jar of sixty-five-year old shochu, low-class distilled spirits (“Drink at your own risk”).

An aluminum-can compressor, utilizing water pressure in accordance with the lever principle.

A privately printed telephone directory purporting to contain “all you need to know” (for residents of

Nerima Ward, Tokyo).

3.3 pounds of powdered banana peel (a marijuana substitute?).

A stuffed sewer rat, nineteen inches long.

A baby doll that could suck on a bottle. 13

And then— the eupcaccia.16

None of these items alone can offer any insight into the purpose or context of the sale they are featured in, and together they simply form a substantial mass or number of items that defy categorization: by type, function, intended customer, or any other criterion. Whereas the modern impulse is to confine or create reality with a meticulous description of its contents, Abe uses this same technique to an opposite end, to obscure the reality of the situation by listing these “autonomous”17 objects that have no relevant or discernible context. Like finding some wholly alien objects or trash washed up on the shore, Abe offers no reason or rationality behind the composition of reality- all emerges from a vast, murky sea of incidence and possibility. Even in the case of the eupcaccia, where we learn the meaning of its name “clock-bug,” this tale does not elucidate the value or meaning of the insect, but only raises further questions that worm their way into our own mental stability. The unanswerable question at the heart of the story is “Why was the Japanese clockmaker undone by the eupcaccia?” The unknowable, unexplainable danger of the object is internalized within us. If the man from the anecdote can succumb to the power held by a piece of junk, all of us are vulnerable to its spell. Abe highlights this in the graphic nature of the clockmaker's death of choking on his own feces, which both sensationalizes the story (cementing it as an object of ridicule) and forces a phenomenological bond of disgust and identification between this character and the reader, as the dreadful death of the clockmaker inspires a strong sense of bodily dread and the fragility of one's own existence. Such unreliable waraibanashi (humorous stories) are common in Abe's work and give only a slight insight into the past and into the possible outcome of the present before leaving as suddenly as they arrived, rarely, if ever, to be mentioned again.

This listing of objects occurs several times throughout the course of The Ark Sakura, finding 14 expression as Mole catalogues such diverse objects as his tools for survival, a list of places he “travels to” using his spectrography device, and the objects piled up in a garbage dump in front of his “ark” to hide the entrance. It is the last of these images, the image of garbage, that is most pervasive in Abe's later work. Indeed, garbage and places where garbage accumulates presented a long-standing topic of interest for Abe. In his essay, “The Skin of a Soap Bubble” (“Shabon Tama no Kawa”, 1975), Abe describes the image of the garbage dump in great detail, heralding it as a place of “somehow unworldly solemnity”18 and forming “the perfect setting for the emergence of my characters.”19 In a particularly grim passage, Abe describes a series of screams he hears coming from the garbage dump, the cries of humans being chewed alive by an insurmountable mass of trash:

The shrieks I can hear coming from the garbage dump, in addition to the garbage eaten by the swamp, seem

to be the screams of the “usefulness” beginning to be chewed up. At least that is what it sounds like to me.

The awareness (or illusion) that one is not yet garbage himself is the skin of a soap bubble that barely

supports itself day-to-day.20

In this passage, Abe offers a radical new perspective in which the experience of the abrasive object in the meticulous dissection of the junk within garbage dump eradicates the boundaries between the willful subject and the object he perceives. Humans can be garbage just as easily as garbage can will itself into motion. Categories meant to distinguish the human and the non-human (i.e. categories which form the distinction of “usefulness” over the “useless”) are chewed to bits with the understanding that objects of convenience, objects of our daily life, are only meaningful in the context of our own limited perceptions, beyond which lie an infinite sea of objects. The epiphany of the garbage dump effectively devalues our perspective as autonomous subjects. After all, what meaning can be found in an autonomy 15 that willfully blinds itself to the realities of life (often through systematic or social means) and can be undermined by something so simple as an article of trash? By forcing this comparison, Abe turns our world upside down, robbing logic of its meaning and handing power over to the great mass of “useless” objects that chew up our preconceptions of reality.

This comes to form the essential tension in Abe's work, the fragility of the balance between willful ignorance of one's own nature as an object and the overwhelming pressure created by one's functioning in relation to the other “objects” of societal exchange. Useless knick-knacks, doctors, con-men, animals, cars; through a combination of meticulous description and matter-of-fact listing, all things find an equal stake in Abe's garbage dump. In interviews with Nancy Shields, Abe often insisted that “the effect of an object is abrasive...thinking into an object grates and eats away previously held preconceptions.”21 In Abe's novels, all the objects of daily life are placed under incisive scrutiny, from the furniture in one's bedroom to the smallest bit of trash in the garbage heap. Describing the facets of daily life to such an extent alienates both the character and the reader from the comforts of daily life; understanding the magnitude of the objects that goes unnoticed within our own sphere of existence highlights the vacuity of our own perceptions. To go day by day without an awareness of the composition of one's environment and then to suddenly be presented with all of it at once, at such a level of detail, is a traumatic experience, one Abe described as revealing a “void” or “vacuum”22 lying insidiously beneath the surface of daily life. The resulting effect is a thoroughly existentialist end, as

Abe describes this new order of humans as equals with objects, as being neither nihilistic nor optimistically charged.23 The meaning that we derive from established categories of objects (useful vs. useless, trash vs. tools, humans vs. objects) is nullified completely as Abe lumps them all together into a non-essentialist depiction of the world unseen, and uses the physicality inherent in the absurd to bring this shock to the reader in a powerful disillusioning scene that breaks down the barrier between humans 16 and objects.

In any case, I am attracted by garbage. My encounters with refuse and the disabled, more than anything

else, inspire me. It is similar to the human genitalia. With vain and purposeless splendor, by simply existing

it overwhelms all meaning. It's only natural. Even if “Usefulness” losing to “Refuse” is possible, “Refuse”

yielding to “Usefulness” is probably impossible. Animals are an exceptional accident of plants, and plants

are nothing more than the product of an exceptional accident of minerals. I'm sorry to say that the ruling

principles are on the side of minerals more than they are on the side of animals. A battlefield is a typical

example in which humans are subjected to mineral law. At this late hour, the extent of pollution caused by

industrial waste will probably not lead to anyone seriously wrinkling their brow either. Conceited attempts

to challenge garbage only allow it to further strengthen its rearmament. If you are prepared, then that's fine.

Though I am not an optimist in nihilist’s clothing, to talk about your hopes is simply making too much of

garbage.24

One's hopes are simultaneously invaluable to the individual and yet of no consequence beyond one's own mind. In Abe's realm of existence, all is permitted, therefore nothing can remain sacred.

As has been pointed out by many before, the essential humor in Abe's characters is that they are caricatures of the modern; they believe in the existence of an essential or rational “truth” and pursue it through systemic analysis or logical thought. They are doctors, technicians, detectives, occupations stereotypically characterized as pursuers and possessors of truth.25 However, when they attempt to apply their methods to the world, they find only labyrinths, puzzles defined by emptiness and hyperbolic complexity. Their coveted illusion of an unattainable security only brings their own idiosyncratic faults to light.

The idea of objects coming to define and bear control over our lives may seem difficult to imagine, but the willful inanimate is by no means new to surrealistic discourse. Michael Guest's term of the 17

“autonomous image”26, an image which, removed from a naturalistic frame of reference, “serves no purpose but to constitute itself as an imaginable entity”27 is rather applicable to the writings of Abe, in particular, as the images systematized within Abe's bizarre societal simulacrum gain willful agency and fragment the image of the would-be subjects within his work. The characters in Abe's novels, in their blind acceptance of the image of everyday items, surrender their agency and allow themselves to be led along by unknown forces so long as they wear the visage of the familiar. In his short story “The Bag”

(“Kaban”), Abe details the experience of an office manager who, despite the warnings of his future employee, takes charge of a mysterious bag that supposedly controls whomever takes possession of it:

While I continued to walk, as expected, it began to take its toll on my shoulders. Even so, I still did not

feel as though I could not endure it. However, suddenly there was the sound of my backbone sinking in

between my hips; as that happened, I did not take another step. When I came to my senses, I had left the

office building without being aware of it, and I was approaching a steep hill. Turning around, I began to

walk again. I intended to return to the office just like that, but it didn't work out somehow. No matter how

many directions I tried to bring to mind, I wasn't at all conscious of them as I usually was, I was blocked

off from slopes and stone steps; cut into shreds, I was useless. Reluctantly, I tried to walk only in the

direction I was able to. Eventually, I had no idea where I was walking.

I did not feel especially distressed. The bag guided me perfectly. Things were fine so long as I simply

continued walking to anywhere I was led without hesitation. If there are no paths one can choose, there is

also no possibility to lose one's way. It was freedom that I came to hate.28

It is vital to note here that the protagonist's abdication of agency is a willing one; he is genuinely pleased to surrender control over his life to the eerily normal image of the salary-man's briefcase, allowing it to lead him wherever it chooses. In a sense, the autonomous image of the bag, the object which has lost all striking features and contextual meaning due to a culturally ingrained veneer of 18 normalcy, is able to slip through the cracks of the office manager's disbelief and seize control of him.

Everyday objects hold a particular salience within Abe’s works; he portrays the blind acceptance or ignorance of these objects as an implicit abdication of individual autonomous thought as the nameless salaryman trusts his fate to a series of objects which form the backdrop or image of an expected

“normalcy” which quickly spirals out of control.

This backdrop is, in other words, the establishing frame for the comedy of Abe's characters. As caricatures of the modern, their own self-obsessed trajectories become an irrational hyperbole on the stage of the human garbage dump. The desire to exist 'normally' is tantamount to wishing to alter one's body irreparably, and neither living with others nor existing on one's own can be considered a source of meaning: both are equivalent in their meaninglessness. There are any such number of systemically absurd organizations in Abe's novels, but this opposition is likely best exemplified in the example of the Broom Brigade of The Ark Sakura.

The established goal of the Broom Brigade, to “sweep away all trash blocking the way ahead,”29 places them as direct opponents to Abe's world of trash. In order for the fantasy of purity to be achieved, reality's unattractive detritus must be removed. But the invisible concept of purity simply amounts to the hope that there is a reality beyond the overwhelming “impurity” of reality's obtuse images, a hope which Abe firmly believes will be crushed beneath the sheer weight of garbage. In The

Ark Sakura, we find the culmination of a rising conflict within Abe's work between the invisible and fabricated systems of humanity placed in direct opposition with the garbage of the world. While other movements can be seen in Abe's literature which find themselves opposed to physical objects and existence through an adherence to reason30, the Broom Brigade finds their battle to achieve a fascist's paradise in direct opposition to the impure physical reality of the world which they seek to erase into “a blank slate” with no historical ties to the stained past. As the head of the organization describes it: 19

“‘The whole world is weeping with loud lamentation. The world weeps at picture books of happy homes, and at TV commercials for wedding palaces, as it takes part in drunken medleys in bars and dives. We quintessential castoffs can hear every wail.'”31

Much like the cries of humanity from the garbage dump that compel Abe to write, the “wailing” from the everyday lives of the people torn apart by the abrasive objects that surround them (the television, etc.) incite the Broom Brigade to action, but to a far different end. In contrast to Abe's meticulous documentation of the refuse forming daily life, members of the Broom Brigade wish to sweep it all away, moving towards a bright, yet rather absurd, future in which decrepit old men singing military hymns will repopulate the Earth with middle-school girls they force to be their brides. Their plan, however, ends in ambiguity as Mole traps them within the ark before making his escape, literally entombing them beneath a massive pile of garbage. In the end, they too are absorbed within Abe's trash dump. The message here is clear: while the piles of “useless” objects may be swept away temporarily, one underestimates their power at his own peril.

A second example presents itself in the “Olympic Prevention League” or OPL of The Ark Sakura, a bizarre group of outcasts who seek to destroy the Olympic Games due to their own insecurity with their body types:

“And why should any country get excited about a well-developed set of muscles? It's unnatural. There's

got to be some plot. Beside, to raise the national flag and play the national anthem in honor of robust

bodies constitutes a clear act of discrimination against the rest of the citizenry(...)Groundskeepers ran

around blowing police whistles. Angry at having the games interrupted, the spectators began throwing

things: hamburgers, boxed lunches, tin cans, spectacles, strings, tissue paper, false teeth, condoms,

chewing gum(...)By then it was impossible to stanch the flow of waste articles that came pouring down

the bleachers like lava. The conical stadium was soon buried in trash(...)Finally, the stadium swelled up 20

like bowels with the anus sutured shut, in the shape of a giant toilet.”32

As in the case of the Kingdom of Quintessential Cast-offs, the systematic order of the nationalist display is erased utterly, buried alive beneath an insurmountable mountain of refuse; replaced by the graphic and visceral image of the scatological. The locus of meaning found previously in the fantasy symbols of the ideal body, and the invisible strength of the nation represented by it, becomes entrenched in the humor and dread of the unattractive human body as the stadium swells with the literal waste matter of the masses, to the point where it assumes the repulsive image of the “sutured anus,” a bloated amalgamation of the junk mass at the heart of humanity.

This overwhelming mass of junk that pervades history, physical life, and the realm of our spirits and imagination creates “a spectacle one could not endure without laughing.”33 Dread and humor are inextricable from one another in Abe's imagery. The abrasive effect of viewing our own bodies as objects, vulnerable and fallible, leads us to this inevitable conclusion in which a consistent, lasting meaning is untenable.

Sexuality & Bodily Impotence

Alongside this humor in the objects and narratives surrounding Abe's characters, there is also an internal humor to these characters which manifests itself as a function of their bodily experiences. In the first chapter, the transformative potential of the bodily image was discussed at some length, as was how the “lightness” within the evanescent image lends itself naturally to a state of playfulness and humor. However, Abe derives most of the humorous elements of the body, not from its lightness or transformative potential, but, ironically, from the stunted and unpleasant aspects of the phenomenological experience. In other words, humor follows from feelings of bodily impotence. 21

Impotence may seem like an odd thematic choice to characterize Abe's characters by but, on the other hand, impotence (particularly sexual impotence in the case of Abe's characters) walks along the fine line of dread and humor that is so indicative of Abe's literary style. The topic of sexual intercourse, then, as the most intimate of social interactions, offers the ideal stage for our most human neuroses to play themselves out.

One question that bears examination in these works is why Abe's work, which is so often concerned with the detailing and exploration of the individual bodily experience, so rarely features any successful exploration of the sexual. In fact, most of Abe's characters are rather stunted in this aspect of their lives, always experiencing the sexual Other (who is inevitably female in Abe's works) from afar or within their own imagination. This is not to say that Abe's characters take no part in a sexual life; indeed, the desire for intercourse is one of the unifying features of Abe's protagonists. The simple fact is that, when push comes to shove, these impulses are never able to escape the individual's sphere of bodily control, that is, to become more than a masturbatory experience. One of the underlying tensions of The Ark

Sakura, for example, concerns Mole weighing out whether he might have a chance with the female con artist aboard his ship, as his concerns over his own appearance result in a simultaneously humorous and incredibly pathetic competition over her among the male members of his crew, with points measured out in how many times one can manage slap her bottom. This image alone conjures a mixture of disgust and pathetic humor. The fantasies of the masculine here are simultaneously given free reign and are inherently constrained by the impotence of the male fantasy which can only express itself as a crude competition for sexual “ownership” with no satisfying result. The contents of the fantasies held by

Abe's characters are most telling regarding this thematic element of impotence. Lacking any kind of resolution or even a shred of inter-personal involvement, the images conjured in their minds can never move beyond the pornographic. That is, nearly every fantasy in Abe is qualified by the absence of the protagonist in the act. Mole's fantasies of the female shill are a prime example: 22

Unreal images began to proliferate. The girl lay asleep now, her whole body pressed tightly against the

chaise lounge, which was permeated with the smells of my body. Her body nestled in the very curves

hollowed out by mine. Perhaps in her dream she was even now smelling my smells. The chaise lounge was

embracing her bare flesh in my stead.34

The irony here of course is that, even in Mole's fantasy, she can only exist in a nude or sexual state of being in the literal, concrete expression of Mole's absence, the empty space created by his body. The masturbatory nature of Mole's fantasy is so great that he himself has no place in it. Rather, the essential impulse here is once again towards this “ownership” of the female form as he imagines her enveloped in his scent, the placeholder for his own body. This is all the more apparent in the few occasions when the female shill and Mole actually make physical contact in which Mole can only focus on his own physical shortcomings and experiences, describing in detail the palpitations of his own heart or the copious amounts of sweat drenching his body.35 The result is a comical yet essentially sad spectacle in which Mole's self-absorption wins out over any chance he has for a meaningful connection, as he and the lady shill end up merely grinding thighs together in a strange ritualistic dance.36 Ultimately, Mole himself reaches this conclusion, as he realizes his fantasy is irrational:

“Day after day alone with the girl, wrapped together in a world the consistency of banana juice-she in her

red artificial skirt, with those red lips, and drooping eyes, and that straight shiny nose, shiny at the tip; and

beside her me, forever staring at her like a mute gorilla...Then would begin the halcyon days of a eupcaccia

(and eventually, no doubt, regret so searing that I would long to chop myself into a thousand pieces and

flush myself down the toilet.)”37 23

Mole struggles through the course of the novel with the interaction of his many fantasies (the fantasy of the female shill, the fantasy of an ideal crew of his fellows, the fantasy of a bright new future following the destruction of his past) and the reality of his situation. It is only after he attempts to absorb the sexual object, his mentally fragmented image of the feminine, that his own physical body enters the forefront of his mind and his world comes crashing down. As Van Wert describes it, “the sexual confrontations which lead to a new identity also lead to psychic terrorism, because they eradicate intellect, leaving the weak ego to fend for itself.”38 The conclusion to The Ark Sakura, which finds Mole abandoning both the ark and the woman for an uncertain return to reality, presents the essential ambiguity found in this 'psychic terrorism' in the stripping away of the ego. The disintegration of his fragile vision is also the disintegration of his established sense of self, leaving behind only the

“stain”39 of his physical body and disillusioned mind. What awaits him in the future is completely unknown to us. Much as in the case of “useless objects” overwhelming “usefulness,” the abrasive nature of the sexual object has erased any source from which we can draw meaning, leaving only a void behind.

One of Abe's most famous quotes, popularized by its appearance in his 1977 novel, Secret

Rendezvous, (Mikkai, 1977) states that, “Love for the weak always conceals a murderous intent.”40 In many ways, this somewhat sinister statement is a perfect summary of affection in Abe's world. The always male protagonist of Abe's works and their desired conquests seem to only be able to interact with each other on a level that approaches a grotesque predation. Women are not a force of salvation to

Abe, but rather a mirror reflection of the male sexual gaze, a literal objectification in which the woman is transformed into a series of unconnected body parts: breasts, butts, and thighs, and their value in the forms they create. This is not done to highlight any kind of present reality, but rather to affirm one's personal reality as the perception of and interaction with objects, which the male gaze parses into 24 meaningless parts rather than meaningful wholes. Only a lack of faith in humanity and an incredulousness towards one's own comically impotent body can come of it. As seen in Kangaroo

Notebook,

The male partner was not in the photograph. It was a picture of a headless girl. One of her knees was

slightly raised. Ribs visible between her breasts. Only her thighs were voluptuous; the richness of her inner

thigh was nearly palpable. Near the left thigh joint was a small pinkish birthmark. Shaped like Sado Island.

Two fingers touching the wispy pubic hair. The edges of her inner labia were visible; they looked just like

thin slices of mushroom. My heart skipped a beat, then trembled like jelly (…) I can't very well spend this

thousand yen. But I want what I want. The photo has an allure for me that surpasses mere lust.41

The protagonist's overwhelming desire for the photograph here is directly correlated with the ease with which he is able to break down the image of the woman (who turns out to be the daughter of the impotent pornographer) into a collection of her features. Neither her face nor her partner are visible here; all that remains is a pile of organs and limbs for the viewer to dissect in a grotesque display of self-gratification. So perhaps, to lift a leaf from Freud's book, Abe's “murderous intent” can also be described as an “atomizing intent,” a desire to forcibly reconcile the other into the personal world through the simultaneous destruction and absorption of the other. The male gaze attempts to deconstruct the feminine into a series of physical features, placing the male himself in a position of dominance as he reaches for control over these objects of flesh. However, sex, as the ultimate act of intimacy, cannot reach conclusion, as intimacy itself has become impossible. In its stead, the fantasy, an expression of the untenable desires of a heavily personal inner world, becomes the guiding principle of human interaction. Abe's characters seek a self-contained reality in which they can exist in absolute comfort. Naturally, though, this requires a reconciliation of the aspects of the outside world with one's 25 own inner desires and perceptions. Abe plays heavily with this dynamic in the realm of the sexual as the woman, the sexual object, assumes the role of an incomprehensible object, one which may flirt with the protagonist in one moment and threaten his life in the next. Abe's femmes fatales are the product of the impotent minds of his male protagonists, unable to imagine a world beyond their own. And, much like the autonomous objects of the garbage dump, these women invade the world of the subject and effectively destabilize his perceived control and agency. The wife swept away in the middle of the night can transform into a sexual spectacle beyond recognition as in Secret Rendezvous; and in The Face of

Another (Tanin no Kao, 1959), the protagonist's meticulous plans to seduce his own wife are undone in an instant by a quick glance in which she sees right through his disguise. The fantasy of the feminine, then, falls very much in line with Abe's “fantasy of the object” in which personal predilections and a confidence in an invisible reasoning lead to farce and disaster. The consequences of this sexual misattribution are not only an impotence of the mind, but of the body. The regressive nature of Abe's characters also robs them, ironically, of any power they might have had to act on their impulses. Van

Wert describes the dynamic as follows:

Real “confrontation almost always comes in the form of a woman, fragmented as a sexual object through

voyeuristic camera-like close-ups and associated with insect- or animal-imagery. But Abe's women possess

superior intellects, which enable them to manipulate the male narrators into sexual confrontations. When

sex occurs, it is always described at the level of animal instinct: a sex that resolves the narrator's divided

tendencies toward aggression (as a man) and withdrawal (as a scientist), a sex which forges new identity by

obliterating rational intellect.42

In Kangaroo Notebook, the relationship of the pathetic humor of impotence and the predatory nature of the sexual is even further accentuated as the fantasies of the protagonist come to shape his hallucinatory journey into the underground. Compared to those within The Ark Sakura, the fantasies of 26 the protagonist of Kangaroo Notebook assert themselves with far greater force, to the point where the line between his individual perceptions and reality becomes blurred. One of the central tensions in the novel is the leitmotif of the doppelgänger, or mistaken identity. In the course of his journey, the narrator encounters three distinct women all united by a common feature of “sloping eyes” which causes him to question whether they might not be the same person. Similar to the case of Mole and the eupcaccia, the fetishized sexual object overwhelms the protagonist's perception of reality, to the point where all he can see are his long-sought after “sloping eyes.”

Suddenly I was overcome by pity and tenderness. My tear ducts tingled. I don't especially dislike my

mother. But I don't like her either. Old people are all revolting. As I silently apologized to my mother, I

became captivated by the vampire woman's short skirt and began having an erection. If she took off her

glasses, what sort of eyes would she have? Her plain glasses created a strong reflection so I could hardly

see her eyes. They may well be gorgeous sloping eyes.43

Of course, this preoccupation with the sexual object also leads to his downfall as he becomes trapped by these perceptions and, at the novel's end, literally incarcerated by them as his tarrying with a young girl with the “sloping eyes” cuts off his means of escape and forces him into an infinite regression into himself. Ultimately, it is implied that he dies here, entombed in his own mind. Intimacy with another is impossible due to the preformed boundaries of men’s' own minds that blind them to the realities of their own situation. Feelings the protagonist holds for his mother are replaced in an instant with his feelings of lust for the short skirt and sloping eyes of the nurse. After all, what chance does affection have when one is presented with the irresistible sexual object? As Iles notes on the protagonist of Kangaroo Notebook,

Intimacy is impossible not only between parents and children, but between men and women as well. The 27

women the narrator encounters on this journey remain strangers to him. However much he may yearn for

physical contact with them, it remains beyond his reach. Moreover, any emotional contact is unobtainable,

as well. Even the mysterious sister at the novel's close has mistaken the narrator for someone else: it is only

by virtue of mistaken identity that she shows him any warmth, and it is by virtue of this warmth that the

protagonist becomes stranded at the station, the site of his incarceration by the dead children of the River

Sai.44

Beyond the theme of sexual impotence, there is a good deal to be said for the motif of more general physical impotence as it plays out in The Ark Sakura and Kangaroo Notebook. Abe's focus on the subject of physical disabilities or disadvantages (like Mole's obesity or Kangaroo Notebook's bed- ridden protagonist) is by no means a novel one to his works 45, however, the trajectory of entrapment or physical debilitation changes dramatically over the course of Abe's career.

Whereas in texts like Woman in the Dunes (Suna no Onna, 1962) or The Ruined Map (Moetsukita

Chizu, 1967), the protagonists find themselves disabled by social or intellectual boundaries, in

Kangaroo Notebook and The Ark Sakura, the protagonists' level of confinement is predicated directly on their sense of physical being. The Ark Sakura's Mole, as an obese outcast, is often torn from his intellectual pursuits by a mixture of physical duress and clumsiness; throughout the novel, his train of thought will be interrupted by a fit of sweating or some physical bumbling on his part. In a sense he is harried by his own physical sense of being, a sensation that reaches a head at the novel's climax where he slips and his leg is caught in the massive toilet at the heart of the ark. To this point, though Mole has attempted to maintain his composure, he loses all sense of reason as he desperately tries to pull his leg free, raving and rapidly shifting between intense pain in his leg, discomfort brought on by his bladder, and sexual desire for the female shill who watches with a mixture of amusement and horror. A change in Mole's physical state here completely destabilizes the mental, leading him to hallucinate “parasitic 28 worms digging into his leg”46. Mind is trumped by matter as the cast of characters fall into disarray with the clogging of the toilet. Indeed, this is but one of the many scatological jokes present in The Ark

Sakura, the titular ark itself being constructed around a giant toilet which supposedly has the power to suck down anything due to the immense strength of subterranean water pressure. The central image of the eupcaccia, the insect that feeds infinitely on its own feces, too has a decidedly scatological cast, furthering this thematic relationship of the private physical functions of the body with the mentality of self-containment and obsession that traces the trajectory of Mole's character. There is a strange sense of nascence that surrounds the scatological as it encompasses the infantile desire to regress into a self- contained, isolated state of being. As Mole notes,

People can't win out over waste matter; at some point it takes over and gets the better of them. In foreign

countries you often come across the ruins of abandoned cities and towns. Buildings made of stone couldn't

be easily moved, so raw sewage and dead bodies accumulated, epidemics were rampant, and the cities were

left to fall into ruins. Wooden structures disappear without a trace, but they might have been that much

more sanitary. The only way to avoid having to move, or leave empty ruins, is to build your city around a

large manhole. The ideal sewage system, in other words, is like a giant umbilical cord: the lifeline of the

city of the future.47

The desire for complete isolation on the part of Abe's characters is quite common, with the protagonist of Kangaroo Notebook wondering himself time and time again whether the growth of radish sprouts on his shins might not signal his rebirth as “a miniature Earth”48 or a self-enclosed ecosystem. The fantasy of self-sufficiency is tied heavily to a sense of the body and quite often presents a central point of divergence in Abe's work. That is, can one, immersed in the experience of his own body, exist as a wholly independent entity? While the fantasy in Abe is, on the one hand, a dangerous 29 gateway to a solipsistic worldview, the body, as a source of dread, can possibly be as destructive, erasing the ego to reveal a nihil lying behind everyday realities. The next and final chapter will attempt to address this question and make sense of the vacuum left in the wake of Abe's abrasive “super- eraser”49 that has eliminated traditional sources of meaning. 30

CHAPTER II: VANITY

The humor in Abe's work is accompanied by an inevitable breakdown of traditional sources of meaning; the transformation of our categorical perceptions, our sources of information, and even our sense of bodily autonomy, into objects of ridicule necessarily alienates us from our “natural” form interaction with them. The question then, is what remains following the fragmentation of these seemingly necessary supports for daily life— what can exist in the void created by Abe's “super- eraser”? An easy answer to this question is that there is simply nothing. Indeed, the narrative arc of

Abe's novels almost inevitably leads to a sense of crushing ambiguity in which the fate of the protagonist is left to one's own interpretation. Iles argued in “Abe Kōbō: An Exploration of his Prose,

Drama, and Theater” that the ending of Abe's protagonist's journey was simply the beginning of another: to seek a new, more ideal community, having witnessed the breakdown of the systematized and traditional forms of human interaction. While one may disagree with Iles' interpretation of Abe's narrative trajectory, there is an undeniable sense of optimism to be found at the heart of the often stark realities the characters of the novel find themselves in by the book's end. Even in cases where the protagonists have lost their traditional sense of autonomy,50 they have discovered the simultaneous comfort and terror of an entirely new reality, a new form of existence hidden beneath the clutter of their naturalistic perceptions. The world of objects, of refuse, left in the wake of climactic destruction offers an opportunity for the protagonists to create a new life, a reality structured by their own desires and needs, which leads to a revolutionary new perspective, a perspective in which the values of the protagonist can be internally generated; fantasy (the “true” fantasy of the selfish individual, rather than the “societal fantasy” of systemic structures) overwhelms reality completely, in an act of simultaneous entrapment and liberation from which there is no escape.

It is in this act of overwhelming vanity in which the unconscious will of the individual creates 31 meaning (ahistorical, non-categorical meaning) in the void of reality's objects, that solidifies Abe as a proponent of postmodern truth over modernity. When there are no criticisms to be made, no objects left to scrutinize, all that remains is the ego, battered and fragile, and the reality it creates in an act of pathos. This chapter will focus on this drastic, new world left in the wake of Abe's analytic destruction which suggests the potential for self-generative truth and the elements of the pathetic and heroic associated with it.

Pathos of the Postmodern

The overwhelming humor and dread associated with Abe's images inherently change our interaction with objects— we can no longer judge ideas, items, or even our own bodies based on elements of

“usefulness” or “uselessness.” These modifiers have ceased to be meaningful in their violent unification within Abe's garbage dump. In their place, the characters of Abe and the reader are left to their own devices in establishing sources of meaning. Ultimately, this culminates in a formation of identity based on sheer whim and personal predilections. As was mentioned in the discussion of the role of the sexual in Abe's works, there is an inherent tendency in Abe's characters to attempt to seek out and internalize the familiar. Mole sees a point of identification between himself and the eupcaccia early in the novel and he quickly internalizes it as a representation for his own character. Likewise, the nameless protagonist of Kangaroo Notebook quickly latches onto the image of the woman with the

“sloping eyes” and begins to see her constantly as she invades his world from all sides. Though the initial adoption of these features may seem shallow or essentially frivolous, this sense of self and world-building based on whim and pathos comes to act as an important guiding principle in Abe's later work as the obsession with the image of the self, of one's own form, comes to dominate the characters' sense of worth.

In Kangaroo Notebook, the vitality and importance of such “pathetic” images and objects cannot be 32 understated. The central image of the novel, the kangaroo, is initially depicted as a malformed cousin of mammals and, indeed, this sense of misshapenness dominates the novel thematically. In the protagonist's many travels, he encounters a near endless number of such “misshapen” objects and characters including (but not limited to): a pair of amorous, but dismembered squid genitalia; young demon children who constantly cry out “Help Me, Help Me”; the ever-popular young girl with sloping eyes; and even the protagonist himself, a man suffering from a mysterious ailment, completely helpless as he is strapped to his hospital bed. The list goes on, but what is vital to note, recalling the point made in Secret Rendezvous, is that “love for the weak always conceals a murderous intent,” and though these objects and characters may seem frail and endearing, they are far from defenseless. To take the case of

Kangaroo Notebook's “Help Me” Club of child-demons as an example,

All of a sudden, the child-demons charged at the tourists. They lifted the hems of their long undershirts

to form kangaroo-like pouches and accosted the old folks.

“Help me, help me, help me, please;

Please, please, won't you help me, please.”

“It's intimidating to say the least.”

“They probably can't run the nursery school on city funding alone.”

The ratio of men to women in the group was two to eleven. Maybe the men looked more generous;

each of them was hit up by several child-demons.

Finally they called it a day. The old people were patting the child-demons' heads, rubbing their cheeks

and hugging them, when the guide blew her whistle and urged them to return to the van (…) To departing

customers, the exchange of farewells marks the end of a rare festive occasion; to the women seeing them

off, it's a depressingly familiar daily ritual.51 33

The intrinsically predatory nature of the pitiable causes yet another classic Abe alienation from the familiar, this time causing us to question the root of seemingly empathetic human interactions. When the old folks exchange wealth for the image of the helpless child-demons, a radically new paradigm of human relations emerges in which both parties actively participate in a simulacrum, a parody of the real, emotional relations enacted in order to achieve their desired fantasy. The old folks visiting the hot spring can experience an amalgam of their personal fantasies in the child-demons (who take on the image of youth, tradition, and salvation in their Buddhist trappings) and the child- demons, like highly evolved parasites, are able to exploit the old for their money, rushing to the targets they know to be most vulnerable. Human interaction thus becomes inherently changed, transformed into an exchange of graphic currency as the many tourists and consumers making up Abe's unconscious world seek out and consume the image of the frail and helpless, unaware of their true nature. In turn, they, the consumers, are trapped by the image of their fantasy which exploits them for needed sustenance. The end result is a “world of pathos” where mythical elements of the past and commercial elements of the present/future compete in a struggle for dominance among the vista of the forgotten, playing on the sympathies of the strong in order to survive. Our damaged, parasitic protagonist, helplessly seeking his own wellness while feeding off the lifeline of his IV drip, is the perfect voyager in this world of vain predators. His own journey sees him jump between the dual roles of sympathizer and object of affection in his whirlwind relationship with the mysterious, dangerous nurse and her doppelgängers , known only to him as “Damselfly”:

Damselfly took my elbow. Graceful fingers, like those of a model in a commercial for laundry detergent. I must have been hexed; my feet were rooted to the spot. The bed pulled up alongside us and quietly halted. 34

Damselfly took a nurse's uniform cap from her shoulder bag, pinned it on her head, and reversed her

green belt with an orange flower pattern to its white side. She was instantly transformed into a nurse.

Absolute authority. I gave in and scrambled up, shoulders first, spun my body halfway around, and lay

down on my back (...)

Damselfly deftly smoothed the wrinkles out of the sheets, shook out the damp blanket, and spread it

over me. When I surrender totally to her, I go falling down and down into a hole; it's a deliciously

regressive sensation, like returning to infancy. I've never taken a sand bath, but I imagine it's a similar

feeling. The erectile nerves in my penis are preparing for action. Have I turned into a sex fiend?52

Of course, to regard an individual as an object of personal fantasy is by no means a novel ideological thrust, but in the context of Abe's image-obsessed world, it takes on more subtle meanings.

The systematization of a lack of human regard and focus on personal desire speaks not only to a reactionary, modernist criticism of a world in which human relations become systematic because of dominating social organizations, but also to the established order of the image-centric “World of

Pathos.” The protagonist's desire for his fantasy object, the nurse, overwhelms his perceptions of her and the world around him to the point that her very existence becomes blurred. He begins to see her everywhere: in the department store where she buys him clothes; in the hospital where she checks him in; hanging around with his mother's ghost, hungry for blood; riding a train bound for the underworld in the body of a much younger woman— the list goes on. Removed from the context of reality, the image of the fantasy gains autonomy and begins to actively exert its will, shifting between position of nurturer and damsel in distress with ease. In this sense, pathos exists, ironically, as a desperate struggle for dominance among the forgotten, playing on the sympathies of the strong to survive. Its trajectory is entirely relativistic, based on whom or what can be exploited in any given situation. It can be seen as somewhat fitting that Kangaroo Notebook, a tale about the search for physical health, assumes the scene of a battle royal in which graphic images of fantasy and the mythic desperately struggle for 35 survival.

In Abe's underworld, ancient aesthetic structures of Japan, too, finally see the light of day, but as tools of a con, aspects of a greater illusion. Poetry in the 5-7-5 meter of the haiku; the mystical River

Sai associated with the afterlife; Buddhist demons serving out karmic sentences; and even a ghost of the protagonist’s mother, plucking away at the traditional shamisen, all make an appearance. However, the sakura Abe brings to our awareness are not the traditionally revered cherry blossoms, but a new breed of con man whose allegiance cannot be guaranteed, no matter their employer's wealth or power.

The shamisen pick conceals a knife and is ultimately nothing but the walking stick of a phantom; the tragedy of miscarriage and spiritual damnation is nothing more than a road stop sideshow built up to elicit the sympathies of already obsolete generation. The images of ancient Japan cannot retain their sacred meaning, as no such thing exists in Abe beyond that which can inspire terror. The re- appropriation of these traditional forms, though one may expect them to be derogatory, is carried out with the nonchalance of absolute objectivity. With no potential frame of meaning in current times, the haiku, sakura, and shamisen all become perfect candidates for the all-encompassing trash heap. As Iles notes on this odd resurgence:

Surprisingly, though, much of this mythology seems to come directly from Japanese folklore. Abe, who

throughout his life had worked so hard against 'Japaneseness', here accepts many of the folk beliefs that

had been so absent from his earlier novels. Ritualistic language throughout— specifically, nonsense

syllables which form mystical chants, intensify the air of mythical passage between the living and the

dead...However, the world of mythological significances in which the protagonist finds himself is not

something for which he intended to seek— it engulfs him without his willing cooperation in its fantastic

occurrences, and ultimately destroys him, leaving him identitiless and abandoned.53 36

As Iles notes, the world that begins to envelop the protagonist is not one of his own design, not directly at least. Images of his past, the face of his father, his mother's ghost, a book filled with annotations by his father, all assert themselves with seemingly reckless abandon, creating ceaselessly without rhyme or reason. The protagonist is left to pick his way through the ensuing chaos. A creature of appetite, he wanders through the images of his own subconscious given autonomy. However, the greatest point of transformation remains with the protagonist at all times: it is the image of his own body.

Of course, the natural target for the vain impulse is one's own body and, in Abe's novels, the phenomenological experience of one's own body takes on far greater significance than the structures surrounding his characters. They are, in effect, absorbed by their own physical bodies, encapsulated in their own physicality. In Kangaroo Notebook, the wayward protagonist, after consuming radish sprouts growing from his shins, can no longer stomach any “naturally” grown sprouts and is forced to rely on his own for sustenance, vomiting immediately when he tastes a sprout not grown from his own body. In

The Ark Sakura, Mole also finds himself in this predicament; as a natural outcast, he often uses the image of the body to mark his territory and to denote possession, to the point where he begins to identify the ark itself as an extension of his body. As Mole notes,

Until now these walls had seemed a second skin to me. They had seemed the inner walls of my own

bowels, turned inside out for my contemplation. Now that special intimacy was gone forever. Community

life meant that they must appear the same to all. The walls were ordinary walls, the floors ordinary floors,

the ceilings ordinary ceilings...Yes, everything had changed. Even if I could somehow have chased away

the shill and the insect dealer, the old tranquility would never return.54

In one sense, the private world of the self is depicted here as inherently unsustainable; it assumes the 37 reality beyond itself to be irrelevant and dispensable, making the invasion of the Other when it does occur far more traumatic. However, the ark is, nevertheless, an object that reflects Mole's self; not in any grand metaphysical sense, but in the capacity of a phenomenological sense of attachment derived from his having inhabited it. It is the vessel for his habits, quirks, and isolated idiosyncrasies, the great stone body shielding his weak ego. Mole's act of creating the ark is an act of self-reflection, a “spilling of his guts” as the ark becomes inherently associated with Mole's act of habitation within it; his loud singing echoing off the walls as he urinates, the intimacy of his evenings drinking beer and eating chocolates, and even his suffering as he was chained to a toilet as a child are all reflected in his memories of the ark, furthering this fascinating association of the environmental object as a mirror of the inner self. The Ark Sakura is filled with such 'vain' objects serving as outer expressions of the private self's physical experience:

“But there are people with attachments to a certain pillow. It must be the smell of their own hair oils,

absorbed into the pillow.” (…) “Other people's smells may be unbearable, but your own never are,” said

the shill. “Everyone has a certain affection for their own body odors.”55

Just as in the example of the radish sprouts, the example of the pillow depicts how similar objects may be differentiated by seemingly meaningless points of phenomenological distinction. While trash and treasure are distinct objects, supposedly separated by the categorization of “value,” a radish sprout or a pillow should be just that, an ordinary plant or pillow. However, Abe's alienation has already proven this naturalistic paradigm of categorization to be faulty. Trash and treasure are merely two sides of the same coin, and a pillow, though seemingly identical to any other, can be elevated by a sense of relationship with the individual's physical body. In this way, Abe privileges the object through the experience of it. Just as in the example of the trash heap, where common items become labyrinthine 38 and mysterious under particular scrutiny, the ordinary or replicated object can become something deeply personal with a mere addition of one's own odors. The meaningfulness and utility of the object here is inherently bound up in the experiencer's vain attraction to the self. And, unlike the systematic categorization of objects that falls apart within the trash heap, this vain indulgence in the self, as a wholly subjective reality, can persist unscathed.56

The heart of the problem in Kangaroo Notebook, then, is finding a method by which to encapsulate this incredibly subjective experience in a form that is transmittable and meaningful. That is, to translate the inconsistent, ever-changing experience of the body into terms which can be used to make meaningful connections. The protagonist of Kangaroo Notebook, caught in a whirlwind of objects and images in Abe's underworld, does not cling to logical structure with the same intensity of Abe's previous protagonists, but he still has an agenda, the goal of health and well-being. In other words, he has a desire for control of his own bodily experience. Often, this struggle takes the form of the protagonist simply trying to keep track of the changes occurring in his own body, an experience that proves more and more trying as he is subjected to myriad metamorphoses through the course of the novel:

Suddenly a cicada sloughs off its skin. Or is it a snake's skin? No, it feels like a thicker garment coming off.

More like a shell being shed by a lobster or crab. All at once the anesthetic sheet wears off and I become

lighter. Apparently I've been under general anesthesia as well as local. Swaddled in a soft skin of moist

nostalgia...Only my vision becomes razor-sharp and my eyes flow with indescribable images. Rapture?

Then, slowly, revulsion brought on by a creeping sensation. Fish eggs laid over the entire surface of my

body.57

There is a fascinating sense of play in passages such as this one between “visible terms” 39

(cicada's skin, lobster's shell) and “invisible terms” (“moist nostalgia”, rapture) as the protagonist grasps for descriptors to relay the sense of his physiological experience of waking up after being anesthetized. Interestingly enough, though, his very attempt to encapsulate the experience of the body is inseparable from his present bodily condition as the grogginess filling his body and mind skew his narration, distracting him from making any meaningful statement. Instead, he is forced to rely on the physiological changes in his body as they occur (becoming lighter, creeping sensations) and he can only give a play-by-play of his situation as it happens. There can be no strategy, no planned oration when surrounded by the weight of the self. It holds an overwhelming compressive power that forces the experiencer into a position of submission beneath the experienced. He is subject to the whims of Abe's physiological “triggers”58 which create changes in the mental state. It is this powerful sense of helplessness within one's own body that led

Yamamoto to note that, “Abe concludes that human nature is not spiritual, is not innate, but rather has its roots in our physiological perception of the outside world.”59

Thus, in The Ark Sakura and Kangaroo Notebook, the experience of the intimacy of one's own body evolves beyond mere existence and takes on the capacity of a guiding principle, directing one's interactions with others. Human interaction in Abe's novels is necessarily stunted as his characters cannot escape their own bodies. This is not necessarily a point to be lamented, however. Abe presents his characters' sense of vanity with a well-practiced ambivalence. As was noted in the chapter on humor, the pollution of the body with the detritus of reality can only occur with the elevation of the body above the trash composing daily life. In other words, one's physical being is the lens which enables perspective and appreciation of that which is soto, without, distinguishable from a position of uchi, or within.60 In the pursuit of bodily purity— purity from contamination, disease, or blemish—the characters of Abe's novels privilege the bodily experience above all else. 40

There is an intrinsic link of humanity and bodily agency that is palpable within these novels. In the hospital where the nameless protagonist of Kangaroo Notebook becomes trapped, the patients are depicted as no more than broken objects, possessions of the nurses and the hospital that holds them.

The physical illness of the patients is directly related to a reduction of their “humanness,” as their physical disability leaves them all imprisoned within the hospital's walls (with the exception of one special patient who is so large that he goes unnoticed by all). Somewhat fittingly, this sentiment is expressed by one patient as he wonders aloud whether the goal of medicine is not “to restore one's dignity.”61 Our initial introduction to Mole of The Ark Sakura, too, immediately emphasizes the importance of Mole's physical reality to his internal outlook. In a somewhat off-putting description of his rotund form, complete with a graphic description of the rashes forming on his body due to his intense sweating, we understand Mole's path to isolation from other humans:

My name is Pig— or Mole. I stand five feet eight inches tall, weigh two hundred fifteen pounds, and have

round shoulders and stumpy arms and legs. Once, hoping to make myself more inconspicuous, I took to

wearing a long black raincoat-but any hope I might have had was swept away when I walked by the new

city hall complex on the broad avenue leading up to the station. The city hall building is a black steel

frame covered with black glass, like a great black mirror; you have to get past it to get to the train station.

With that raincoat on, I looked like a whale calf that had lost its way, or a discarded football, blackened

from lying in the trash. Although the distorted reflection of my surroundings was amusing, my own

twisted image seemed merely pitiful. Besides, in hot weather the crease in my double chin perspires so

much I break out in a rash; I can't very well cool the underside of my chin against a stone wall the way I

can my forehead or the soles of my feet. I even have trouble sleeping. A raincoat is simply out of the

question. My reclusion deepens. 62

The physiological description of Mole here is not presented as a means to access this character; 41 rather it is his character itself. Seeing his own visage reflected to him on the black glass of the city hall complex, it becomes clear that his isolation is the direct end result of a physical contrast, separating the misfit body of the self from the world surrounding it. Again, this distinction made between Mole and his surrounding world is not intended to be reflective of a present reality, but rather presents a vain categorization performed on the basis of “ugly” and “attractive”. Mole, absorbed so fully in his own state of being, unable to escape the sweat and discomfort of the body, forms this distinction of self and

Other based entirely on a point of personal vanity, in which the ugly and isolated become attributed to the self created in the physical experience of his body. All aspects of Mole we may consider 'internal' to his character are mere reflections of the external. His discomfort, lust, and loneliness all play out in the visual formation of a eupcaccia-like man tumbling around in his own world.

What this binding of the physiological regard to one's own perceived “essence” ultimately leads to is a fascinating new paradigm of identity formation in which one's own self-regard serves a generative source of individual meaning. This sentiment comes to light rather early on in Kangaroo Notebook in which, the protagonist, accosted by a construction worker, is forced to explain not only “who” he is, but

'what' he is as well:

“Cut that out. Who should I contact? For illegal parking, it's the police. For oversized garbage, it's the

district office. For lost invalids, it's the fire department...It all depends on your pride.”63

“Hey, there's a luggage tag here. Maybe you're a kind of mail parcel.” He shone his flashlight on the tag

wired to the bed leg. “You were about to be sent to some sulfur spring. Something or other 'Hell'. I can't

read it; the ink is smeared. ...So you must be a piece of lost property. Anyway, I'll phone the police box for

you.”64

Herein we see a radical transformation in the source of one's identity; the physical appearance of the 42 image overcomes any essentialist meaning associated with the human form. Garbage, luggage, and the infirm all become interchangeable elements of the individual identity; all that separates their overlap is a sense of self-regard. A mastery of the self-image, of one's “pride,” determines their place in a non- hierarchical animistic reality. There is no essence, no solid self to be found, only a sense of self-regard that controls the sway of his unstable, ever-changing reality. The greatest virtue is the ability to manipulate this sense of self-regard that controls identity, to embrace the “learned helplessness”65 of their condition. The protagonist himself has flashes of understanding in the novel where he embraces a manipulation of his image, noting aspects of his considerable, lengthy transformation and manipulating them to his benefit by embracing a novel identity. When he is hospitalized for the second time, for example, the nameless wanderer takes on the mantle of the patient fully, changing from reticent adventurer to completely helpless patient:

On a hospital ward, nurses aren't obliged to ask permission. A patient is merely a defective piece of

merchandise that can maintain its form only by being cast in a mold called a bed.

“Does it hurt?”

“Uh-uh,” I whimpered softly shaking my head slightly from side to side. Whether a nurse

prefers self-restrained patients or clingy ones probably depends on her personality. In any case, during

Round One I should just observe my opponent's moves.66

Abe's manipulation, his step beyond the modern, is the depiction of these characters who have learned to manipulate the system of regard and human interaction, to bend the beliefs and expectations of its adherents over their knee. They are the thieves, outcasts, opportunists, and the eternal survivalists who camouflage themselves in comforts of contemporary society. The shills making off with tickets for survival behind the newest stainless steel all-purpose vibrator; the nurse who, with the unpinning of her 43 cap, becomes a violent seductress, the self-proclaimed winner of the “Daughter of Dracula” award: these characters are able to function in Abe's world because, unlike the invisible, pedestrian characters seeking normalcy through routine, they have an understanding of the graphic power of the image and can manipulate it to their benefit. They shed identities, titles, props, and costumes much like a snake does its skin. A mastery of the image, or more specifically the image of the self, though rarely achieved, is the pathway to freedom, and the concerns of the image, a gateway to slavery. The question that remains, then, is what kind of identity can be attained with such a self-involved trajectory? In other words, can a viable identity be formed by vanity?

The “Eternally-Slipping Identity”

Of course, the most striking aspect of Abe's novels is found in their resolution, in which emerges a realm of unresolved ambiguity and personal isolation. Having experienced the destruction of the world without, Abe's protagonists seek refuge in the world within, constructing a world of utter vanity which only they can inhabit, the final labyrinth in which they are hopelessly lost and simultaneously shielded from the outside world.

I can no longer see my watch, so I do not know how many days have gone by. Our provisions have

run out, and so has our supply of drinking water. Even so, whenever I grow tired I take out the batteries

and put my arms around the girl. She hardly even responds any more. One of these times the batteries in

the listening device will go dead, too, and then I will be able to go on holding her without fear of anyone.

I gnaw on the quilt made of the girl's mother and lick drops of water oozing from the concrete walls,

clinging tightly to this secret rendezvous for one that no one can begrudge me now. However much I may

resent the fact, “tomorrow's newspaper” has stolen a march on me; and so, in the past called tomorrow,

over and over again I continue certainly to die. 44

Embracing a tender, secret rendezvous for one...67

While there is an undeniable element of desperation in the plight of the ego untethered, there is a simultaneous capacity for an internal rejuvenation within the isolation of the individual. The protagonist of Secret Rendezvous, having abandoned the long and circuitous quest for his missing wife, now finds himself in a situation of unparalleled freedom. He is liberated from the fear of his peers, the fear of the march of time, and, indeed, the fear of death itself as he reaches the conclusion that to live is only an act of “continuing to die.” Mastery of himself, of his image, hands him control of his fate, but this metamorphosis leaves him with little beyond. Nevertheless, the appeal of a self-sufficient, individual existence, free from the trappings of reality, remains a dominant theme throughout Abe's works. Kangaroo Notebook approaches this theme similarly in the self-interrogation of the protagonist as to whether he might not become a self-sufficient body with the growth of his radish sprouts:

Shameless parasite though it is, there's no doubt that a plant is preferable to vermin (...) Radish sprouts

have actually eased my hunger any number of times. As long as I'm not phased by other people's

reactions, I must say they're an extremely convenient source of green vegetables. Without consulting an

expert, I can't say whether my balance sheet shows a deficit or a credit, but surely the sprouts aren't a

total liability. My partner absorbs liquid and lymph from my shins and through photosynthesis produces

carbohydrates. I eat those and convert them to energy. Assuming that energy is sufficient, then together

we constitute a closed ecosystem. Come to think of it, the earth itself is a closed ecosystem, isn't it? If I

think of myself as a miniature earth, what's there to grumble about?68

As was mentioned in the discussion of hygiene and the scatological, the myth of the “clean” body is bound up in the desire to transform into a self-sufficient, self-contained entity in order to segregate and define the self as a contrasting or distinct entity from the object. However, the scatological experience, 45 in highlighting the vulnerabilities of a perspective contained within an imperfect body, prevents us from isolating the mind. Despite our desire to isolate ourselves completely, we cannot help but be made aware of our unavoidable similarity to the refuse objects we so vehemently try to distance ourselves from. The catheter hooked up to the nameless protagonist of Kangaroo Notebook and the pressure exerted on his bladder serve as a constant reminder that, while in his own imagination his agency is endless69, this free mind is a product of and subject to the whims of a fallible, physical body which cannot be escaped. The protagonist's long voyage within his mind is brought down to earth time and time again with the realization that something in his body has gone wrong. Radishes sprout from his shins, he has an incredible urge to urinate or defecate, and he hungers for food (despite having an IV drip). Though his journey is a surreal one through the mind, the body is pulling the reins, the specter of physical decay and death overshadowing any possibility for a metaphysical reemergence in the

“normal” surface world above. This is not to say that Abe holds the body in disdain, however. Rather, any feelings of animosity we develop for the clumsiness of the physical is attributed to an ultimately hollow and unfulfilling reliance on the “mental life”. Indeed, while the protagonist travels through the nightmare-scape, his pleasure is always greatest when he receives physical relief, either when he is able to urinate or find food.

This positive association granted to a non-cerebral, visceral relationship with the body and the personal self-image offers an alternative source of identity to the individual. The fantasy of a self- contained body, an individual earth, is naturally far too idealistic to occur in reality, but a self-sufficient mind within a phenomenolgically based, bodily perspective is another matter entirely. Indeed, oftentimes the thrust in Abe's narrative arcs a movement towards a mental isolation and a physical unity, in which his characters, disillusioned to the narratives of “I” and “Other” surrender themselves over to the physical experience, becoming mentally lost in the labyrinth of the self. Much as in the final 46 moments of the protagonist of Secret Rendezvous, the characters realize they cannot compete with the illusionary external reality of “tomorrow's newspaper” and that they have no desire to try, the end result only being a greater sense of loss and self-destruction as they are brought under the heel of Abe's

“super eraser.” Mole of The Ark Sakura, expresses this sentiment, too, considering the possibility that the dynamite charges he has set to isolate the ark permanently from the outside world might backfire, killing all its inhabitants:

Should the explosions set off a chain reaction that ultimately destroys the ark, so be it. The important

thing, after all, is not survival per se, but the ability to go on hoping, even in one's final moments. And we

would certainly be guaranteed a gigantic tomb, at least the size of the pyramids!70

The devil-may-care recklessness that seizes Mole and his fellows at the novel's climax cannot be taken as happenstance; it speaks to a deep disillusionment with the traditional forms of reference and meaning. The bomb shelter of an ark can no more ensure survival than it can stop the passing of time.

Even if Mole and his compatriots can use the ark to avoid the nuclear disaster, death will find them another way. It exists as an element of their very being. What is vital, then, is not to prevent death, or to separate oneself from the object of death, but to embrace the object of the self as a generative force providing one with the will to live and “survive.”

It can be argued that Abe himself indulged in such a vain paradigm of self-representation. As he notes in Laughing Moon, many of Abe's images are taken from his own dreams or warped versions of his personal experiences.71 There is an essential air of vanity underlying this self-insertion of Abe into his own stories. As the reader interacts with these remnants of Abe's personal experience, images like the titular laughing moon— which Abe laments can only be understood within the context of his own physiological experience— they come to understand Abe's locus of interaction with his thoughts and 47 work, derived primarily from his personal experience of humor and dread. Though Abe eschewed the

“I-novel” form through most of his career, the graphic thrust of his images and their interaction with and manipulation of the characters involved reflects a deeply personal reality within Abe. His expressions of the unstable void beneath the obtuse concreteness of the image, though often aimed towards the target of societal destabilization, in and of themselves are fragments of Abe's own phenomenological reality; the product of the inescapably real and compressive interaction with an inherently personal physical and mental reality that forms the “refuse” of his character. It is the black smudge, the unseemly mark of reality which elicits a response of confusion and terror from the reader, because that is precisely what it is composed of. These images, as the detritus of Abe's real experiences, force us into the perspective of Abe himself and the realizations of instability in the everyday as he perceived it. Thus, though Abe's works are expressed in the form of the parable or the thought experiment, the haunting rumination they inspire is based in the visceral, vain nature of their imagery.

In an interview with Nancy Shields, Abe said of writing, “Many people ask why a writer commits suicide. But I think the people who ask don't know the vanity and nothingness of writing. I think it is very usual and natural for the writer to commit suicide, because in order to keep on writing, he must be a very strong person. There are writers who might as well be dead, but just keep on living.”72 There is a definite element of depression underlying Abe's works. He himself remarked there was often a sense of melancholy and emptiness that inevitably followed the completion of a work.73 Part of this melancholy despite all the critical praise he received may have had something to do with the fact that Abe didn't write to be lauded or analyzed. Rather, his work was intended as a tool of liberation. This aspect of his work comes through most clearly in Abe's dramatic pieces, which focused heavily on interaction with the audience.74 Abe's theatrical technique of “neutral position,” was expressly designed to draw the attention of the audience to aspects of physical interaction which form the point of inference for our 48 experience of abstractions of human interaction (i.e. emotions, thoughts, etc.)75 Shields explains this aspect of Abe's technique as follows:

The point of this journey along which Abe led his troupe was not that emotions don't exist, but that an

awareness of physiological states was absolutely essential to the understanding of emotional states and

their expression on the stage. On the other hand, Abe held, psychological analysis did not illuminate

physiological states— in fact, because of the illusionary power of analytical language, talk of emotions

was more likely to obscure our understanding of our physiological state of being.76

The new order established by Abe is an ambiguity wrought from an essential conflict with the physical world, one between the invisible, (supposedly) infallible analytic mind and an unyielding reality composed of the refuse the mind cannot accept: Abe's paradise of garbage. In Ark Sakura and

Kangaroo Notebook, this essential dichotomy is taken a step further as the conflict becomes internalized to the characters' sense of physical presence and being. The body becomes an ambiguous locus of meaning, both a source of dread in its fallible nature and a locus of meaning in the narcissistic

“self-sufficient” freedom it possibly offers. Once the characters in Abe (and arguably Abe himself) reach this conclusion, there is no other option than to retreat inward, to give oneself over entirely to the physiological reality of the self. No longer draped in the psychological illusions of self-deception, the protagonist of Abe's novel can find no other meaning than the self, and his perspective is thus “trapped” within and limited to his own experience. However, with a new-found awareness of the mutability of his own bodily state, the limited perspective of the self offers limitless potential for transformation and change. This simultaneous liberation and constriction the body provides forms the central argument of

Abe's later works. Truth is both unknowable and easily fabricated and the resolution to Abe's novels finds the protagonist experiencing just that. Whether this results in an inescapable despair (as in 49

Kangaroo Notebook or The Face of Another) or in a somewhat hopeful recognition of potentiality in a postmodern existence (as in The Ark Sakura or The Box Man) is entirely dependent on the individual and, at times, the result is so ambiguous that it may well be a mixture of the two (as in Secret

Rendevous). Regardless, the pathway to this understanding remains fairly constant through Abe's works: a disillusionment with the object-subject relationship and a resulting regression into and isolation within the individual, physiological reality. As Michael Guest describes the conclusion to

Abe's most famous novel, Woman in the Dunes:

What had appeared from his previous naturalistic, public perspective to be an intolerable condition was a

utopia in disguise, a vital sexual autonomous life. Junpei's abnegation of the old life is marked by an

official document noting his disappearance: the final trace of an identity as it slips perpetually,

instantaneously about the Mobius curve into its subjective phase. One will read pessimism into Abe's

narrative progression to the extent that one contributes traditional ideas of reference and mimesis.77

The essential question raised by the conclusion of Abe's works is if there is a potential for the existence of a non-essential identity. As Guest notes, the disappearance of the protagonist from reality marks an abandonment of a previously established identity for an anonymous existence. There is an essential deterioration of the “I-thou” formation of identity as the character disappears into his own state of existence. However, this breakdown in categorical distinctions of identity is portrayed constantly in Abe's work, and there is a readily visible parallel in the useful/useless dichotomy previously discussed in the comparison of trash and non-trash objects. Just as in the prior example of trash objects, the solidity of the individual identity is undermined by a sense of basic human regard that underlies human interaction. The conclusion reached is that there is no essential value to be found within humanity, but this also negates any possible negative aspects of humanity one might hold in his 50 preconceptions. As the shill from The Ark Sakura notes on the various organizations of people they encounter:

“Even granting the Wild Boar Stew Gang is the dregs of humanity— absolute scum— there still isn't

much to choose between them and the old men in the Broom Brigade. Anyway, basically I don't believe

in dividing people into trash and nontrash. Evolution taught me that much.” He gave a quick self-

deprecating smile, and added, “Garbage is the fertilizer that makes trees grow.”78

It's little wonder that it is the sakura, the con man, who reaches this conclusion. He is Abe's champion, the eternal survivor. With a mastery of his image and no regard for the hollow categorical structures of reality, he embraces a variable identity on equal footing with the many objects of reality's composite parts. His statement concerning the division of humans into trash and non-trash, too, finally bridges the gap between the regard for objects and the regard for the self, equating the two as basically being the same. At first glance, the phrase “human garbage” is likely to be written off as a mere insult, an unflattering comparison denoting someone as the dregs of humanity. However, the works of Abe Kōbō offer a significantly different interpretation. Garbage and refuse are not a negative in Abe; to the contrary, garbage constitutes the world we live in. Our most valuable possessions are garbage, our communal history is garbage, even our own bodies are merely complex heaps of trash waiting to break down. However, in this shocking transformation of both ourselves and our world into a meaningless heap of garbage, Abe offers a rejuvenating alternative to the world of prejudices, fixed perspectives, and callous narratives of control that dominate our lives. In alienating us from this world surrounding us, Abe urges a movement to the true self, a phenomenological being with no preconceptions and the ability to forge meaning in a context-less new world. Abe's depiction of the human body and the experience of its perceptions rejects the essentialist nature of naturalist depictions of reality, and forces 51 both his characters and readers into a state of unstable reappraisal. Abe's approach to reality is inherently fragmentary, it breaks down the world into its composing elements, depicting all as malleable, including ourselves. The ultimate result is a call to see beyond the collapse of a universal, social truth, and to move to an isolated, personal truth. His message is simple: pursuit of self- destructive traditional forms of organization invites disaster, and the pursuit of individual, idiosyncratic meaning offers possible liberation. As Guest notes in a final analysis of Abe's association with the physiological:

Why scar, bury, vanish, fragment, conceal, unravel, and deface the body? Rather than informing

allegories of human alienation, the more progressive act may be to undermine the simulacrum of man by

attacking its generative icon, the body.79 52

NOTES

1. William Joseph Currie. Metaphors of Alienation : the Fiction of Abe, Beckett and Kafka. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms International (1977).

2. Timothy Iles. Abe Kōbō: An Exploration of his Prose, Drama and Theatre. Fucecchio, Italy: European Press Academic Publishing (2000), 10-11.

3. Nancy Shields. Fake Fish: The Theater of Kōbō Abe. New York: Weatherhill (1996), 53.

4. Fumiko Yamamoto. "Metamorphosis in Abe Kōbō's Works." American Association of Teachers of Japanese 15.2 (1980), 173.

5. Shields, Fake Fish, 35.

6. Ibid., p.13.

7. Ibid., p.13.

8. Iles, Abe Kōbō: An Exploration, 26-27.

9. David Keffer. "The Scriptorium: Kobo Abé." The Modern Word (blog), November 10, 2000. http://www.themodernword.com/scriptorium/abe.html (accessed April 17, 2013).

10. Shields, Fake Fish, 23.

11. Ibid., 23.

12. Abe Kōbō, The Ark Sakura, trans. Juliet Winters Carpenter (New York: Knopf, 1988), 8.

13. Abe Kōbō, Warau Tsuki. (Tōkyō: Shinchōsha, 1984), 124.

14. Abe Kōbō, Kangaroo Notebook: A Novel, trans. Maryellen Toman Mori. (New York: Knopf, 1996), 29.

15. Abe Kōbō, Laughing Moon, 111.

16. Abe Kōbō, The Ark Sakura, 5.

17. Michael Guest. "Autonomy and the Body in Samuel Beckett and Kōbō Abe." Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd'hui: AFTER BECKETT / D’APRES BECKETT (2004): 162.

18. Abe Kōbō, Laughing Moon, 100.

19. Ibid., 100.

20. Ibid., 102. 53

21. Shields, Fake Fish, 50.

22. Ibid., 24.

23. Abe Kōbō, Laughing Moon, 102.

24. Ibid., 98.

25. Iles, Abe Kōbō: An Exploration, 42.

26. Guest, “Autonomy and the Body,” 162.

27. Ibid., 163.

28. Abe Kōbō, Laughing Moon, 130.

29. Abe Kōbō, The Ark Sakura, 297.

30. The commune of doctors in Secret Rendezvous or the village heads in Woman in the Dunes, for example.

31. Ibid., 283.

32. Ibid., 196.

33. Abe Kōbō, Laughing Moon, 86.

34. Abe Kōbō, The Ark Sakura, 198.

35. Ibid., 4.

36. Ibid., 226.

37. Ibid., 231.

38. William Van Wert."Levels of Sexuality in the Novels of Kōbō Abe." The International Fiction Review 6.2 (1979): 132.

39. Slavoj Žižek. Enjoy Your Symptom!: Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and out. New York: Routledge (1992), 4.

40. Abe Kōbō, Secret Rendezvous, trans. Juliet Winters Carpenter. (New York: Knopf, 1979), 1.

41. Abe Kōbō, Kangaroo Notebook, 164.

42. Van Wert, “Levels of Sexuality,” 129.

43. Abe Kōbō, Kangaroo Notebook, 100. 54

44. Iles, Abe Kōbō: An Exploration, 100.

45. In “The Skin of A Soap Bubble”, Abe describes his obsession with photographing “people close to refuse” along with trash he finds. In many ways, the individuals he describes are outcasts, people who no longer have a “useful” aspect to their being. His list includes diverse characters and places as a scraggly yakuza, a train station, and a wayward vagabond. The association of the physically disabled or deformed with the garbage object is particularly interesting, however, and this will be the focus from here on.

46. Abe Kōbō, The Ark Sakura, 259.

47. Ibid., 168.

48. Abe Kōbō, Kangaroo Notebook, 63.

49. Shields, Fake Fish, 24.

50. Niki Junpei of Woman in the Dunes, trapped in his sand pit, or the protagonist of Secret Rendezvous, forever lost in the labyrinth beneath the hospital, for example.

51. Abe Kōbō, Kangaroo Notebook, 78-79.

52. Ibid., 111-112.

53. Iles, Abe Kōbō: An Exploration , 93-94.

54. Abe Kōbō, The Ark Sakura, 197.

55. Ibid., 110.

56. Perhaps due to a lack of grandeur found in the vain act.

57. Abe Kōbō, Kangaroo Notebook, 134.

58. Abe Kōbō, Laughing Moon, 111.

59. Yamamoto, “Metamorphosis in Abe Kobo,” 172.

60. Seiichi Makino. “What Will Be Lost in Translation?.” Lecture. Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies. Harvard University, Porte Room, Cambridge, Massachusetts. 28 September 2012.

61. Abe Kōbō, Kangaroo Notebook, 154.

62. Abe Kōbō, The Ark Sakura, 3-4.

63. Abe Kōbō, Kangaroo Notebook, 23. 55

64. Ibid., 24.

65. Guest, “Autonomy and the Body,” 169.

66. Abe Kōbō, Kangaroo Notebook, 134-135.

67. Abe Kōbō, Secret Rendezvous, 179.

68. Abe Kōbō, Kangaroo Notebook, 62-63.

69. Referring here to the Atlas brand mechanical bed that ferries him through the nightmarish plane of his mind. Ironically enough, the hospital bed that traps the protagonist through most of his journey may, within the warped fantasy, be considered an “ideal body”, effortlessly bringing the protagonist most anywhere he desires (until its inevitable failure, of course).

70. Abe Kōbō, The Ark Sakura, 184.

71. Abe Kōbō, Laughing Moon, 67-68.

72. Shields, Fake Fish, 68.

73. Ibid., 63.

74. Ibid., 53.

75. Ibid., 71.

76. Ibid., 82.

77. Guest, “Autonomy and the Body,” 169.

78. Abe Kōbō, The Ark Sakura, 272.

79. Guest, “Autonomy and the Body,” 172. 56

BIBLIOGRPAHY

Abe Kōbō, Kangaroo Notebook: A Novel. Translated by Maryellen Toman Mori. New York: Knopf, 1996. Print.

Abe Kōbō, Secret Rendezvous. Translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter. New York: Knopf, 1979. Print.

Abe Kōbō, The Ark Sakura. Translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter. New York: Knopf, 1988. Print.

Abe Kōbō, Warau Tsuki. Tōkyō: Shinchōsha, 1984. Print.

Currie, William Joseph. Metaphors of Alienation : the Fiction of Abe, Beckett and Kafka. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms International, 1977.

Guest, Michael. "Autonomy and the Body in Samuel Beckett And Kōbō Abe." Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd'hui: AFTER BECKETT / D’APRES BECKETT (2004): 161-77. Web.

Horvat, Andras. The Wall That Kōbō Built: Four Short Stories by Abe Kōbō. Diss. University of British Columbia, 1971. N.p.: n.p., n.d.Https://circle.ubc.ca/handle/2429/34354. Web.

Iles, Timothy. Abe Kôbô: An Exploration of His Prose, Drama and Theatre. Fucecchio (Firenze), Italy: European Academic, 2000. Print.

Keffer, David. "The Scriptorium: Kobo Abé." The Modern Word (blog), November 10, 2000. http://www.themodernword.com/scriptorium/abe.html (accessed April 17, 2013).

Makino, Seiichi, “What Will Be Lost in Translation?.” Lecture. Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies. Harvard University, Porte Room, Cambridge, Massachusetts. 28 September 2012. Shields, Nancy K. Fake Fish: The Theater of Kōbō Abe. New York: Weatherhill, 1996. Print.

Van Wert, William F. "Levels of Sexuality in the Novels of Kōbō Abe." The International Fiction Review 6.2 (1979): 129-32. Web.

Yamamoto, Fumiko. "Metamorphosis in Abe Kōbō's Works." American Association of Teachers of Japanese 15.2 (1980): 170-94. Print.

Žižek, Slavoj. Enjoy Your Symptom!: Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and out. New York: Routledge, 1992. Print. 57

Appendix A: A Translation of Laughing Moon (Warau Tsuki) by Abe Kōbō

Abe Kōbō “Laughing Moon”

Table of Contents

1. Sleep Induction Technique 2. Laughing Moon 3. For Example, Research on Tab 4. The Seed of an Idea 5. The Matter of Mr. Fujino 6. The Gramophone 7. Considering “Waragen” 8. Alice’s Camera 9. The Skin of a Soap Bubble 10. A Portrait of a Certain Artist 11. Dream of the Awa Loop-line 12. The Guide 13. Self-sacrifice 14. The Flying Man 15. The Bag 16. A Public Secret 17. Secret Rendezvous

Sleep Induction Technique

For sleepless nights, allow me to introduce a sleep induction technique.

First, you appear in an American Western; preferably I would like for you to imagine an everyday scene. The conditions for a raid on a stagecoach are favorable; a prairie with a steep gorge would be best. I myself don’t fully understand why it has to be a Western. Conceivably a historical drama is roughly the same thing but, in my experience, Westerns are best. It may be because both the plot and the scenes, being quite stereotypical, require little effort to imagine.

Now, a single white road crosses the plains. Eventually the road is blocked by a high cliff and sucked into a deep fissure. Though it is dangerous, there is no road that can go around it, making it the perfect location. You are now an Indian. Above the cliff, you find a suitable place beneath the shade of a rock 58 and quietly conceal yourself there. At the zenith, the white sun trembles continuously, like a jellyfish washed up on the shore. The fluttering wind is a transparent curtain. Poorly developed, reddish bracken. A thin thicket charred a sandy color. If you like, you may broadcast a Western accompaniment.

Soon, a lone condor climbs high into the sky, as though warning of some danger. A dust cloud is forming a strip along the far road. There is a unit of cavalry dressed in ordinary uniform. You mustn’t rush. Wait until every member of the company enters the valley completely. Within the thin ravine, the soldiers can only form a single column; neither a quick retreat nor breaking their formation is possible.

Should they decide on that place, you could pick them off one by one. A famous master of the bow, you have never had to worry about missing your mark.

Now, release the arrow. The sound of the string tears the air. The arrow could not be seen, but the hit was unmistakable. Clutching his chest, tearing at his neckerchief, the white soldier fell from his horse, much like in a scene from a movie. Here, the next arrow. The fellow’s cap flies from his head. Pitching forward, he embraces the horse’s neck. Following an unhurried assessment, you nock the third. There is no shortage of the enemy and plenty of arrows on hand.

Obviously it will differ depending on conditions, but even if circumstances are good after the fourth or fifth man, the effects will begin to appear. You will seldom surpass twenty men. Rapidly, but quite smoothly, you transition into sleep. Strength leaves suddenly from the arm nocking your bow; you look at the sights around you, frozen, and then, you fade. Just like that, you fall into a deep sleep. In desperation, you try counting backwards from 1000; like those times when you try to follow familiar directions by force of habit, you recognize none of the frustrating feelings of exhaustion that come from struggling with insomnia. At first glance it seems savage; it is probably unthinkable that pretending to be a sniper from the shade of a rock should have a sedative effect, but the facts are unavoidable. Perhaps the act of murder and imagined murder are mutually contradictory matters. 59

Consider that, for example, the recent enforcement policies on model guns, contrary to the intentions of the authorities, instead began promoting incidents of public violence.

Be that as it may, this prized technique for restful sleep is regrettably of no help to me now. At one point, the tip of my nocked arrow suddenly twisted around into the shape of the letter “U” until it came to face me. It was fatal. To tell the truth, I have a terrible fear of points. It gets so bad that if I am near a knitting needle, I will be unable to tolerate it as though I am being stuck by the point in the midst of sleep; or, being unable to put up with the angles on the book of a passenger sitting next to me on a train, I will surely leave my seat. Once I began to worry about the point of the arrow, I was unable to move on. No matter how many times I tried to re-nock a new arrow, the replaced tip would suddenly curve around. Far from sedated, I became increasingly irritated, and the prospect of sleep drifted far away.

So I tried substituting a rifle for the bow. The steel barrel was, as expected, far more solid than an arrow. For a short while, the exchange somehow managed to hold up. However, in the same manner, the barrel of the gun was twisted by some distorting force and things became as unstable as they had been before. As my efforts to prevent the barrel from bending clashed with the hypnotic effects, the number of number of men I killed gradually began to increase. Then, one day, the barrel of the gun limply twisted as well, turning to face me.

For the time being, my top priority is to cure my point-phobia. But, according to the advice of my neurologist, he says that first and foremost I should try to sleep better. That is probably true. It’s decided that in order to sleep well, I should try sleeping well. I wonder if rounded weapons without any edges would be no good either.

But what’s really troublesome, even more so than the insomnia, is when I am unable to wake from a dream. The inability to awaken, more so than the difficulty of falling asleep, pierces one to the bone. 60

For example, when you dream you’re being chased by a something frightening, just when you think you are done for, you will usually wake up naturally; but I find I cannot wake from these dreams. There was a time when I had such an experience.

At that time I was traveling, waiting for someone in the lobby of my hotel. I received a phone call warning me that the customer would be an hour late. I returned to my room, laid down on my bed without removing my clothes, and, with the aid of the usual sleeping technique, I began to doze off.

Then I dreamed.

In the dream, I was being pursued by a dreadful monster. Once or twice a year, it had appeared to trouble me, a regular customer of a monster. The whole surface of its head is covered in scabs no bigger than the tip your pinky. The scabs cover him like the scales of a dried fish, thin hair still remains at the tips. Though I can’t clearly conceive of any harm he may be able to inflict on me, I cannot help but flee. A thin smile appears on the monster’s face and he pursues me. I run about frantically trying to escape. It was somewhere in a crowded back alley. The street is narrow and I immediately run straight into a dead end. I climb over the wall, dash through the back fence, and cut through the house of a stranger; a dog chases after me barking as I desperately try to get away. As usual, before long I hit on the idea that I am probably dreaming. While running, I’ll try pinching the back of my hand. As I thought, it’s a dream, I feel no pain. But somehow I still can’t relax, so I try pinching myself again. I try stretching the pinched skin on the back of my hand as hard as I can. Like rubber, the skin stretches out over twenty centimeters; it doesn’t hurt or itch. Though I am certain it is a dream, my fear of the monster refuses to fade. Normally, the tension would somehow loosen and I would simply wake up automatically. However, that day was different. Though I knew it was a dream, there were absolutely no signs I would awaken. At a loss, I tried with great effort to come to my senses; I struggled like trying to remove swim trunks shrunken by the water but, as there was no effect, I considered daring to 61 let the monster take hold of me. But when I considered that even then I might not wake up, I was horrified and I still wasn’t able to make up my mind. So finally, I decided to turn to my last resort.

As anyone can tell you, a falling dream will invariably end with the dreamer awakening. Since it’s all a dream, there’s no concern about dying. All you have to do is jump from any high place. Although I was unafraid, it was really just a matter of a split-second, anything would be better than being captured by that monster. There was a bridge. Underneath it, the dry gravel of a riverbed. Soaking their feet in a thin stream, a group of children were playing together. I turned around, the monster was already closing in on the foot of the bridge. After trying to pinch the skin of my hand one last time, I tightly shut my eyes and, with a momentum coursing through my whole body, I threw myself over the edge.

For some reason, even then, I still could not awake. Hitting the riverbed, my body bounced again and again, slowly losing speed, like a rubber a ball. The children had stopped playing and were now staring at me, dumfounded. On top of the bridge, the monster was laughing in a loud voice. The strength leaves my body and the bouncing stops, I collapse on the riverbank. I have been destroyed completely by that sense of shame which transcends terror. Is there anyone who would believe such foolishness? If one acts as though they could not see something, everyone else will come to believe they didn’t see it either.

Climbing up from the riverbed, straight ahead, on a boulevard with heavy traffic, I was fortunate enough to find the hotel I was staying at. Glancing at the clock, I saw exactly one hour has passed.

Hurriedly, I slipped into the lobby; wearing an innocent face, I pretended to read a newspaper; four or five minutes later, my client arrived. I felt ill. Eventually, I arrived in my bedroom just as I was, without having woken up; still, I could not bring myself to believe it was a continuation of the dream.

While talking with my client, I pinched the back of my hand; it actually hurt! The rift between dreams and reality must be somewhere beyond my awareness. 62

Laughing Moon

As far as I’ve experienced, while any pleasant dream will always fall well short of a pleasant reality, when it comes to nightmares I feel as though the anxieties and terrors of the dream often exceed those found in reality.

For example, in my case, my most familiar dream, which I have seen repeatedly countless times, is of being chased by a laughing moon. I think the first occurrence was probably in my elementary school days. My terror then was so great that it almost hurt to have to go to bed at night for a while. My memory isn’t precise, but at intervals of around 6 months out of the year I would periodically receive a visit from the laughing moon. I think the last occurrence must have been about ten years or so ago now.

I reckon that, for some thirty-odd years now, I have continued to be threatened by the laughing moon.

With a diameter of about a meter and a half, he comes softly chasing after me as an orange-colored full moon, floating just about three meters above the ground. On his face, which seen directly from the front resembles the “Kao Soaps” trademark, his large, thin lips, which almost seem to stretch far back behind his ears, give the impression of an especial ruthlessness and menace. Come to think of it, didn’t he make some kind of sound as well? Now that I say that, there was something like an inorganic howl, much like the electronic noises used in sci-fi movies. In the dream, I am running about an unfamiliar alley trying to escape until I somehow end up managing to reach my front door, and though I close the door behind me, I am left with the unpleasant sensation that part of the moon has become flabbily sandwiched in the gap of the door. Then, I wake up.

I wonder just what it is about that moon that makes me feel so threatened by it. Perhaps it’s his smile, or maybe the sound of his howl, or maybe it’s the feeling of him being caught in the door? His grin was certainly gruesome. Now that I think on it, his face probably resembled a joker playing card more so than the “Kao Soaps” trademark. Nevertheless, would that be enough to account for the sense of terror I held for his face? No, I probably should consider the pursuit itself as the frightening part 63 instead. First the fear of pursuit appears and it is this fear that takes on the shape of the laughing moon.

If it were simply a dream in which you were just threatened by a monster, then the image of a monster I once saw, growing scores of scabs like horns on his head, would be filled with a far more vivid force.

Perhaps, during sleep, the physiology of fear is created first, and this physiology must be projected as that moon on the screen of the dream. However, I myself don’t know the reason why exactly the ultimate image of terror is a laughing moon. Perhaps there is no reason for it. If I were to encounter the scab monster in reality it would probably be quite horrifying, but to see the true shape of the laughing moon would be no different than seeing pampas grass. It only works within a dream, it’s a logic only found in dreams. Any interpretation of dreams beyond this is not to my liking.

Sometimes, when you are looking up at the night sky, on the periphery of your field of vision you might catch a glimpse of starlight but, as you redirect your line of sight towards it, you instead become unable to see it. As you turn your eyes away, it comes back into sight once again. It is a phenomenon that comes from the specialization of the functions of the retina and peripheral portion of the eye. I think that there is also something similar somewhere in the relationship of dreams and reality. Reality is most vividly grasped in the heart of consciousness, but dreams can only be perceived at the edges.

Setting them into the center instead cause one to ostensibly lose sight of their true nature entirely. Just as anthropomorphism frequently misreads the true meaning of animal behavior, attempting to translate dreams into words after you awaken (causality), causes the dream-like quality of the image to fade. As dreams are still dreams though, you ought to accept the facts as they are without applying a clumsy interpretation.

I don’t remember it exactly, but previously I read an interesting article concerning “sleep”. It said that it is a misconception to imagine that the nerve cells of the brain, if likened to photophores, are dark while one is in a state of sleep. It seems as though the amount of illumination of the whole brain is generally uniform; so long as the brain has not died, the dark portions of the brain are in inverse 64 proportion to the other parts of the brain that are illuminated. As the darkness spreads, the light becomes concentrated and the illumination grows brighter. This is when the brain is most awake; a single point of light remains and the surrounding darkness becomes deeper and deeper. While sleeping, the points of concentration are spread out, and the whole of the brain is covered in a dim light.

Generally speaking, sleep and arousal are polar opposites, but it seems that when you surpass a certain degree of arousal you will fall into a state of super-concentration and will be unable to maintain the full quantity of light. The overflowing light begins to permeate into the periphery, and you approach a state close to a kind of sleep. I wonder why it is that the deepest mental concentration frequently occurs on a point approaching sleep?

Just because dreams are not caught in the net of consciousness does not mean that you can write them off as small fry, however. Leaps in thinking often occur on the periphery of consciousness. I can say from my own experience that around when an impulse occurs to me and my mind is most active at work, I often dream. Not only does the frequency of dreams increase, but their subject matter becomes more complex, and the details become more specific. At the same time, when the dreams become more abundant, that alone almost seems to give my thoughts the power to fly. No matter how much you put your engine into full throttle, running a set course marked on a map would still be of no use. At some point or another, you will go off course, and only after you have flown close to blind around the periphery will you struggle on towards a suitable destination (a completed work).

Perhaps dreams are like an auxiliary engine. Or maybe at least a creative notebook continuously being written in my subconscious. However, the moment those things called dreams are exposed to broad daylight, their color fades right before your eyes and they begin to deteriorate. If you intend to use them effectively, you should handle them while they're still fresh. That's why, in recent years, I have taken to keeping a tape recorder on hand at my bedside. So that I might capture the dream alive then and there. 65

In the end, what’s essential isn’t anything like the identity or true character of the laughing moon, but that which is the laughing moon itself. 66

For Example, Research on Tab

It appears as though there is an object called Tab which exists. Unfortunately, information concerning Tab is still woefully inadequate. The truth is that both its size and shape are mostly unknown.

But, what is clearly known is that to a particular person- for now, we'll call him Mr. A— it is a vital presence; moreover, it has no practical value to anyone besides Mr. A. At first, I imagined it might be something like a keepsake left behind by someone very close to him. That made sense to me, and I was satisfied with it. That Mr. A would be unable to properly explain the significance of the problem of Tab to others would probably be only natural.

However, the information continues further on; a person we will call B, who continues to supply Mr.

A with Tab, appeared, thoroughly confusing me. It appears as though Tab is manufactured by Mr. B and he continues to periodically supply it to Mr. A. That is to say, Tab is not a memento-like object that can withstand storage for long periods of time; it is consumed in some way by Mr. A, which means he has to receive a new supply of the product from Mr. B after a certain period of time. In other words, it is likely to be a type of consumable, like a kind of food or some other daily commodity. Nevertheless, I can't figure it out. A daily commodity useful to only one solitary human being. Unfortunately, no matter how much I think about it, I can't come up with anything.

Speaking of things that don't make sense, the presence of the supplier of Tab, Mr. B— I failed to hear as to whether he is a man or a woman— is something I am not at all satisfied with. If Tab is worthless to everyone except for Mr.A, then it should naturally be useless to Mr. B as well. Not to mention that if Mr. A is unable to explain the use of Tab, then it ought to be as much of an enigma to

Mr. B as it is to us. How in the world is Mr. B able to manufacture it when he knows neither the utility nor the applications of this Tab? 67

There is only one explanation I can think of. It could be that Mr. B was handed blueprints for the production of Tab or a prescription from Mr. A and, without understanding it himself, he simply follows the instructions and does his job. In other words, it is merely contract work done solely for compensation, completely typical of a craftsman. But, the information has pointed out that the essence of the problem is based on the fact that B cannot reveal the method of Tab's production to A, and that this is a cause of tragedy and misfortune to B. If say, Mr. A became able to supply himself with Tab,

Mr. B would also be freed from Tab, but as much as that is impossible, he would just end up continuing to be bound by some such valueless thing like Tab. He does not appear to have his sights set on any particular reward, nor does it appear as though he is unwilling to give up the production method. In other words, B will continue to produce Tab without understanding its intended use, and A will simply continue to consume it without knowing its true nature.

This is nothing more than my imagination, but what if perhaps the work of Mr. B's production of

Tab consists of somehow completely unconscious, quite accidental processes? If one is in a reasonable position of insight in which they more or less understand the process by which it works, they should be able to arrange the manufacturing process in order and create an instructional text that could be transferrable to anyone. However, unless he is able to understand what parts of Tab hold what kind of properties that make the item so essential to Mr. A, like a chicken sitting on its eggs turning back into a chick, just because results are presented, does not mean that they are actually there.

Well, this is the result of the Research on Tab from within my dreams so far. I was excited when I first woke up. I felt like I had discovered an important economic law. Stories in my dreams like that of a famous mathematician who made a major discovery, too, are often not entirely false and give me cause to nod to myself. I have constantly been recording my dreams onto a tape recorder for the past half a month. The following is a mystery based on that tape which I made in my waking consciousness. 68

Listening to the tape again, the first thing I noticed was that the role of the now-exceptional object

Tab in Mr. B's tragedy and unhappiness had been deliberately emphasized to the point of pathos. Likely what I wanted to say was that Mr. B was forced to continue producing Tab against his will. At the same time, it seems to imply two things. One is that B is arbitrarily unable to stop the production of Tab given that it is an indispensable thing for Mr. A. Perhaps, because it is an irreplaceable thing that constitutes a matter of life and death, Mr. B stopping the supply could immediately become a life- threatening matter for Mr. A. The other is that Mr. B did not receive payment of sufficient value. If he had received compensation appropriate for the labor involved in manufacturing Tab, there should have been no need to use the negative expressions “unhappiness” or “bound.” Because, in a society like today's, everyone more or less receives a salary from labor, the results of which remain unseen.

I dare say Mr. B may have resigned himself to the fate of the supplier of Tab exclusively from a moral point of view. But, this does not necessarily mean that Mr. A is in a superior position. That is to say, the fact that Tab is a heavy burden to Mr. B, speaks to the fact that Mr. A does not have sufficient ability to reimburse Mr. B. Mr. A must have to rely on Mr. B's charity to just barely obtain Tab. If Tab is a burden for Mr. B, then at the same time it also ought to be a source of anxiety for Mr. A as well. Of what use is such a humanitarian perspective? Even if Mr. B became ill and bed-ridden with influenza, then there would be nothing more for him than that. Or, if on brink of starvation, Mr. B had to leave a restaurant without paying his bill, in the end it would be he who was charged with the crime.

Mr. A probably continues to entreaty Mr. B with a servile attitude for his provision of Tab. Mr. B, in return, probably attends to him reluctantly, wearing a sour look. While this may be the case, the two are not necessarily in a relationship of master and servant. For Mr. B's part, he gets nothing out of it. If pushed to describe it, I would say their relationship is probably like that of two slaves chained to each other. If either of the two thought they would try to become free from their partner, they would merely 69 have to sever the chain of Tab. For example, find a user of Tab besides Mr. A, and allow Tab to spread among more general non-Tab-like existences. If at the very least one hundred thousand Tab users appeared, Mr. B could successfully do business. Mr. A, too, ought to be much more at ease as a result.

But how would Mr. A possibly advertise Tab to the world when he can't even explain it himself, I wonder. Just like Tab is an unusual existence, Mr. A and Mr. B's relationship is also somehow just too bizarre. Though I sympathize with you, I have no choice but to try and delve deeper into it. To those who live within our anti-Tab-like existence, it doesn't really matter in the end. The discovery of this long-sought after dream too, appears to be nothing more than a short-lived elation.

No, if I worry about that, then I won't even be able to give a reasonably realistic explanation. For example, what if we assume Tab was nothing more than a provisionally agreed upon password only used between Mr. A and Mr. B? It is entirely the same thing, but in order to still call it a different thing among other people, Tab, as well as any other thing corresponding to Tab, is unjustly ignored by the world, and will most likely be held in the view that it should go on without being treated properly. I would be extremely surprised and disappointed by others' reactions to it. In any case, not wanting to admit to exceptions that cannot be generalized appears to be a bad habit of mine. That there are topics somewhere in the world which are fated to never be shared is probably nothing to get particularly anxious about.

Waking consciousness, often more so than the logic of dreams, is full of dogma and prejudice. 70

The Seed of an Idea

Fragments of a manuscript and old sheets of memo paper are piled up in a mound under a desk. I found a single notebook within the pile.

I will try to copy the first few pages just as I found them. At the beginning, the first line is entitled

“The Ruined Map”80. Below, a memorandum similar to the following continues.

o A burned photograph― at a glance I was led to suspect it was preparations to elope, but that is rather unlikely. The possibility of a trick. There may also be a motive on his wife’s side.

o The motions of a spider hauling in its prey. The process is so puzzlingly roundabout. Should we accept the absurd, or think of it as a different rationality?

o Responsibility―If the morals of the collective are eliminated, any individual sin will also be permitted. (The relation of war to murder)

o The protagonist’s last cry ― “The world is a lie. The world is trying to deceive me.” (Find a realistic image that corresponds to this)

o There is a woman living as a room. She feels the weather (humidity) through the folds in the wallpaper.

o A man condemned to blindness, with the last of his sight, describes the neighborhood― 71 o The inevitability of escape. (See “The Anatomy of Heterozygotes” )

o “Outcasts are those who can feel the isolation of strangers with an antenna-like sensitivity. They pretend to be cruel. That at least is their penance…”

o The right wing―extreme loneliness. Starvation of others.

o The private detective observed a certain contempt in the answers of the woman client. With this, the detective begins employing his intuition.

o “Nearly every day for the past two months, I have taken to standing at the corner of S Street.” “Why?” “No particular reason. It’s just, somehow…” “Please, try to think harder.” “With that

many people around, it’s a street where anyone might pass by…” “Would you feel confident

saying you understood your husband well?” “I thought he was just an ordinary person.”

“Suppose it was you that disappeared, would you also walk down that street?” “I am a woman,

so…”

o The city―the cannibal of the graveyard. Ruins slathered in make-up.

o An elementary school classroom in a dream. However, each of the students has grown to be 40 years old. …A boy’s outlook on life is a mysterious gem. The world is filled with signs

(symbols); if one pulls in a sign, any sign at all, he should manage to claw his way to the truth.

o A story of two tramps. Hearing the complaints of a homeless alcoholic wanting to commit 72

suicide, a fellow tramp deeply sympathized with him. They began a bout of drinking with

leftover whiskey he had found somewhere. The two walked around looking for a suitable grave.

Finally, they stumbled upon a thickly branched pine tree. With the kind help of his companion,

the voluntarily suicidal tramp hung himself. When the suicide was discovered, his companion

was sitting on a nearby stone, crying. Referring to the police officer’s report, the man simply

replied “I was waiting”. When asked “What were you waiting for?” the man was unable to

respond.

The notes continue further on but I will stop here temporarily. The reason I was interested in picking up this notebook in the first place was because of the memo concerning the vagrants. For some time, I have been searching for this notebook. Honestly, I didn’t even think it would be in the midst of all these old papers. In truth, the story of the two vagrants, which I picked up from a newspaper article, was the trigger that allowed me to conceive of the theme for The Box Man81.

From looking over the contents of the memo, it appears to be from at least a year before I completed

The Ruined Map. I think roughly seven or eight years have passed since then. It’s only natural I would forget about it. At that time, the story of the two vagrants forced itself again into my awareness with electrifying force; I completed The Ruined Map and this should have been a cause for me to finally breathe a sigh of relief. Since that time, I have been searching for this memo. In particular, until I formed the concept of The Box Man I was digging around for these memos and tapes with great frustration. Though, because the subject matter was quite uncomplicated, when I couldn’t find them I told myself it was nothing special. I was able to get a sense of the proper image from the general conditions of the episode and began to start writing from my memory of it; as I was already able to finish work on The Box Man, I couldn’t really complain. 73

Moreover, the two vagrants were actually omitted in the final version of the novel. Thus, you can probably see no more than hints of what you would call its inception. However, until just before I finished writing it―probably two or three months beforehand ―it had existed as a completely separate chapter. Of the some two hundred pages that were eventually cut from the original manuscript, the episode had been included in ten of them. Though I was forced to cut them out, even now I feel somehow attached to them and I will likely be inclined to write them as an independent short piece at some point.

Nevertheless, it’s surprising to think that before long it may grow into a single piece of work; the seed of an idea, the casual way in which it arrives. Naturally, when I wrote the memo, I wasn’t thinking of any notes outside those related to The Ruined Map. If I had seen it as more important then, I would have recorded it on tape or remembered to jot it down in a separate notebook. (However, as I have no system of organization, I have lost the majority of them. Particularly important notes I will write on a scrap of notebook paper and fix to the wall with a thumbtack, but these too disappear quite often without my noticing it. It probably doesn’t matter. After all, the writings in notebooks are simply dreams trying to awaken. All that is needed is the mindset to try setting them down in memos.)

Even while receiving such treatment, the seeds continue to live and grow. Effortlessly, they burrow into my unconscious, and insidiously they germinate; the seeds bud, and without warning they take hold of me. I hate it when people use a pompous style to describe the so-called 'secrets of creativity', but I cannot deny that the process of writing is more than the author’s manipulation of memory.

Unwittingly, we gather seeds, they are planted inside us, they are fertilized in the unremembered, we give them water, and with their unexpected germination, you and I have brought ourselves into the work of farmers.

This is why I’m so anxious. Specifically, until you can assess that the seed is budding, you cannot affirm whether or not you are really a writer. You just hope the seeds will be planted without your 74 knowing, and until that time comes, you can do nothing but wait. 75

The Matter of Mr. Fujino

I am going to try to write about Fujino. It was the name of a zookeeper who appeared in “Ue”

('Slave Hunting', New Version).82 The odd thing is that to this Fujino there existed model-like things.

The fact that his name was originally one that I had chosen for a character in one of my works is exceedingly exceptional in of itself. In most cases, I just leave them as pronouns. Although occasionally a character will appear calling themselves by a name, there will be no deeper meaning to it and it will be nothing more than an unavoidably appended marker. If at all possible, I like to leave characters nameless. I rarely have felt a sense of inconvenience from doing this. For instance, even in the case of Niki Junpei of Woman in the Dunes when, following his disappearance, his name was revealed for the first time due to procedural necessity, his role as the protagonist was still nothing more than that of a mere man. The namelessness of the character, appears to be an indispensable condition for my works somehow or other.

In Fujino's case too, that he has a name affixed to him is nothing particularly special in of itself. Of the eight characters in the play, he alone received a name, but this does not mean that he therefore stands out in greater importance over the other roles. The original drama “Ue” was a world configured by namelessness. Not having a name is actually more natural. But, aside from Fujino being called by his surname in the dialogue, all the other members of the cast were just referred to by their occupation as zookeepers.

However, it was quite an exceptional discovery that there were model things to this Fujino. It is strange to say that it was also to my own surprise, but the presence of the model which I had been completely unaware of to that point became noticeable right in the middle of practice. At that time (it must be about week prior now), sounds of unfamiliar laughter emanated from the word “Fujino” in the script. Ka ka ka ka; with a dry roar of laughter as though only reading it aloud just as it is written here, 76 it actually spoke in a completely different voice than that of the actors playing the “zookeepers.” It was connected to a far-off memory somewhere. While concentrating my thoughts for a moment, the squarish angular contours of a face, with a Frankenstein-style hairdo sagging down over the forehead, emerged around where the laughing voice emanated from, and suddenly the form of a person appeared before me as all the features linked together to form a single image. That was around thirty years ago now. It was the real Fujino. As he ought to have been ten years older than me, I probably should really call him by Mr. Fujino instead of just Fujino83. Though, he was not necessarily a man of character like the “Dr. Fujino”84 penned by Lu Xun, and I also think that I heard through the grapevine that he had died. Well, with respect to its usage in the play, I'll just leave his name as it is without the title.

Besides, although I called it a model, when it comes down to what extent I had control over it, I am woefully uncertain. I get the feeling as though the characters just borrowed the names and they had no relation to any real person. But why, when I was choosing names for the “keepers,” did the surname

Fujino come to my mind? Why did I expressly choose that surname when I knew it was linked to my memories of the real Fujino? In the end I think it may have been modeled in a place somewhere deep down that even I myself am not aware of. In any case, shall I try to write about Fujino's character? No matter what kind of reality the model is based in, the moment it becomes transplanted into a work, it will begin to grown on its own, and it will soon change into something that doesn't even come close to resembling the original prototype. However, the fact remains that a single drop of rain is the primary component of the ocean.

Come to think of it, there is a true leading role— or leading subject— of this play. “Ue” itself is, in a sense, something composed out of models. It was something based on a complete misconception, but models prominently exist in situations like those. You might well say that the relationship of these models and “Ue” is well beyond the relationship of Fujino and the “keepers,” but at the same time 77 nothing gave a clearer sense of closure or was more tumultuous than the case of Fujino. Even in the same models, there seems to be a difference in quality. Or maybe this is a broad interpretation of models? Rather than calling it a model, I should probably refer to the prototype of “Ue” more generally as the sprout of an idea.

I met this person I've been referring to back around two decades or so ago. If I'm not mistaken, it was at the time when I was traveling in Hokkaido at the invitation of a broadcasting station, or something like that. As I was still virtually unknown at the time, I cannot remember at all why I was blessed with such an opportunity. Perhaps it was the result some accumulation of chance, Hokkaido being my permanent residence at the time. Anyways, together with several elderly people (officials from a local coterie magazine or the broadcasting company?) I boarded a steam locomotive.

The wilderness stretched out beyond the car window. While pointing out a suspended band of white smoke hovering over the wilderness, one of the old folks eventually began telling an outrageous, bizarre story.

Now in Hokkaido, as you can plainly see, Amuda hunting is being done just about everywhere.

Amuda are humanlike animals that farmers, under the direction of the military, were basically forced to breed during the war; their skin, to be tanned and made into shoes and bags, their meat, packed into tins for military rations, their bones, used for everything from handles for toothbrushes, to buttons, to raw calcium, and so on; it appears they were subjected to quite extensive expectations. Indeed, the only thing that was really expected was the unbelievable fertility held by the Amuda. In the blink of an eye, hordes of Amuda filled the corrals, and the supply of necessary feed quickly bottomed out much faster than the military was prepared to receive them. Then, with the situation as it was, the end of the war approached.

It was a period of horrible food shortage. It goes without saying that the meat of the Amuda was welcome. It's said that every last one was killed; they flew off the shelves, and the vast majority of 78 them were eaten up almost immediately. However, it seems a small number of farmers, being unable to bring themselves to eat the Amuda, opened the gates to their farms and allowed the Amuda to escape intact. If you think about it, it's not surprising. There should have also been some who could not bear to kill something humanlike. That said, the cost of the feed needed to continue keeping them was also too large. Perhaps the act of freeing something is what you would call humanity. It appears that the Amuda that escaped fled to the mountains, and they continued to scrape by there. In time, as they became progressively more wild, they once again regained their vigorous fertility; it seems that before long the harvest of the mountain alone became insufficient, and they started to come down to the villages and decimate the rice fields. The damage increased at an accelerating rate, and it came to the point where people became unable to tolerate them simply because they resembled humans. On the contrary, the resemblance alone became a cause to stir up their anger. Thus the Amuda have resurfaced once again as a large point of concern for farmers. This time as the target of an abominable slaughter.

It was a truly stimulating story. I became thoroughly excited. Turning reality into a fable is not so rare, but this was my first experience with the turning of a fable into reality. As if I was suddenly thrown from the bottom of a dark tunnel into onto a blazing August shoreline, my eyes were blinded, and I was dizzy and out of breath. Was this a triumph of anti-sense? Had I at last come the age where one can dream with open eyes?

I tried asking the old man. Would I have the opportunity to see an Amuda during this trip?

There's nothing to it, he said; they buy them for 10 yen a head, so if you peek behind the government office, you will see their corpses scattered about. But, though you say such a major event is happening,

I said, how have the newspapers and naturalists remained silent about this? Shyly laughing, the old man responded in a low voice. Well, because it's unseemly, isn't it? Hokkaido folks are particularly nervous about being treated like fools.

I was even more deeply impressed. The age of chatting about such unusual a situation as this one in 79 this kind of indifferent manner, as though it were an everyday occurrence, had arrived before I had even noticed it. To speak about everyday occurrences in the language of dreams is not such a troublesome thing. But, to truly describe dreams as well as one would want to with ordinary language is not something that can be done with careless feelings. I wonder if now is the time when everyone will be reborn as poets?

However, once more I asked again and, though it might be expected, it was clear that everything was due to nothing more than a simple miscommunication on my part. Amuda, it turns out, was a mishearing of the word hamster.85 And, the word like was referring not to “human” but to “mouse” instead.86 Once I knew the trick of it, it became easy to understand. The old man's Hokkaido dialect was difficult for me to hear, and the noise of the train, too, was much worse than it is these days.

Even so, the clues from this misconception soon became the base from which the concept for “Slave

Hunting” would be born. Then, moreover, it would reach fruition as the upcoming “Ue.” Who would have anticipated that the tiny seeds of the misconception I picked up on that train would continue to live on for over two decades? But, that may just be the case. When it comes to those things called the sprouts of an idea, they are ambiguous in that, unless they grow, you won't know their features.

The peculiar human-like beast Amuda that became the model for “Ue”, eventually turned out to be nothing more than a mishearing of the mouse-like hamster; but the Fujino that became the model for the character of the “keepers” was an undeniably real person.

The memory of him is even older, dating back to about thirty years prior. The year after the end of the war, aboard the last cargo ship from Manchuria. Due to both an insufficient knowledge of ship terminology and a lack of understanding of their mechanisms, I cannot create an accurate depiction of it but, in any case, I would like for you to imagine a sprawling ship's hold converted from an old- 80 fashioned transportation or cargo ship. Directly below the hatch, there is a shallow hole that has become the only empty space there; on one side there is a steep ladder to go up on deck, the three remaining sides are crowded by makeshift wooden racks partitioned into bunks. Down there, we were packed together in a row like sardines. No, sardines in a tin can would still probably be better off. Of course we were all standing; it was so crowded you couldn't even lie down. We had to disorderly tangle together like a bunch of flash-fried anchovies.87 So even if you inadvertently tried to linger in the toilet

(a cedar panel with holes overhanging on the deck) or let your guard down in some such way, your personal area would be halved while you were away. In order to secure a location, you would have to remain lying down as long as possible and allow your body to stretch out. Occasionally a man would die, and those men surrounding where he had slept would be rather enviable. The wavering condition of the seriously ill was always a target of interest. Space was surely the most valuable commodity after food.

Now, within this competition for space, only our Fujino would always calmly raise up his body, sit cross-legged and, placing his chin on his legs, he would enjoy a position of freedom. Fellows who were allowed such freedom were roughly split into two categories. One was made up of the seriously ill who were fully contaminated with their own excrement or excessively violent, dangerous people. The other was made up of resigned, overly-nice human beings who had given up on lying down. This group of people remained seated even at night and slept just like that. But, Fujino did not belong to either of these groups. During the day, he would sit with a free posture; if it was night, he would sprawl out his arms and legs and could indulge in restful sleep. He was a truly exceptional individual.

It was not because he held any particularly special position. Had he been given the maximum possible amount of power, even as the distributor of food, such a luxury would still not be permitted.

Fujino achieved an extension of his personal space in a totally original manner. His secret was the 81 product of a kind of commercial transaction. In other words, it was a trade. On the condition that he would provide a small quantity of sugar, around the size that could fit on a small hook,88 three times a day, he would be able to purchase space from three people.

At that time, saccharine was the most reliable and secure currency. It had the advantages that everyone was starved for sweeteners, it could be sold for a high price, and it was unlikely to degenerate. As it was strictly forbidden to smuggle precious metals out of the country— rumors were floating around that on disembarkation we were to be examined by metal detector and any possessors would be shot dead on the spot— far-sighted individuals would exchange their property for saccharine as much as possible. So, Fujino was not necessarily the only one who possessed saccharine. It was simply that there was no other person who tried using it to trade for territory. One who sold out their place, naturally, could not stay in the hold, so they would violate the rules and would simply wrap themselves up in a blanket somewhere up on deck. In October the Sea of Genkai is in no way an easy climate to endure. Nevertheless, can one blame Fujino? They were deals were based on complete agreement.

In fact, I never saw the least bit of timidity in Fujino. Near the center on the front side of the “C- shaped” partition, which was also the best vantage point on the edge of the handrail, taking up a broad space, he calmly looked around him, fully enjoying his free position. His vantage point was, at the same time, also an easily seen position. Because he would indulge in eye-catching behavior in such an easily seen position, even if you didn't want to, you could not help but pay attention to him. Fujino was always a conspicuous presence. Then, once he realized he was noticeable, he even seemed to be enjoying it.

Although, if he just bought space with saccharine, the eyes surrounding Fujino would likely become more hostile. But, he was also quite the tactician. As soon as he resigned to the fact that he could not 82 win, feelings of animosity would readily be changed into straightforward envy; he had a firm grasp of the psychology of the weak. For example, three times a day, after eating, he would retrieve a large container without fail. It was a round tin box surrounded by roses and brilliantly colorful picture prints like that of Romeo and Juliet riding on a swing. With a slow, ceremonious movement of his hand, he would remove the adhesive tape fastening the lid shut. Among dozens (or hundreds) of almost burning gazes, staring while pretending as though they were not looking, Fujino gently opened the lid. For that time, the box alone was already a novelty, but what was inside was a sufficient rarity to make one's heart race all the more. It was chocolate candy, about the thickness of your thumb. In other words, it was a treasure worthy of the vessel. Sticking out his large, red tongue, Fujino would begin sucking on the chocolate. Breathing with every lick, slowly taking his time, he would begin sucking on it. Of course, there was a sizable reaction. Those who sank into the oppressive silence, those who indulged in endless chatter, those who, unable to tolerate either, went up on deck...There were a variety of responses, but there definitely wasn't anyone who simply expressed hostility.

Now that I think on it, that brine soup with bits of seaweed floating on it, covered with thin strands of potato root around the size of your pinky, was just barely enough to keep us beyond the line between life and death. To be envious of his chocolate candy would be quite the show of self-deception. There is no way that someone could get used to such an appalling feeling. Too distant an ideal. Even as I looked, I could not believe my eyes; it was like an illusion. Or, was I the only one who felt overwhelmed by it?

That can't be the case. As proof otherwise, when Fujino's chocolate time started, several people, without fail, would form a ring around him. Sometimes they were the same faces, and sometimes they were different. While pretending as though he were taking a stroll through the central hall, he would nonchalantly collect them, like iron scraps pulled to a magnet. I wonder if I was lucky and begged if he would have blessed me with even the smallest splinter of chocolate? Of course not, such a hope was 83 crushed to the smallest atom a long time ago. This would simply be a “How are you?” to Fujino.

Without any hesitation, he would suck on the candy to his heart's content, displaying nothing more than a resolute determination.

So, as might be expected, I never displayed the least bit of good will towards Fujino. As he loudly laughed Ka, ka, ka, ka at the men he had gathered, I began amusing myself by having a friendly chat.

Tongue dyed chocolate brown, sweetish vanilla white breath....ka, ka, ka, ka....Looks like three people are going to die today as well, no, could be four, look stop crying right now you baby, yeah, four are stiff, Kakaka, Japanese people die so easily, I bet that guy Korori is next, that's what you get for not sticking to your studies, first, I don't know this penchirin (penicillin in Fujino's accent), do you win the war over a thing like that? You would definitely lose, penchirin, I really don't know it, ka, ka, it's

American medicine, as long as you have just that you can cure any illness at once, dying from disease comes down to a matter of human strength, but that baby is going to croak, ka, it won't be much longer, he probably won't last till evening, ka, ka, ka, I can't say it out loud but, look, there's blue mold on that rice cake, if you look up the species it might be penchirin, he always says it lives at the base of lighthouses, but don't spread around that rumor, it's an American military secret, it's a secret Japan's doctors don't even know yet, kaka, well, I'll make it a reality sooner or later, till then hang in there and make sure you don't get sick! Ka, ka, ka, ka, ka......

And, even though I too was often one of them, one of those sucking in the scent of the chocolate to their heart's content, it makes me feel contented that I was able to survive this way until now solely thanks to Fujino and that I was made to feel satisfied completely by his gift, which allowed us to bury ourselves in the ever-shrinking territory of our own selves within that oppressive place.

And, despite being able to write this, it still remains unclear to me why Fujino appeared as a model for the keepers in “Ue.” Rather, I feel the heterogeneity of his character stands out all the more. 84

However, it is also still a fact that when I decided on the name Fujino for the keepers, that the Fujino from my time in that transport ship came to my mind. Somewhere, there is probably some kind of connection. I myself do not understand my own way of thinking very well.

But then, perhaps there existed a model from the beginning not limited to Fujino. A model (reality) provokes the imagination. The character (expression) born as a result, is not simply a model that has been processed and reformed, and it should come as no surprise even if it is a completely new creature.

If we assume this pathway is a maze that cannot follow normal logical thinking (waking words), then simply trying to follow the road itself will likely be a wasted effort. However, if there is a methodology through the maze, that is yet another matter. Art is more than a provocation from reality (I believe this is so), no matter how much it appears to not exist, there must be some kind of pathway. Precisely because it is a route that cannot be produced on any map, I doubt if it can even be followed by creative expression.

The recording and collection of dreams are, in other words, a way of my own to slip through that labyrinth that cannot be traced by logic. 85

The Gramophone

A very long time ago, around when I had just entered elementary school, I lived for around a year and half in my grandfather’s house in Hokkaido. My grandfather was bedridden due to paralysis. He was the landlord for the time being, but during the busy farming season the entire family would come out to help and I would be left to watch the house alone. Actually, he was no trouble at all. I have absolutely no memory of him ever ordering me to do something or bothering me for assistance. All I can clearly recall of him is the image of a closed, blackish sliding paper door. I used to believe a gelatinous89 flabby, white monster covered all over in bumps was waiting on the other side of that door.

Perhaps it’s because I tried not to think about it as much as possible, but any details about the interior of his room are missing from my recollection, just as though they’ve fallen through a hole in my memory.

As if he had suddenly remembered something, my cousin came by to play from time to time. As I recall he was four or five years older than I was and he held a kind of hypnotic power over me. He was very impulsive in everything he did, and yet filled with thrills and creativity. For example, he would cut around a chicken’s cockscomb with a pair of scissors, or pluck the flowering buds from around the pumpkin patch, or say that he had released a live mouse he had captured into the rice granary; mischief that could not cause any real harm, but that also could not be ignored. There was always a paper-thin difference between play and terror with him. Even now I don't know that I can remember him ever receiving a punishment that really stuck with him.

When this kind of mischief was exhausted, my cousin began bullying my grandfather. He once shot an arrow through the paper door and injured grandfather’s left jaw. He also once stole grandfather’s bottles of medicine one by one using a fishing rod he inserted through a gap in the sliding door. Once he even ran a colt into grandfather’s room. Because he always ran away at full speed as soon as 86 grandfather started screaming, it was never clear exactly how it happened after the fact. However, I do recall that the doctor would always make a house call either that night or the next morning.

But, no matter how you look at it, the definitive example of his mischief was probably the incident of the gramophone. At that time, my cousin had come by some interesting information. It seems my grandfather held something of pathological aversion towards musical accompaniments to second rate samurai films. An appropriate record that seemed to be like that was quickly prepared. He took a gramophone found among the articles of a deceased uncle away from the side of the Buddhist altar, located ten tatami90 from grandfather’s bedroom, away to the furthest room in the house and placed it against the edge of the wall. With all the tact of a saboteur placing a landmine, he laid the record in place and placed the needle to its surface.

The effect was instantaneous. A cry exceeding all expectations could be heard coming from my grandfather’s room. I didn’t understand the meaning of his words, but I could imagine the form of his body writhing in anger. Then, something unbelievable happened. Just as I thought I heard a noise, the sliding doors opened and my grandfather who should have been bedridden came crawling out.

Hurriedly, we dashed outside and waited to see what would happen from the garden.

For the first time in my life, I saw my grandfather at work. Once he pitched forward, but he immediately got up again and raised one knee, assuming a painful-looking half-rising position. Then, he fell over as he twisted his body forward diagonally. Taking a breath, he once again slowly rose up.

Repeating this process over and over, he somehow managed to continue advancing forward. I thought that he looked like an enormous insect. However, one movement didn’t even take him half a step forward. It would probably take him significant amount of time yet until he reached his goal.

My cousin laughed. Naturally, I laughed as well. It wasn’t a spectacle one could endure without laughing. I was convinced that if grandfather died he would surely reappear as a ghost. 87

The record stopped playing. My grandfather still had five or six movements left. My cousin abruptly jumped to his feet and nimbly stopped the gramophone while removing the record, then he fled back outside. Grandfather howled. His sticky saliva formed a thread and dripped onto the tatami floor.

However, grandfather didn’t even attempt to look our way. Disregarding us completely, he started to sidle up further in the direction of the gramophone. Did he intend to destroy it? Secretly, I think that I hoped he would want to. Grandfather, who had finally managed to reach his destination, hunched himself over the gramophone. It would require almost no force at all to destroy it. He could have probably done it easily just by using his weight.

However, grandfather did nothing. After remaining still for a short while, he once again moved to rise and then collapsed; and while attempting to get up and falling over again, he began turning to go back just the way he had come in. To my grandfather, who was once a pioneering peasant, an outrageous act like breaking a gramophone was likely something he could not even hope to do. Today it was finally clear to me that he had cleared the primeval forest of the Kamikawa Basin91. It’s no wonder that, even when it came to things he needed, he always felt things cost more than they actually did.

The moment he made sure that grandfather had reached his bed, my cousin once again returned to set the record in place. Grandfather did not yield either. Without even giving another cry, he once again began the march towards the gramophone, accompanied by the music of a sword fight. It was a much longer journey than before. As one might expect, my cousin didn’t even laugh. Naturally, I didn’t laugh either. Before the record stopped playing, my grandfather, having used up all his strength, collapsed limply to the ground. Tired of waiting, my cousin and I changed our location in order to play a different game. I don't remember if there was any relation between this incident and my grandfather’s death. Nor do I have any memory of being blamed either. 88

Just last night I had a dream in which I had become a gramophone. I was that old-fashioned, hand- cranked, mechanical gramophone that I had used to bully my grandfather. Someone eagerly wanted to break me. Of course, it wasn’t my grandfather. It was someone more familiar. I felt the sensation of a hand slowly but surely loosening the wooden screws that held my body together. I couldn’t afford to be silent and watch this happen. I had to assert myself somehow, to demonstrate to this person that I was still useful in some way. I tried to begin singing. Though I had no record and my mainspring had been stretched out, for some reason I became able to sing just as I had intended to. It was a wonderful thing.

It was a feat that even a state-of-the-art stereo couldn’t hope to imitate. There could not be anyone who wouldn’t think well of it.

The only worry was the timbre. If, in the worst case scenario, it should become feeble and hoarse, inviting sadness would not be without danger. As soon as I hesitated, the dismantler’s hands were filled with strength. I could not afford to rest. At the very least, I would continue to sing so long as I still remembered the lyrics. It's not as if someone wouldn’t be able to remember a human that had at some point hidden himself inside a gramophone.

The serpents of the ink pot

Spill out and become a map

As fingers grope for the map

The fingers dream.

That they have been locked up in a prison called a gramophone

They dream

Those are the unaltered lyrics that I sang after becoming a gramophone. I have not altered even a single 89 word. I also felt as though I was vaguely aware of something about my grandfather, but it seems like it wasn’t directly related to him. However, as soon as I try saying the word gramophone aloud, I am able to feel some ties with the distant past. Now that I say it, I have come to feel as if I were a child like a gramophone about to break down. 90

Considering “Waragen”

There was a crisis shortly after the end of the war. At the time, there was a massive outbreak of epidemic typhus in the city of Shenyang. My father, too, became infected and passed away. As I was still a medical student, I wasn’t yet qualified to give actual medical treatment; but, as my home happened to also be a clinic and I was well equipped with various medical utensils and drugs, I spent my time examining the sick who asked for my assistance, given that I was probably better than a complete amateur. Perhaps it’s simply due to the number of cases I saw, but I became particularly skilled in matters concerning epidemic typhus. But then, as the diagnosis of illness in a period of epidemic is quite simple, it was really nothing to be especially proud of.

At some point, I heard a story from someone that there was a Chinese fellow who been treating typhus using a concoction made from pill bugs; of course I didn’t believe it but, without being thinking overly much about it, I happened to make a house call to the patient who had told me the story. Just as soon as the patient had turned over the tatami mat, dozens of pill bugs came wriggling out from some damp newspaper on the floor. Flustered and without time to restrain him, I watched in horror as the patient picked up two or three of them with his fingers and quickly popped them into his mouth.

I was appalled. First of all, when it comes to those pests called pill bugs, simply seeing a picture of one, let alone the real thing, makes my hair stand on end. It could only possibly have been worse if it was a centipede. To make matters worse, since he ate them while they were still alive, if they can survive in the patient’s stomach, what will become of him? But my partner acted as if nothing had happened. As he rolled the insects around on the palm of his hand, they curled themselves up into balls making them as easy to swallow as a pill; it seemed as though he was willing to believe in this nonsense, even to the point of trusting me to prescribe to him how many he should eat per day and the like. Thinking that I couldn’t bear the anxiety of betraying his long-standing trust, I decided to simply leave things as they were. In other words, I conducted myself in a manner worthy of a professional 91 doctor.

A few days later, the patient took a turn for the better. I recall thinking that his recovery had been much faster than normal. But I hardly entertained the thought that it was due to the pill bugs he had eaten. Though it's true that, in some corner of my mind, I was somewhat bothered by it.

Then, a short while later, my uncle, who was entrusted with the management of a hospital, contracted pneumonia. Although one might say he entrusted me with the administration of the hospital, that doesn’t mean I had particularly wished for this to happen; following the death of my father, he barged in and began to impose on me as he pleased. I didn’t have a good feeling about it. Taking advantage of my father’s absence, he had behaved as though he were the owner in order to sell medical supplies under-the-table and secretly pilfer valuables like sugar. I quickly made up my mind to pursue revenge. I resolved to take this opportunity to test the out the efficacy of the pill bugs. It was not only simple harassment though; I also had a theory of my own. The first principle for the treatment of epidemic typhus is to prevent the breakdown of the heart. If the pill bug is to have any benefits as a drug then, naturally, it must have some cardiotonic function. If it does have some cardiotonic effect, then even a case of pneumonia shouldn’t be worsened by it.

I worked to patiently collect the hated pill bugs from underneath rocks and various other places around the garden. I soaked them in alcohol and separated the dehydrated insects from the exudates. As

I ground the insect carapaces in a mortar, they became a glittering blackish-gray powder. The exudates

I put aside for the time being, and I decided to prescribe my uncle just a gram of the powder.

At any rate, as it was a natural drug and I had already leached it with alcohol, I had led myself to think around a single gram wouldn’t yield a significant effect; that night, my wretched uncle got up to urinate once every hour, he sweat incessantly and reported that he could hardly sleep a wink. Though in mind and body I felt somewhat guilty for his pain, I secretly jumped for joy that the pharmacological effects had exceeded my expectations. This was a prototypical effect of a cardiotonic diuretic agent. I 92 decided to name this new drug “Waragen.”

However, that was the only time I actually used it, since then I have not used it even once. This being due both to the fact that the efficacy of the drug was far too strong and that the pill bugs are physiologically repulsive. Besides, the central ingredient was not entirely clear to me and, as a rationalist, my reluctance was too great in the end.

After I repatriated to Japan, I tried relating this experience to a friend of mine in the Department of

Medicine. I fully believed there was no doubt that he would jump at the chance. I dare say that, with this “Waragen,” there is no doubt that he would have been able to make a fortune. As for me, if I received even ten percent of the profits, I would be satisfied. At that time, though I was starving and thought only of money, I also suffered from excessive humility.

However, my friend, on hearing my long-awaited proposal, quickly dismissed it. As his specialization was in synthetics, it seems he had absolutely no interest whatsoever in the field of natural medicine. I was dejected; I scorned his aloofness and stupidity. And, since then, the problem of the

“Waragen” has sunken to the bottom of my fantasies, as motionless as a stone.

These days, I only speak of “Waragen” as a joke. This isn’t because I no longer believe in

“Waragen;” while my belief in it still remains somewhere in my heart, the obsession and fever of my youth are lost to me.

Now that I think on it, I get the feeling as though the ridiculousness of the “Waragen” and the foolishness of youth, in some respects, follow the same vein. The single-minded inability to be aware of youth, the narrowness of a point of view that is unable to be objective… now that I think of it, it’s almost as though the subtle kind of glittering in the recollections of one’s youth too, is somewhat reminiscent of the light in the powder of the pill bugs. One can never become the author; you are in an eternal position of restlessness and stupidity. 93

However, by placing it in the category of humor, even with this kind of clumsy insensitivity within me, I feel as though I can almost be included, in part, in the work of the author. Naturally, in the course of my work, I rarely talk about the experience. However, if a “Waragen”-like youth really existed, I imagine it would be used as an unseen pillar of support somewhere in one’s work. What is necessary, in the end, is not the experience itself but rather to completely suffocate the experience with laughing gas.

I also get the feeling that the ideas associated with the christening of “Waragen” might have been from much later. At the moment I named it “Waragen,” the beliefs youth of my youth likely came to an end. That’s probably it; though I have no lingering affection for my youth, even now I am incredibly pleased with the name “Waragen.” 94

Alice’s Camera

To me, the camera is one of the essential tools I cannot be without while on the job. From taking notes for a novel to capturing the production of a play, there is a considerable range of applications.

More recently, it hasn’t been uncommon for me to shoot slides that are actually used on stage and I even tried inserting some of my own snapshots into The Box Man. Putting the question of technique aside, when it comes to how intensely I use the camera, you could say I am at the level of a semipro.

I did not write this out of any particular desire to brag. From my perspective, I want to reject the notion that the camera has completely become a tool (means). That is why I need to make this claim; in fact, the camera serves as a model fetish object in modern society. This trend seems to be particularly pronounced in Japan. I remember seeing an article somewhere previously noting that Japanese people who appear in European satirical comics are always depicted as wearing glasses and holding a camera.

Indeed, even in domestic travel, the camera is the universal symbol of the traveler. This is also supported by the numbers appearing in statistics. While Japan is the world’s largest producer of cameras, at the same time it also boasts the largest number of consumers of cameras in the world. What is it about the camera, I wonder, that attracts the Japanese in this way?

A different set of statistics is even more interesting. If many people buy cameras, then naturally the consumption of film should also increase, however, this is not the case. I’ve forgotten the exact figure, but Japanese film consumption is unbelievably low. Even in the kingdom of cameras, there is an underdeveloped nation of film. There is something of joke about how from the first picture taken on a roll of film to the last, though both may resemble a New Year’s landscape, one is actually a seawater beach in the middle of summer. An acquaintance of mine is even worse off; in spite of his mania in collecting any model of camera from a certain company, he suffers from a meaningless aversion to even press the empty shutter of the camera, claiming he does not want to damage the device. Needless to say, he hasn’t put film in it even once. 95

It is truly a camera for a camera’s sake. In a kingdom of film like the U.S., in order to increase the number of film users, attention has been applied to creating cameras for amateurs, however, there are few Japanese who would accept this kind of instant camera. No matter how troublesome the operation of a high-end machine is, if one does not operate it, then it follows that one will not be confused by its operation. Thanks to that, manufacturers can devote their attention to developing luxury model cameras without reservation. High-end machines which originally should only have been able to target an extremely limited patronage can now be ceaselessly mass-produced; there's nothing that can stop them.

Thanks to consumers who buy them despite not using them, the Japanese camera has accomplished something like world domination.

It's clearly fetishism. In separating the camera from the act of taking pictures, its purpose as a means has been altered. I don’t intend on raising any particular criticism against this. As a reflection of the contemporary state of mind, I simply feel it is something worthy of investigation. What about the camera attracts people in this way? What on earth does the camera mean to people?

Of course, not everyone necessarily loves the camera. If you are a person who is able to consider the camera practically, you probably wouldn’t fall in love with it immediately. There is a subtle, yet difficult to cross gap between thinking you’d like to take a picture and falling in love with the camera.

There is an even deeper gap between these people and professional cameramen. It’s similar to saying that, if I said I thought I wanted to write a novel, then I wouldn’t necessarily be gripped with stationary mania.

In fact, with the exception of those pros who can exchange their work for money, the camera cannot possibly be anything more than mere tool of “fantasy.” Photographed results are always decidedly transparent things. Old albums idly lose their color and fade, even if they are seldom opened. What exactly I was hoping for at that time, when I released the shutter, is impossible to recall. At the moment 96 that one becomes aware of being intoxicated by the act of intending to leave a picture, while in reality the camera leaves no tangible result, that person will resolve to discard the camera completely. Of course, that would also mean one would also completely discard that liberating hope in the moment of pressing the shutter along with the camera.

But, with the acknowledgment that there will be no tangible result, there are still more than a few dreamers who go on without losing hope; they are the ones who will become camera lovers. As their desire is satisfied simply by pressing the shutter, they don’t care about the result. In extreme cases, just the pressing of the shutter alone will end the fantasy. If it comes to that, even a lens-less camera is a fine thing, but that is an outlook indicative of a mania’s mania. If there is actually a guarantee that if something is photographed, then the picture will reflect the image as expected (or as expected ideally), then it is also possible to fulfill one’s fantasies.

As a result, true camera enthusiasts have ignored kinds of cameras like Polaroids where you see the result as soon as you press the shutter from the very start. There are rumors that the Polaroid Company is on the verge of a management crisis, but is there not also a shallowness in the readings concerning this psychology of mania? What maniacs want from their camera isn’t a boring pragmatic reality, but rather a fantasy. With a press of the shutter, they believe that a part of the world becomes a signed print that can fit in their hand; the self-deception of that moment is the reason that it's fun. As might be expected though, somewhere in the corner of their consciousness, there is also an awareness of something beyond mere self-deception. Thus, Polaroids are all the more uninteresting. Such feelings of guilt may also be one of the characteristics of the camera enthusiast.

You can also change to a slightly different way of looking at something by changing your perspective. The fact that camera enthusiasts do not show as much interest in film as they do cameras may be unexpectedly because what they want to shoot does not exist in reality. Taking advantage of the 97 fact that the camera is essentially taken as oriented towards reality, by ignoring the result, camera enthusiasts may be trying to reject reality. If that is the case, then the camera becomes a symbol of non- existence. Or, alternatively, it becomes the negative of reality.

I once read an article that kept me on the edge of my seat and caused me to feel horribly uncomfortable which purported that the author of “Alice in Wonderland,” Lewis Carroll, took up the camera as a hobby late in life and, in addition to that, that he became engrossed almost exclusively in pictures of young women. I had never imagined the author had harbored such kinds of feelings for

Alice. When you get down to it that novel, in its own way, can be taken as a kind of romance. Instead of a real girl, he fell in love with one who does not exist. And then, possibly for the sake a portrait of a girl who does not exist, he became a camera enthusiast.

An illusion that if one just continued to press the shutter, someday Alice might appear in the frame.

The tension of a moment subjected to the impossible. It is a rejection of reality, and also a wish to deconstruct it into parts. One can only meet Alice in a dream. Those who dream too often of escape, have no choice but to escape into their dreams. 98

The Skin of a Soap Bubble

The eight pictures I inserted into The Box Man were favorably received in and of themselves. And, I was also able to congratulate myself given that I am still just an amateur. But since then, I have hardly taken any pictures. When I begin to push the shutter, I start to question to what extent it is an inevitable moment for me and, as I do, my fingers will not move. I wonder if this is more or less a sign that I have begun to approach the mindset of a professional?

When I try to think about it, I still cannot quite bring myself to an awareness of my own motives.

Why bother taking photos? Why am I thinking about what kind of pictures I want to take? I cannot organize my own feelings. But, there is a certain kind of trend. Though it is faint, a definite preference is noticeable. Before analyzing my motivation to press the shutter release button by force, I will try to come up with concrete examples of cases in which I will want to press the shutter release button, and

I'll attempt to line them up as I do.

First, for example, is garbage. For some inexplicable reason, I am attracted by garbage. Or rather it might be that I am attracted to places where garbage is thrown away. Recently, as garbage disposal has begun to reach its limit, even places that did not originally appear suitable for disposal are being flooded with garbage, and the image of a suitable place for garbage has faded away almost completely.

However, this does not mean it has disappeared entirely. At places like where rivers and bridges and highways and railways intersect each other, there are spaces where, for reasons of structure, humans absolutely cannot live, and these will naturally be used as a garbage dumping grounds. Fortunately, such spaces are located in places that go completely unnoticed. Given that people are in contact with locations like shadows and pot holes within the city, even if someone passes by them, they rarely ever stop. If you seek them out, you will be able to see them; but if you are not particularly pressed to look for them, you will miss them entirely. They are unregistered spaces to the world, so to speak.

I also do not expressly try to stop at these kinds of places. For a moment, it flits in the corner of my 99 eye, and then I pass it by. For some reason, I become self-conscious and I am unable to face it head on.

However, while sheepishly passing by, I can hear some kind of voice come calling. Then, I almost feel guilty for having assumed such an unreasonable attitude with that space. I am obsessed. But, no matter how fixated on it I am, I don't care enough to stop moving. At that point, the camera begins to act as an agent for my obligation. The act of pressing the shutter release button may be a way of justifying myself to that space that condemns my silence.

The scene of the dumping ground, for me, is one always associated with landscapes within my memories.

I think it must have been around when I was a middle school student. At the southern boundary of the city of Mukden where I grew up, was the embankment of huge river called the Conga that flooded every rainy season. Around where the railroad tracks intersected the river bank, there was a massive swamp and the whole of that swamp became the city's unofficial dumping ground. However, with the exception of the very deep section at the center, the swamp was dried up for most of the year, so most of the garbage on the ground was exposed and you wouldn't know by looking at it that it was a swamp unless you stepped foot in it.

Because the school was nearby, I have many memories of going to play close by there. It was not expressly prohibited, but I rarely went too close to it, probably due to fear. We were convinced that the swamp sucked all the trash discarded on its periphery towards its center. In fact, the closer the garbage was to the center, the more deeply it appeared to be buried in the mud. Although, what covered the center probably was not just trash, but crows as well. I also have such memories of thousands of wings of crows soaring through the air at dusk, as though lifting up the surface of the swamp. I also seem to remember all of us crouching down on the embankment, watching in awe as half of the sky that still should have been blue suddenly turned black. At any rate, that dumping ground on the outskirts in my 100 memory is a place that was imbued with a somehow unworldly solemnity.

Alternatively, it may have been the point in the outskirts of the swamp that exactly faced the railroad tracks, where a device used for gibbeting was permanently installed, that was at fault for strengthening my impressions all the more. On a thick T-shaped board supported by stakes, three iron nails were hammered in from the back like candlesticks; it was a gibbet designed for three people. It was located in a position that could be seen directly in front of the windows of the train. As to whether I actually saw a real, exposed head, that aspect of my memory is unclear. Although I feel as though I caught a glimpse of something like a black mass of lint, that may only be a fantasy created by my memories. I had absolutely no idea who was being exposed or for what purpose, but in any case it was said he was there in order to serve as a warning. Whoever it was, within the darkness he was suddenly transformed into the figure of a lone head; that person who became food for crows and faded away, planted within us a sense of terror and longing. That legend has never been told before; I think the dumping ground of swamp might be the perfect setting for the emergence of my characters.

The past lying in wait at the origin. The mouth of the earth that chews up human beings. Its lips and teeth and tongue, all are deathly pale.

Beyond that, I photograph various junk.

I photograph people that are close to being junk.

The eight photos featured in The Box Man, too, are each, in some sense, an image of either refuse or an invalid.

-A young gangster staring at an expired lottery ticket

-The wallpaper of a ward for critical patients experiencing respiratory distress from coughing up blood. 101

- A commemorative landscape photograph for the handicapped at the World Expo Site.

- The public toilet of a train station.

- A club for old naval officers reflected in a mirror

-A beggar with all of his worldly possessions loaded up on a tireless bike walking by

-A literal mountain of scrap

- And then, for some reason, a freight train. In accordance with my taxonomy, this too seems to be a companion of trash.

It is not my aim to disclose the secret of a trick here. As my photos are not recordings of facts, a description of their contents serves no ostensible purpose. What I have tentatively attempted to write so far has simply been to help you to understand the circumstances of the moment when I release the shutter.

However, it is not because I am attracted to some amusing implications within these situations that I release the shutter. Just as in the case of dumping site, it is because I hear the refuse and the crippled crying out in a terrible voice. I cannot explain it any more than that. Somehow or other, something inside me begins to resonate like a tuning fork and, with hair-raising thoughts, I am pulled in strongly all the same.

While I am terrified of that cry, at the same time I also feel as though I am frightened that I will stop being able to hear it. Supposing that I did become unable to hear that cry, it seems as though I would also lose the impetus to want to take pictures. No, this probably isn't simply a problem of the shutter alone. I have a premonition that the moment the image of the dumping site disappears, all creative impulse will be destroyed. Both my novels and plays ultimately seem to be working on behalf of that cry I hear coming from the garbage dump.

In any case, I am attracted by garbage. My encounters with refuse and the disabled, more than 102 anything else, inspire me. It is similar to the human genitalia. With vain and purposeless splendor, by simply existing, it overwhelms all meaning. It's only natural. Even if “Usefulness” losing to “Refuse” is possible, “Refuse” will probably never yield to “Usefulness.” Animals are an exceptional accident of plants, and plants are nothing more than the product of an exceptional accident of minerals. I'm sorry to say that the ruling principles are on the side of minerals more than they are on the side of animals. A battlefield is a typical example in which humans are subjected to mineral law. At this late hour, the extent of pollution caused by industrial waste too will probably not lead to anyone seriously wrinkling their brow. Conceited attempts to challenge garbage only allow it to further strengthen its rearmament.

If you are prepared for this, then that's fine. Though I am not an optimist in nihilist’s clothing, to talk about your hopes is simply making too much of garbage. But, in order to at least die my own original death, I have enough selfishness to think I want to reject a typical death.

The shrieks I can hear coming from the garbage dump, in addition to the garbage eaten by the swamp, seem to be the screams of the “usefulness” beginning to be chewed up. At least that is what it sounds like to me. The awareness (or illusion) that one is not yet garbage himself is the skin of a soap bubble that barely supports itself day-to-day. Besides the skin of a soap bubble, perhaps tomorrow I will continue writing a sketch of the swamp that devours garbage in some way. Perhaps a tale of a human crushed by garbage. 103

A Portrait of a Certain Artist

A and B are two people that exist. As two young playwrights representing the cutting edge, whenever one of them is discussed, without fail the other will be brought in for comparison, so naturally there are times when they will disagree, but theirs is a relationship defined by a strong sense of camaraderie. The public opinion of them as well shifted equally between them. And, up to this point, this is all true; but from here on it becomes a dream.

One day, an incident occurred in which B robbed the home of A. At the time, A, with a red wool boa covering his chin, was vacantly gazing at a late-night television broadcast while alternately sipping coffee and whiskey. Suddenly, a worrisome sound came from the direction of the kitchen; thinking like always that it was probably some run of the mill cat burglar, just as A grabbed a commemorative paperweight from a lecture he had given at his alma mater that caught his eye as a precaution, he was shocked to find that it was B.

B, with a pistol in one hand (of course, it was decidedly a fake), stood with his legs spread open in front of the window frame. Sliding the unscrewed ventilation fan out of the way, he inserted one leg inside, his extended fingers changing color as they fumbled with the clasp. For a moment, A couldn't believe his eyes. But facts are facts. What a despicable fellow! Could this be B's true face? He could easily expose B in the act, but instead he felt rather reluctant to do so. In any case, had B so easily missed A, who had noticed his true identity? Crimes of an acquaintance are all the more awful in their cruelty. A hastily grabbed the handset and dialed 911. But the phone did not connect. It seems as though

B had cut the phone line.

He stood transfixed. Then, suddenly, he realized the noise had stopped. When he tentatively peered into the kitchen again, the figure of B had already disappeared. Breaking into a run, A threw open the front door just as a human figure, with all the agility of a tongue quickly retracted, ran past the gate.

Like a balloon filled with water deflating, A let out a long, slow sigh. Returning to his room, he turned 104 off the television, and comfortably buried himself up to his nose in his red wool boa.

Have I been had? If it was a prank, it was one filled with unthinkable wickedness. That guy had surely drawn up this plan somewhere; it must have been his intention to make fun of me, A thought. It had become an entirely unpleasant thing.

But wait, even though I saw him, I was not seen by him. He also had not seen me grabbing the paperweight with the motion of seizing a weapon, nor did he see when I stalked the kitchen like a beast, charged with excitement, nor did he even see how my face immediately changed as though I had been covered in glue when I recognized it was B. I can't tell whether or not that is something that should worry me more or less. ...But, could that really be the case? Could that really have happened?

No, that's not it, at the very least, the scene of the crime is one thing I can be sure of. For instance, I saw him fleeing from the gate. In order for me to have seen that, I must have opened the door and, naturally, made a sound doing so; that should have confirmed to him that he had been seen. Another problem is that, as I witnessed his escape, I made no attempt to hail him or even raise my voice. If I had intended to do so, then it would be something of use to me.

I have done an irreparable thing. Why did I not have room to say as much a single word? I feel regret as though I had pissed myself. B must be in tears from laughing by now. I've been seen through completely. Eventually he will publicize my snobbery everywhere around here.

A gulped down 4 or 5 glasses of whiskey in succession; to quench the thirst in his throat, he opened one of three beers, and finally he came to a conclusion. When one receives a gift they do not want, it is best to return it as is. If you are inclined towards that way of thinking, you can't refrain from doing it in this situation either. Suppressing his feelings of impatience, A pulled the red wool boa further up over the top of his head as a disguise, and filled his right and left jacket pockets with mountain climbing knives and a length of rope respectively; then, wearing black leather gloves, he slipped outside.

Needless to say, he did this without telling his wife and child. 105

Moving on to his mobilization for the time being, his feelings suddenly became lighter, and as this happened his legs became lighter as well; he suddenly wondered whether or not the whole incident could be written as a play. With pursed lips, he slyly smiled. That's right, maybe that guy B could have also unexpectedly had that intention? There's no doubt about it, I've decided that must be it, A thought.

From here on, I will use my all of my actions as materials for a two-act play. Too bad for him, he won't get it so easily! Standing still, A snorted his nose strongly underneath the red boa. I want to make him think I am still holed up back in my house as he left me. That way, his two-act play will end up as a run of the mill psychodrama. However, I am actually, as one can plainly see, currently wandering around wearing a thief's clothing in the middle of the night. By brilliantly stealing the two act play he is waiting for right in the middle of it, I will completely outwit him!

With a histrionic flair, A took a step further into the dark streets and muttered aloud to himself,

“Well, the destination from here on out is a secret loophole that only I know. Look, sinking into the darkness, my form is already invisible.”

As the darkness gradually grew deeper, he was pushed back into the direction of a dim light.

Simultaneously, a laugh suddenly arose from deep within the darkness, and A found himself standing on a stage. The alcohol remaining in his stomach changed into a sticky, solid lump. His armpits sweat heavily and he felt nauseous. However, the curtain rose, and seeing as the patrons were already seated, he couldn't very well say nothing. Then, perhaps this might be my two-act play, A thought. Well, since it doesn't matter what I do, I'll try speaking out anyways. If it is my own creation, then the dialogue should come out naturally, and the dialogue that does comes out will be natural.

“The problem, however, is that in some cases it can be the exact opposite. In fact, I myself feel closer to a character than an author right now.”

Once again, a burst of laughter. Having somewhat pulled himself together, A pulled his neck piece down to the bottom of his chin and, with the bravest tone he could muster, he continued onward. 106

“I am disgusted, assuming this is B's work, that is. Nothing could be of greater service to his critics.

Though this is what I think, I must say, without retracting what I said before, that I am somewhat nailed down here. Because, for some reason, there is similarly also no evidence that this is not my own work.

However, this, will it not become a play? ...This indecisive situation...it will become a play, absolutely...Yeah, of course, even in this odd state it is a play; but to perform such a play makes that yet another future play...This, is a new revelation, I, I'll take it!”

But, the anticipated laughter did not come. Wiping his drenched lips, A rubbed his swelling temples with the palms of both hands and, attempting lifting his broken spirits, he indiscriminately pulled together as many words as he could come up with.

“That's it, I've got it! In the first act, there's something important that I overlooked. The dog! The dog didn't bark. My dog didn't give even the slightest cry in reaction to B's invasion of my house. B unexpectedly made that point the number one problem, don't you think? There's a reason for that. I forgot to feed the dog. When I forget to feed him for three days in a row, even though I go out of my way to take his food to him, he looks coldly at me and makes a show of sulking about. When he sees people he doesn't know, instead of acting standoffish, he wags his tail all the more. The kind of dog that bargains like that is not like other dogs at all, and I hate him for it. At any rate, I can't stand B's meddling. Could it have been his intention to criticize me with this? If it was just to get me to feed the dog without forgetting, then B's drama shouldn't have been arranged from the very start. I have no particular intention to search out faults with B's work. However, at most, there is the issue of the dog food. I don't get him at all. Well, if that's the case, if the play goes well, then that's the natural cause...”

Without warning, the curtain quickly descended on whatever act he was in the midst of. A could not continue any further.

“That's the natural cause...” There was no reaction whatsoever in the direction of the curtain, and everything became deathly quiet. Perhaps B was also wearing a thin smile in that silence. After a period 107 of intermission passes, the curtain will rise once more, A thought. Without running away, A stood still, at his wit's end. Within the darkness behind the curtain, he continues to stand motionless, forever. 108

Dream of the Awa Loop Line

There are also dreams that do not seem entirely like dreams.

The setting is in the vicinity of Tokushima in Shikoku. There is a railway known as the Awa Loop

Line; a curious tradition remains in this region. As long as men have sex with women from behind, regardless of the conditions, it will considered to be legitimate, and apparently the perpetrator will never be blamed. Because the local women are always on their guard, they are rarely ever attacked, but ignorant travelers are often put at risk by this custom. In particular, when transferring from the nearby station to the loop line, a long set of stairs near the overpass is well known as a dangerous place for women. How defenseless the posture of a woman carrying luggage while climbing the stairs can be requires no explanation. Why it is that this custom continues to be tolerated indefinitely is something no one truly understands. According to one theory, it's said that it is due to strong lobbying against local tourism officials but, more simply, there are also those who claim that it is just for the reason that there is no one who believes in it, and this latter explanation somehow seems much more convincing. In fact, it is well known that the women in question who have become victims, remained skeptical themselves about the existence of this kind of harm until the very last.

I left this dream recorded on a tape by my bedside and, for a very long time, I hesitated to write it down. With the exception of the name of the place “Tokushima” in Shikoku, everything else is complete fiction; that custom is naturally made up and even the “Awa Loop Line” railway (I tried looking for it on a map thoroughly) is no more than a completely imagined entity. No, it doesn't particularly surprise me that it is simply imagined. At any rate, it is a dream, and I am already accustomed to the extent to which the transformations of dreams can surprise.

However, no matter how many times I may attempt a Freudian analysis of these dreams, to be honest, I can find no clues. Since it is a vaguely erotic dream, the original impulse that was made to 109 transform this far is also surely an erotic thing, and though I tried my best while hoping to figure it out, not a thing came to my mind.

Even more puzzling, this dream was not accompanied by visual objects at all. Consequently, there was no development of images. Neither temporally, nor spatially did I have any personal experience within the dream. Not only did I not have a personal experience, but the sense of a first person view as the subject experiencing the dream was completely missing. Thus, within the dream it's not as if I spoke to anyone, nor was I necessarily spoken to, nor was I even perceived to be there. That is a simple fact, and it is information, and it is knowledge; it is nothing more than a construct made from the building blocks of words. Nevertheless, I had the dream. How can you see something that cannot be made into an image, I wonder. What in the world is seeing a dream, anyway?

Since then, my way of thinking about dreams has been unsteady. In the majority of my dreams, there certainly is a subject (self) I am watching, and transformation in the dream occurs in terms of the relation between the subject and the outside world. Though there are situations in which I arrive in the third person, even in those cases, the seen me I am watching is still an alter-ego of myself, after all. I was convinced that in dreams, the existence of that experiencer (subject) was a prerequisite.

Yet in this dream of the Awa Loop Line, the existence of the subject (myself) was completely missing. The contents of the dream were interesting in their own way, and it even had a realness to it that caused me to examine a map with feelings of half-disbelief after I awoke; but naturally, scenery and people in the area were entirely absent. There was only just awareness. There was no audience or narrator. There was pure awareness. Consciousness is structured non-existence. Recently I wonder if I may have seen non-existence within the dream.

Probably because of that, I felt no responsibility for the strange, erotic custom from within that dream. Even though it was unconscious, I came up with it, and there is no doubt that it is a delusion 110

(quite an amazing success of a delusion, to sing my own praises) that I brought into being; but I felt none of the guilt normally inherent in erotic sexual fantasies. To accept the Freudian interpretation— that the dream is a product of deformation due to self-censorship— is downright impossible as far as this dream goes.

Attracted by the physiological sensations that trigger a dream like light, sound, and skin stimulation, a fired bullet strikes a brain cell somewhere and the rest is a like a cue ball breaking in billiards— a chain of automatic movement that forms an image— I held the same opinion concerning this line of thought. Therefore, with regards to everyday rules, when an erotic image begins to form, one that frequently has this destructive impulse, immediately the mechanism for self-censorship activates and the dream changes completely; it's not like there aren't any cases of this happening. In particular, when the vagus nerve is tensed, in dreams at dawn, this kind of sexual dream deformation is probably typical.

Control of sexual drive is one of the critical restraints necessary in order to become a part of everyday society. (A particularly surreal dream, therefore, might be characteristic of dreams one has at dawn.)

However, all of my dreams are not necessarily deformed because of self-censorship. To pull a phrase, all bananas are fruits, but not all fruits are bananas. Neurons of the brain that receive stimulation, quite reliably cause a chain reaction, and should form a true image without distortion. My dream of the Awa Loop Line too, was probably no different from this kind of dream. Although the contents were completely fictitious, there was a clarity to it reminiscent of descriptions in an encyclopedia, and I hardly noticed any of the so-called dream-like distortions of the images. At the same time, there was also not enough force in it to confuse my everyday senses. In spite of the abnormality of the events, I could clearly parse everything, and I was never made to feel shocked or surprised.

Furthermore, adequate explanation for the point of the missing subject also comes about. I guess it 111 must be related to my profession. Triggers are the same in typical dreams; even if it is a very simple physiological sensation, that stimulation can easily cause a chain reaction, the course of which can affect one in so many ways: in a situation like mine in which one is engaged in the manipulation of words on a daily basis, there is even the possibility that networks of words without images will be formed. The expression “I saw a dream”92, is thus no longer appropriate; it should be probably be reworded to express that dreams are woven from words.

Describing this kind of dream is difficult. There is a certain style to writing out a dream; it is best to write it exactly as you saw it. By writing it as you see it, a dream-like effect appears. The extraordinariness of the experience is brought to the forefront. However, an unseen dream cannot possibly be written as one sees it. This also serves as sufficient reason for why I left that dream as it was, lying in a tape recorder by my bedside, for such a long time.

The meaning of the act of writing this experience holds is something I thought about again and again. It is a very simple fact that a dream which cannot be written in a style that is appropriate for a dream also has no value as a dream. Writers, due to the nature of their work, tend to easily spill out words with a kind of automatism. Naturally, because it is a seen dream, it must be an automatic process. However, the automatism of unseen dreams (purely words) is fundamentally different. With unseen dreams— or an idea filled with ingenuity you come by otherwise— the moment you have the illusion that you have the seeds of an idea that can be fermented into a greater work, a breakdown that cannot be undone begins.

First, you will need to see it. Then, you will repeatedly question yourself as to whether or not you actually saw it. You will rigidly sort out what you did see and what you did not see, and you will show no hesitation in deciding to abandon what you didn't see. The virtuousness of this abandonment should 112 restore for us, perhaps, the necessity of the act of writing. Dreams you should write are seen dreams, and that is why they can be written. 113

The Guide

The guide descends the stone stairs. I follow after. Since my partner is a guide, to follow him is only natural. As my eyes adjust to the light, I come to understand the curious feeling beneath the soles of my shoes from earlier on. Instead of asphalt pavement, there is an oil soaked wooden floor. What I first thought was a dimly lit alley is actually a long, narrow passageway inside a factory.

Though one might call it a factory, there’s no kind of machinery around. Running perpendicular along a low-ceilinged, rough-coated wall, wooden benches are lined up at intervals of a few meters.

One by one, men with faces like a middle-age woman’s mount one of the benches. Their bloated faces appear as though they’ve been wiped with white powder. Seeing as they look similar to the point that I can hardly distinguish them, they use their faces as a standard. Or, perhaps they are just women who look like men.

In front of each of the men (or women), is a tin box of about fifty square centimeters. They are completely synchronized in their work; with their right hands they pluck bits of down colored like dead leaves from within the box, and wreathe it around the tip of chopsticks they hold with the left. The wound tufts of down gradually take shape, eventually coming to resemble a chubby Popsicle. Keeping an eye on the pointed end, they immerse it in a bucket of liquid by their feet and cover it with down from the box once more; the shape becomes a phallus about the size of a cattail head.

Suddenly there’s a noise outside. On the other side of the window, a great number of young women are passing by. With a disturbing contortion of the hips, their bodies twist limply as they run forward.

They twist their hips as though they have to urinate and can no longer put up with it. They are all lined up in a row, from the wooden bathroom door comes a pungent odor reminiscent of stale frozen fish; with this, the workers on the bench point the tips of the cattails in their hands toward my direction and, with a flourish, they lewdly giggle as they shake and whirl them around at me.

The guide leads me to a corner of the factory. There is a makeshift table made of a thick and heavy 114 plate, it seems like this is where one is meant to eat. In any case, I really don’t like this smell. Like smoking hay (though I would say it’s really more like burning ragweed), the acrid air covers not only my throat, but my whole vision, with smoky itching. I also get the feeling that the bad smell is like a disguise, meant to hide something more. Or perhaps they’re using some unexpected special seasonings?

“How about it, sir? How do you like it?” Rather than expecting a reply, the guide’s tone of complete sincerity seems already convinced of my satisfaction and blocks any chance for me to air my doubts. In line with his gaze, I glance around the store, simply nodding many times more than necessary in reply.

Before long, a waiter carrying a menu appears from somewhere. However, with only a cursory glance, the guide tells the waiter, “Bring us your finest chicken dish right away!” with curious assertiveness; in kind, the waiter, with a somewhat unprofessional familiarity, replies, “Yeah, ok, hand it over,” and snatches the menu out of my hands. But with the waiter’s kind joking smile, I feel like I can’t really oppose him.

Soon, he returns carrying the self-proclaimed “finest” chicken in question. Chicken…both the guide and the waiter unanimously called it that, so I believe that much, but the only thing served on the plate is an ashen powder. It’s just black and white particles mixed into a powder, like the sieved remains of coarsely ground pepper. However, I also can’t say with confidence that it isn’t actually chicken. Once cooking falls into human hands, it almost invariably fails to retain its form, and if the secret of the process isn’t revealed to you, it’s not unusual that even imagining the original ingredients becomes entirely too difficult. If soybeans can be transformed into tofu, then even a bird being turned into powder must not be impossible.

“Somehow, the appearance of it just doesn’t seem to make sense, does it?” The guide and the waiter exchange looks and snicker. I do my best to put on an appearance of calmness and, while pressing the head of the spoon to the pile of powder, I say, “In short, it’s really powdered chicken then? I suppose 115 you dry and smoke a chicken, then grind it into powder?”

“If you have to snoop like that, the flavor’s bound turn bad.” All of a sudden the waiter rudely cuts in with rapid cadence, “People come here to eat, not to make stupid accusations! Even if you are a customer, you have no right to complain about food you’ve been given! Maybe other places will just give away what ingredients they use, but our recipe is our policy. Believe in the results you receive.

We only wish to serve customers who will trust us. This isn’t some everyday dish! All you need to do here is to earnestly believe and just eat; that above all else is the secret to enjoying food.”

Suddenly, the guide moves over to the bench separating the passage; he drops his pants to his knees and gets down on all fours. A worker draws out a completed cattail head and, with a thoroughly practiced motion of his hand, he inserts it into the guide’s asshole.

“It’s an anal cleaning.”

Absentmindedly, the waiter says, “I sort of feel the same way.” Then, for some time, I become focused on the plate of chicken powder. It’s profoundly dry, and it instantly dries up all the saliva in my mouth, so much so that I can’t really tell what it tastes like. However, because I have to demonstrate that I’m willing to swallow, it’s a considerable struggle to get it down.

The guide, who has finished the anal cleaning, returns to the table. While buttoning his pants, as if to pacify the sulking waiter, the guide gives me a look and casually kicks me in the shin under the table.

“After all, this is what you call a modern restaurant. Sure, I feel there are a number of problems with it as well but, a restaurant is, well …what people want in a restaurant is…Listen, if you follow the direction of the modern appetite, it’s not unlikely that you’ll ultimately end up in a place like this, right? All that is needed, more than how to ask for things, is to be able to accept them. I, having been a guide for many years, can tell you this from experience, but you can see it for yourself.”

Yes, I also feel as though I understand. Actually, I don’t really understand, but I somehow feel as though I do. Even now, with the soundless motion of precise hands, the production of cattail heads 116 continues. Outside the window, another group of women looking for the bathroom pass by, twisting their hips. It appears there is no restroom in this restaurant either. However, as for me, I don’t even know how to ask questions anymore. 117

Self-Sacrifice

Due to the ferocity of the wind and waves, combined with how incredibly quickly the boat was sinking as we were escaping, we were left with the misfortune that from those of us who narrowly made it to the lifeboats, only 3 men, including myself, were able to go aboard. Then, after 75 days of drifting at sea, I alone was the only one to be miraculously rescued.

However, I have heard that the fact that I was the only survivor has caused the authorities involved to harbor some dubious suspicions. To the contrary, I have no particular plans to deny anything. To be sure, a tremendous sacrifice was made. However, the most lamentable victim of all, more than anyone else, is I myself who survived.

Our boat was made from a combination of rubber and aluminum, a state-of-the-art model. In the bilge of the ship was a large water storage tank and a solid quantity of fuel-efficient gasoline, probably enough to last a year if used sparingly. In addition, we were able to establish something like a small medical clinic with plenty of first aid supplies. Fully waterproof sleeping bags. A cassette player stored in a waterproof case. A set of stainless steel cooking utensils. I omit listing food products from the list of conditions because, as it was, we were stocked with almost anything one could want.

This is why we had no feelings of helplessness or despair concerning the shipwreck the first day after leaving the storm zone. However, with the coming of the second day, the rations reserved for emergency situations began to outnumber the whole of the food supply stocked for normal consumption. With the third day, someone tossed the case containing the cassette player into the ocean.

On the fourth day, all medicine in the first aid kits, save for the most dangerous drugs, naturally bandages as well, were completely used up. Then, finally on the fifth day, the three of us unexpectedly reached exactly the same conclusion.

What was necessary now, above all else, was food. And what could be made into food was actually inside the boat. But, there still remained differences in our appreciation of what qualified as food and 118 what did not. However, compared to trying to catch a fish without a hook, adjusting this kind of difference in opinion was a simple matter.

In fact, relations between us were agreed on from the very start. Everyone, without the slightest hesitation, was prepared to consider themselves as food.

I myself made such a claim.

“A doctor has an obligation to protect the lives of others that must be maintained. If one of us is to be eaten, it should be me before anyone else.”

The head cook objected to this.

“What a thing to say! Doctors have to administer injections, write death certificates, and do any number of other jobs. Chefs, on the other hand, only exist in order to provide food to others. Both of you, do not forget that you hold the position of 'eaters' here.”

Finally, the second navigational officer reached a conclusion.

“That’s true; a cook is obligated to process food. But, the preparation of food and the provision of the raw materials are completely different, right? To put it more accurately, a chef has the right and the obligation to claim cooking ingredients and, furthermore, from the doctor's perspective, it’s necessary for the cook to fulfill his duty in order to maintain the doctor's health. Seeing as that is the case, there should already be no question that I who am left should become the cooking ingredients. Please, I’d like for the two of you to give up on becoming unnecessarily sentimental and calmly accept that no one besides me is eligible to be eaten.”

To be frank, both I and the head chef had completely lost our confidence. Nevertheless, with the cook and I not knowing when to give up, the second navigational officer pulled out a large knife and slit his windpipe. With courage and a strong sense of duty, our second navigational officer, in forcing us to take on the burden of murder, was no fool.

The process of dismantling the human body was my specialty. There were thirty-two kilograms of 119 flesh alone; after we sorted out the edible organs like the liver and kidneys and collected bones to be used for soup, the storehouses on the boat were completely filled. Having first eaten his fill, the head chef washed the intestines and prepared liver sausages; afterwards, he spent the entire day boiling all of the meat in sea water in order to preserve it. Thus the head cook and I who had outspoken the second navigational officer were forced to survive more than an additional twenty days.

Eventually, we ran out of food again. On the fifth day after we began to starve, the head chef and I once again had to start the argument between us.

“Well, this time it’s my turn,” with a fair amount of confidence, I sparked the debate. “Honestly, you have forgotten the words of the second navigational officer who refuted us, haven’t you? To me, I have an obligation as a chef to ensure your health and well-being. You have an unavoidable ethical duty based on your occupation. In order for you to fulfill your final obligation, have them write you a prescription for an ample supply of protein and fat.”

“A chef without someone to serve is no longer a chef!” The head chef calmly looked back at me and continued speaking, “A chef without someone to serve, also no longer has an obligation to cook. You,

Doctor, should have no obligation to a chef who has none.”

“Regardless of whether you are or aren’t a chef, I have a duty to preserve your health.” “And I have a duty to provide ingredients to you, Doctor.” “Ingredients and cooking are different. Without you, I cannot cook anything!” “These days, with things like teppanyaki, customers can simmer and cook enjoyable food by themselves.” “Stop saying such impudent things. Regardless, I am a doctor. I’m not going to stand by and watch you die!” “It seems we’re in the same boat. If I ate a quack like you, I’d get appendicitis.” “Even I’m already sick of your terrible cooking!” “So aren't you just saying, then, that you would prefer to do the cooking yourself!?”

Perhaps because I had wounded his professional pride, the head chef forgot himself and suddenly started acting impulsively. Thrusting away from me, he pulled out a large knife for cutting bones from 120 the shelf behind him. With things going just as I had planned, I chuckled to myself. Because, naturally,

I believed he had turned his anger on me. I was careless. Of all things, the head chef pointed the sharpened edge of the knife at his own heart and thrust it deep inside.

The head chef’s flesh weighed thirty five kilograms. The flavor was also good. I do not mean to belittle the second navigational officer, but all the same, for many years, I think that was the only time I was able to try my hand at gourmet cooking. In addition, thanks to the meat I was not only able to survive for more than forty days, but when I was rescued I had put on about three kilograms compared to the time before I was first stranded. But, let’s not be sorry that I survived at this late hour. Meat and fat alone are no problem. “Whether or not humans in a crisis are able to nobly promote a spirit of self- sacrifice”; precisely just this point is the gist of what I wished to discuss in this short lecture. I have already forgiven the two friends who forced a painful sacrifice on me a long time ago.

As I finished speaking and looked around at the students in attendance, the attending doctor picked up the scalpel and quietly began working on the process of my dissection. 121

The Flying Man

One morning, I saw phantom-like dream. Or rather, I wonder if I should say I saw a dream-like phantom.

Mistaking the screams of a rat drowning in a kitchen bucket for the siren of an ambulance, I crawled out of a dream. Looking outside as I gargled milk from the refrigerator, a lone man was flying in the not yet blue dawn sky.

It goes without saying that I didn't believe it, nor was I at all surprised. Though I had forgotten what I was dreaming about, I just assumed it was a continuation of the dream anyways. Though, I did think it was certainly a curious dream. It's not so bad when it's a dream in which you yourself are flying, but a dream in which a stranger is flying is definitely unusual. I squinted at the window. With his belly turned down, he flew horizontally like a fish. Although I could only see an outline like a black cut-out, there was no mistake that it was man. A gesture to push back his wind-teased hair, unclear posture, a seemingly unconfident angle in the knees...estimated around 35 or 36 years old. Across the street from a narrow bus route, he flew slowly and gently at around the speed of a bicycle, just above the tops of a row of houses parallel to the street. If not a dream, then it must be a hallucination. If not a hallucination, then it's impossible it is something besides a dream.

The man continued flying. Skimming the roof of the second floor house directly opposite mine, with the smoothness of a balloon swept away by the wind, he continued to fly. Then, he abruptly turned to face my direction. Grabbing a television antenna and spinning himself around, he tilted his head like he was looking for something; as he quickly made a half-turn, he spotted me.

I was caught off-guard. Because I thought it was, after all, a dream, I hadn't cared that, with my forehead pressed to the glass of the window, my upper-body was fully exposed to his line of sight. I hastily withdrew. The dawn sky had changed more quickly than I had imagined. In the span of only a few seconds, it had become bright enough that even the arms of the man's glasses were distinguishable. 122

He had surely noticed me. Staring at me, he shrugged his shoulders and pulled his knees close to his chest, becoming like a shrimp. As he quickly stretched out his body, he was boosted with a springing motion and reversed his body's direction, immediately disappearing in the direction of the roof.

Think. I thought he looked like a shallow water fish. I rubbed my forehead. However, I could not really think so deeply. As I foolishly muttered aloud to myself, I felt somewhat jealous. My eyelids became heavy. I returned to my bed and, once again, sank into the sleep within a dream.

I awoke. The sound of knocking at the door was hesitantly, yet persistently continuing to call for me.

Who could it be at this hour? On the other side of the half-opened door, an unfamiliar man. A navy-blue necktie on a common gray suit. A jaw that looked as though it were installed by special order on a face with conspicuous pores marking the flesh,

“Thank you.”

Sullenly brushing him off, I nearly closed the door on him. He must have been salesman or something like that. No matter what kind of salesman he might be, I have no use for him. But, without a word, my opponent brushed me aside and entered the room. As he firmly pushed the door closed behind him, he said, “You saw, right?”

Breathing like a warm bottle of beer with its cap taken off,

“Saw what...”

Another thin memory glued to the bottom of my recollection. A memory difficult to peel off, like damp paper. That's right; it was that man...the flying man...the silhouette swimming in the sky. Then is this a continuation of that dream from just now? Or were the events from before a dream-like reality?

“Please, do not worry about it.” With downcast eyes, the man shrugged his shoulders and continued delivering his explanation at full speed, “Indeed, it's really not a big deal, more so than you would think. But no, I should say less than you would think, instead of more than you would think, right? Oh 123 my, you must have thought of it as a bizarre dream...”

“It doesn't bother me at all.” My voice lacked confidence. I could not successfully read the situation.

“What's with pretending like you're trying to wake a sleeping child...it was my intention to believe this was a dream from the start.”

“No, I noticed the bottle of milk was empty when you opened the refrigerator. Can you drink milk in a dream? Because it was the east-facing window, it was probably difficult for you to see with the backlight there, but I could see everything you were doing, down to nearly being able to read the exact number of wrinkles between your eyebrows. No, it's no good, there's the unavoidable evidence of the milk bottle. If you can't believe it, then why not try taking a peek inside the refrigerator?”

“So what?”

“So, I am offering you this warning. When you over-think and exaggerate too much, things will become out of control. Even if it is only a tiny bit uncomfortable at first, that crack will become deeper day by day, and will eventually throw your everyday senses into madness. A gap between yourself and strangers will form. Human relationships will disintegrate. Eventually, you will become alienated from the act of living itself.”

“It's you who is exaggerating! In this world, what you consider to be unbelievable is actually quite common.”

“Why not try being more honest about your feelings?”

“Besides, that's right, even now I may still be dreaming. After all, if this were a continuation of a dream, then no matter how many milk bottles were empty, it would not become strange.”

“That dream, no matter how much time passes, no matter how many times you have it, when you realize that you are unlikely to awaken...try imagining it...do you think you would be able to withstand that?”

“If it is a dream, even a lifelong dream, it's only a momentary affair. More important than that is 124 how you are able to fly. Is it by some knack or maybe some kind of psychic power? Or, a hovercraft device...but, it looks like it makes no sound, right?”

“I make an effort so as not to draw public attention as much as possible. But if I fly in darkness, I don't feel like flying. I make it a rule to play around inconspicuous terrain and fly low over the rooftops for no more than around thirty minutes. Nevertheless, it is impossible to avoid being seen one hundred percent of the time. Of course unforeseen mishaps like this morning's will happen. If one were to call it willful negligence, they wouldn't be too far off, but...”

“It's far too suspicious. There's also a slight feeling of paranoia to it. It's because something akin to my spirit of curiosity is too strong that...”

“Apparently there was a man who was nearly appointed section chief had to give up his position because he talked too much about me at his place of work, and a housewife somewhere seems to have ultimately been divorced by her husband; in an even worse case, there was even an instance in which someone was put into a mental hospital. It is not a story to be taken in jest.”

“I also understand that, but...”

“I wonder if you do understand.”

“You, you really can fly, can't you?”

He thinly smiled and the man's back suddenly straightened. In proportion to how far he appeared to extend his back, he floated into the air. I stepped back without thinking, the top of my head gradually tilted forward as it began to trace a rising arc. Still staring upward, I sat down on the floor. The man, skimming the top of the ceiling, became level and stopped his ascent. I was irritated; I could not find the words to describe this man who had become a completely different person.

“See, it's not a lie.”

“Are you not using any tools at all?”

“I am not. How about it, you can't stand to look at me. When a person becomes like this, it's the 125 end for them.

“What a thing to say! I'm jealous. Isn't it convenient first and foremost? You could go anywhere smoothly, without a crowded bus or train, without having to deal with other people, and without worrying about using gasoline...”

“I can't go that kind of speed.”

“But, to connect between two points, being able to take the shortest course sounds absolutely convenient to me.”

“The practical value of it is zero. At best, you might gain reputation as a spectacle.”

“But, that's just because of the blind-spot of your privacy. When it comes to locks on windows, say, the assumption is that one cannot fly. As for the practical value of it, who knows? If you're in the mood for it, being a flying man is right up there with being an invisible man, there are various things to say about it...”

“Why are you changing the subject like that?”

“Change the...I'm not...”

“But, it's frightening isn't it?”

“Frightening? What is?”

“Surely you don't really think you want to become able to fly like me?”

“Because that is hoping for too much, right? Were it in my power to be able to do so, I really would want to fly. But, as you said about people flying, this is quite the talent. It's not something anyone can do. Far from being frightened, I'm a bit jealous. Strolling through the dawn air; I am refreshed even though I can only imagine it.”

Skillfully crawling on his hands, the man descended the wall and inserted his feet into his shoes arranged on the floor.

“Is that so?” 126

“If you think I'm lying, there's nothing I can do about it.”

“Then I may have come across an exceptional person for the first time.” He twisted his upper body, and as he fixed the tacks of his shoes into place, he said, “If it were my making too much of things... no, I am relieved. Always, no matter where I inquire, I am treated like a monster. It is truly heart-breaking. The main reason is that fear makes matters worse. To tell the truth...it is because of people like you that I can speak with peace of mind but...this floating phenomenon, apparently, holds a contagious power.”

“Contagious power...”

“If one likens it to an illness, what would correspond to the virus would be, in the end, rather than a fear of flying humans, a distortion of the mind due to knowing there are flying humans...do you get it...it's a kind of collapsing feeling, like the world is going to fall apart. You will remember me.

Each time you remember me, panic like foul, black water will slowly ooze out from the core of your heart. You will come to see this world as a black cave. Within it, a single, isolated man, in the moment of feeling as though he has been left behind.....”

“But, I would never. I can't imagine the feelings of horror you're describing.”

Without making a sound, the man gestured as though wiping dust from his hands, and gave a small nod.

“I feel relieved. With this a burden is lifted from my shoulders. I am terribly sorry for interrupting your awakening. Please, don't take it the wrong way.” 127

The Bag

Wearing worn attire that appeared as though it was soaked in the rain and then dried as he was wearing it, a young man who gave off the impression of being quite honest, but with an uncanny brightness in his eyes, appeared in my office.

Indeed, it's true that we put up a job advertisement. However, that advertisement was put out over six months ago. For someone to brazenly come apply this late would be too absurd under any circumstances. It's almost as if he delayed his application until now in order to not be employed.

I was blown away. Looking contemptuously at me he said, “As I thought, it's not going to work out.”

And, with a rather relieved feeling of having removed a weight from his shoulders, he retraced his steps with the same abruptness as when he came. Against my better judgment I, who had been imposed on of the two of us, hurriedly tried to detain him.

“Come now, wait just a minute! It's only natural that I would take issue with this. I'm curious as to why you applied for a job that started over six months ago. I’d like for you to convince me as to why you should get the job. If you can persuade me, then that will be enough. It just so happens that a vacant position just opened up and we were also just about to consider hiring on new recruits, so there is certainly some room for consideration. What in the world was it that brought you here?”

“As a result of wandering here and there, I understand by process of elimination that, in the end, this is the only place for me.”

Due to his way of speaking, the young man's statement that he causally spoke with ease, could easily have been taken as an insinuation, but it also strangely convinced me all the more of his honesty.

“Can you try to be more specific?”

“It's all this bag's fault, I suppose,” he said. And, placing it at his feet, he looked down at an oversized bag-if it were filled with infants' corpses, it looked as if it were overstretched with three of 128 them stuffed inside- somewhat unsuitable for what one carries with them while job hunting, “It takes up too much of my stamina and balance. When I am simply walking, I am able to carry it with ease, but as soon as I approach a route with stairs or it is even a little steep, I'm no good anymore. Thanks to that, the paths I can select are naturally limited. The bag's weight decides my destination.”

I was somewhat discouraged,

“Then, if you did not take the bag with you, you would not necessarily have to come to our company, would you?”

“Letting go of the bag? That's not something I even think about.”

“Just because you let go of it doesn't mean you are going to explode or anything.”

“Of course not. Look, even now it has clearly left my hands and is sitting on the floor.”

“I don't get it. Why is it necessary for you to go to such impossible lengths to walk around with that thing.....”

“It's not so unreasonable. It's strictly something I do voluntarily. It's precisely for the reason that I know that if I wanted to stop, I would be able to at any moment, that I do not stop. Would I be able to do such an idiotic thing if I was forced to?”

“If you cannot find employment here, what would you plan to do, then?”

“After going back to square one, I suppose I'll begin offering up my prayers once again. Unless changes occur even in the terrain.....”

“But, if changes occur in your physical health or in the weight of the bag and you become completely unable to walk, or if you become able to travel a new road due to residential development...”

“Do you not want to hire me that much?”

“We are only discussing the possibility. Even in your case, if you could choose an occupation from a freer position, then you could do no better than that.” 129

“I know more about this bag's burden better than anyone else.”

“What if, for a little while, I tried holding on to it for you?”

“Honestly, of all the impudent...”

“What are the contents?”

“Nothing of importance.”

“So it's something you are hesitant to reveal?”

“There are only boring things.”

“About how much is it worth?”

“I am not always carrying it because it is especially valuable.”

“However, what would someone who didn't know about it think on seeing it? Indeed, you don't appear to be even a bit physically strong, if a purse-snatcher or robber set his sights on you, you would probably be helpless.”

The young man let out a small laugh. It was an old-sounding laugh, as though he were looking through a hole in my forehead to some far-off landscape. He just laughed, and didn't really answer.

“Hmmm, fine then.”

Without losing a beat, I also lifted my voice into a laugh, and putting a hand to my forehead I returned his gaze, “Though I'm not saying you've caused me to concede anything, I do feel as though I have also somehow come to understand your position a bit better. For the time being, you will work for me.

Nevertheless, that bag is too large. Even if I am hiring you, I'm not hiring that bag, so I only ask that you refrain from bringing it to the office.”

“That's fine.”

“Where do you intend to put the bag during work?”

“Once I have decided on a boarding house, I will leave it there.”

“Is that really alright?” 130

“What do you mean?”

“Will you be able to make it from the boarding house to here without the bag? If you become too light, won't you lose your course on the way here?”

“I won't go off the road between the boarding house and the workplace.”

Finally, the youth let out a refreshing laugh suitable to his expression, I too thought I felt the relief of a weight being lifted from my mind. When I introduced him to an employment agency I was acquainted with over the phone, he immediately left to go inspect the place. Quite naturally, as a result of the course of events, the aforementioned bag was left behind with me after.

So without any real aim, I tried lifting the bag. It strained my arms profoundly. Though the strain was great, I didn't feel as though I should stop carrying it. As a trial, I tried walking two or three steps.

It seemed like I could walk farther.

While continued to walk, as expected, it began to take its toll on my shoulders. Even so, I still did not feel as though I could not endure it. However, suddenly, there was the sound of my backbone sinking in between my hips; as that happened, I did not take another step. When I came to my senses, I had left the office building without being aware of it and I was approaching a steep hill. Turning around, I began to walk again. I intended to return to the office just like that, but it didn't work out somehow. No matter how many directions I tried to bring to mind, I wasn't at all conscious of them as I usually was, I was blocked off from slopes and stone steps; cut into shreds, I was useless. Reluctantly, I tried to walk only in the direction I was able to. Eventually, I had no idea where I was walking.

I did not feel especially distressed. The bag guided me perfectly. Things were fine so long as I simply continued walking to anywhere I was led without hesitation. If there are no paths one can choose, there is also no possibility to lose one's way. It was freedom that I came to hate. 131

A Public Secret

There is an old concrete bridge over a half-buried ditch. However, a new highway was constructed parallel to that bridge and it is not used anymore. Occasionally, a tired salary-man or bill collector will lean on the railing and have a smoke, and children will play catch nearby. Eventually, it will probably be demolished and buried in the ditch. At the bottom of the ditch, the mud and sewage are viscous and stagnant. Discarded old bicycles and such, wearing a thin film of clay, form a relief. The only clear shape is that old bicycle. What the rest are, I cannot say.

From the foundation, you can see things like smashed roadside trees. Though there is no wind, they are moving faintly. No, no matter how much wind might blow, there is no way that the timber buried in the mud might move. Things which should not move are moving.

However, there is not a single person who pays it any mind. Even if they cared, it's not as if they would show it. If asked questions by children, would they answer that it is because of methane gas seething up? Of course, even children can see through to the reality. It is already a public secret. It's just that everyone is pretending not to see it. They can only wait until the movement stops. For any reclamation work to resume too, it would all have to be gone.

The movement became larger. Could it be my imagination? It looks like it's my imagination just as much as it is reality. What's worse is that I am not the only one who thought it was suspicious. A crowd has already formed on top of the bridge. The number of people was not clear to me. There could have been three people just as easily as there could be ten. It was neither necessary to clarify how many there were, nor did I wish to. I was single-mindedly only keeping track of changes on the surface of the water. If you can come to a conclusion without looking, then you can do no better than that; but there's nothing that can be done for all that you have seen. In order to convince myself that I alone was noticing it, it was best not to look away.

It was moving. It was definitely moving. It was able to break through the coating of dried white 132 mud. A shape appeared on the wet, black surface of the water.

The part that appeared to be the trunk of a tree was a spine. The parts that appeared to be branches were ribs, extending left and right from the spine. Between the bones, skin like oiled paper. The bones were writhing as though trying to climb up. There's no way it can; anyways, I have decided that it is a hallucination. There is no way that it would have that much strength left now. That is the struggling of its death throes. In the next moment, it will break apart and that will be the end of it.

Everyone held their breath. I too waited with bated breath. There could not possibly be another conclusion.

But, it showed no signs of giving up at all. The cracks in the mud still spread, and finally a large head in front of the spine was exposed. It had the shape of a face-down plate; without the spine, it would look like the belly of a dead beast. Then it planted its front legs and slowly rose up from the shoulders. Black sewage dripped from its emaciated body, and at last the shape of its whole body became recognizable.

As I expected, it was a starved elephant calf. Whitish color of dead wood, gray skin marked with some lines, disproportionately large face, small eyes that always seem to be laughing.....the nose has rotted and become quite short, but there is no room for doubt anymore.

Someone spoke.

“My, what a shock!”

Immediately another voice replied.

“Don't play dumb!”

I agreed. As far as this incident is concerned, saying one was surprised becomes a lie, and saying one was not surprised becomes a lie nonetheless.

The elephant calf slowly began to climb the slope of the collapsed canal. I noticed that its feet were 133 also rotting. That said, it was decaying in the way that plants do as opposed to the way flesh decays. It looked like the kind of rotting that occurs in dead trees buried underground. There was simply no way he would last until top, I thought. But contrary to my expectations, the elephant calf's steps gradually became lighter. I wonder if it was because he was all skin and bone, and his body weight was already mostly gone. Or conversely, I wonder if, even if it is rotten, it should still be considered an elephant at all?

Its abdomen began to rise. It's just too simple-minded. No one's desire to try to push an elephant calf into the mud should exceed the slightest impulse. I truly have no patience at all for this kind of stupidity. That the onlookers missed the opportunity to willfully ignore the crime against the elephant calf and place blame elsewhere or to speak out in unison was ultimately nothing more than a chance accident.

Before long the elephant calf crawled up out of the ditch and stood up on the side of the road. It shook its body, looking like a skeletal specimen with paper pasted all over it, and its jaw stuck out.

Perhaps it would have shown its trunk raised up high if it hadn't already rotted and fallen off. The calf began walking slowly along a line of houses. Stumbling on its decaying legs, it began to walk. It came to a stop in front of the first shop. A middle-aged man who appeared to be the proprietor was sprinkling water on the sidewalk. Seeing the elephant calf, the man's body became stiff. Shaking his head from side to side, he diverted his gaze and quickly retreated into the back of the store. No wonder. As the shop is a pharmacy, they don't sell items an elephant would want to eat. As though making an entreaty, the elephant calf peered into the store, with tears in its little eyes. Or was it just in the one eye?

On top of the bridge, the onlookers exchanged words in frustration.

“Why is believing that kind of thing to be an illusion bad? There was no reason to think they were in

Japan in the first place!”

“But, elephant fossils have been discovered even in Japan.” 134

“They died out before humans began to live here. We have no responsibility.”

“As a concept, the elephant arrived in Japan together with Buddhism.”

“Do you expect me to just accept his loitering about?”

“I cannot accept it, but I also cannot ignore it. Anyways, shouldn't our first priority be to clearly assert that its an eyesore?”

“To make matters worse, it's rotting.....”

“Yes, there's no need for this intrusion”

“Just because it was in that ditch, our unpreparedness came back to bite us.”

“Everyone knew there was an elephant over there. It was a public secret, so to speak. But we excused it because we believed that was the same as it not being there.”

“But, things that should not be should not exist.”

“Should we just wait patiently inside until it rots away...”

Suddenly, the elephant calf changed direction towards us, interrupting the conversation. There was no particular animosity in the elephant calf's expression, but no one was able to hide their consternation. And then, as though projecting the rotted off nose out in front of it, it came towards us, shaking its jerky body. With each step, buckets of water dripped off. Its body tilted whenever the wind blew. It was probably gradually hollowing out.

“It's too pathetic, I can't watch...”

From atop the bridge, someone threw something. It looked like a small box. The box did not reach their partner. The elephant calf ran happily up to it and slowly began to gnaw at it with its small mouth.

“They are matches,” a low voice quickly said apologetically. “There is nothing else we can do.”

“I suppose it's just as well, after all the elephant calf will eat them quickly...”

“Besides, phosphorous has antiseptic properties too, doesn't it?” 135

Subsequently a number of matchboxes flew on the elephant calf all at once. There were even some that were already burning. I think several gas lighters were mixed in as well. Still, the perspective of the elephant calf watching the bridge was filled with an appearance of gratitude. He was probably unconcerned about the heat of the fire because an air of dampness still remained.

The elephant calf continued eating with its small mouth and we waited. What we were waiting for was not clear, but we continued to wait anyways. The elephant calf innocently continued eating, and the excitement among us gradually began to swell. I suppose it's only natural; love for the weak always holds a murderous intent.

Before long the elephant calf flared up like an old newspaper, and burned down. 136

Secret Rendezvous

First, I open to the green page of my JAF (Japan Automobile Federation) issued map. With an eye staring at an upward angle, I quietly walk out. For glaring, the left eye is good and for walking, the right. That's how I feel. Here there is a short wooden bridge. Therefore, when I cross the bridge, I will enter Yokohama. Yokohama is roughly made up of cyclical roads arranged in a doughnut shape, it gives off the impression of a folding fan.

Now a lone man is starting to cross the bridge. He is a doctor from a dream I just started having a few moments ago. The doctor is wearing a green identification mark on the edge of his left breast pocket denoting that he is the head of the cartilage surgery ward. But, he is not wearing his lab coat because he is on his lunch break. As the doctor who had finished crossing turns around, following him is a young girl who began crossing the bridge, lightly smiling. Today, they will finish replacing one third of the cartilage of a patient they plan to discharge for the third time with a special plastic alloy.

The doctor roils his outstretched hand suspended in an ambiguous gesture; he did nothing to force the girl to leave her room, he tells himself, and he begins to walk ahead again. In the case of the hierarchical relationship between the two, everything will be taken as an admission of the patient's free will, and the doctor, being trusted by the patient, will be able to satisfy his sense of superiority.

Climbing the emergency exit stairs of an underpass, he appears in a waiting room in Yokohama station. Since the waiting room for the internal medicine department is directly facing the wall, he wants to pass through here quickly. Not only is he bothered by the eyes of strangers, but there is another reason to hurry. He made arrangements for a secret rendezvous with a female colleague of his during his lunch break. Therefore, to quickly find a suitable place, he must placate his patient.

He is intruded on by a group of cleaning women. Behind the station, there is a gathering spot of lanes for taxi drivers; normally it should not be at all crowded during the day, but unfortunately today is 137 the middle of the Hanafuda93 gambling exposition. The entrance of the bank too, is difficult to use unless you go around 3 o'clock. The spaces under apartment emergency stairs everywhere are occupied by groups of salary-men on break.

Finally he arrives in front of an old-looking one-house hotel. Though it looks run down, it is a decent hotel. The doctor hesitates. This is the place where he will arrange a secret rendezvous with his female colleague. Having caught up to him, the patient looks up at the doctor with her whitish, completely dependent smile. That optimistic smile, accepting of everything; it would be hard to betray that smile.

Besides, he was expected to arrive at the front of this hotel sooner or later. Beckoning the patient, the doctor opens the hotel's revolving door.

To the left is the front desk, to the right, a restaurant. Exactly a dozen people in the middle of dining are silent for a moment, and turn towards the doctor. It is the entire staff of his office, with the exception of himself. To make matters worse, even the female colleague with whom he should have arrangements for a secret rendezvous is eating with everyone else, wearing a look of complete innocence. The situation being what it is, coming up with a defense beforehand would have been a winning strategy, the doctor thinks to himself as he stands in silence.

“What a coincidence.....” And, with a wink, the female doctor continues with a quite natural calmness, “There's a special menu today for cartilage surgeons.”

The doctor also puts on an air of nonchalance as best he can, “If you pass through this hotel, it makes for a great shortcut.”

Another surgeon speaks. “Sir, there's a rumor going around that the guys in orthopedics are planning to deny the status of cartilage atrophy as a unique disease, is this true?”

“Clinical records and medical bag.....” The female doctor stands and, presenting him a black leather medical bag and a large size envelope, she smiles at the young girl sheepishly clinging to the doctor's 138 side. “Get well soon, won't you?”

Having received the bag and envelope, the doctor, with a restlessness as though he had just remembered something, pushes the girl's shoulder and resumes walking. Exiting from the hotel's front entrance, he backtracks the ring-shaped road and comes to the station once again. Rather than aimlessly wandering around, taking the train is the best way to get to the girl's house, even if it becomes somewhat of a detour. Besides, the female doctor probably won't even be free until the luncheon ends.

He has not necessarily met with disaster yet. (He had the feeling he somehow knew from before that the young girl lives alone in Yokohama.)

As they approach the station square, he begins to hear intense, blunt voices. It appears as though they have started shooting at each other. A huge tank as large as two-story house, is continuing to shoot somewhere in the opposite direction as the turret rotates. The turret is marked “U.S. Military”. And, for whatever reason, he is somehow able to clearly call to mind the contents of a newspaper article concerning the incident from the next day. According to the report, the details surrounding this conflict of the SDF and U.S. Military are still unclear, but sources reported that one American soldier had already died. When he tries thinking about it that way, the doctor recalls there was indeed an American soldier collapsed on the side of the tank. But he seemed to still be breathing. He wonders if he should have done his duty as a doctor. But, according to the newspaper, it seems as though the soldier was doomed to die anyways. Sticking his nose into it and being criticized for it later would only make things more troublesome himself. Pressing the young girl, he hurries into the station.

The tank stops. It is forced to cross the railway line towards the heart of the city. As all of the ring- shaped roads within the line are occupied by sprinting ranks of the SDF, so the doctor can only run through the maze-like alleys at random.

Young ruffians wearing headbands and brandishing unsheathed swords are racing around from alley to alley. Though he has no apparent reason for doing so, the doctor endeavors to move in the direction 139 opposite the men. He didn't have a good feeling about passing those men in the thin alleyway, but obviously his libido has already surpassed his reticence. More and more he chooses alleys that look unpopular and steps inside. A filthy, neutered, one-eyed cat is lying across width of the road. He nearly kicks it to death, but he is discouraged by the thought of the young girl's cat. Hugging the cat, the young girl's expression of gratitude completely melts the doctor's heart. The young girl walks ahead, and climbing the steep stone steps with some effort, they have arrived at the young girl's house in good condition.

As he opens the door, six or seven small animals are crawling in the dim hallway. They are not cats.

Having said that, they are not dogs either. With unusually long front legs and long necks, they are incredibly strange animals. The doctor is immediately seized with an ominous premonition as though he has just diagnosed a cartilage abnormality. The young girl snickers as she opens the shutters. He can see her bed. As he boldly takes a step forward, thousands of noisy laughing voices come flowing in from the open window. There is a corridor below the window, and there the members of the medical office, who just broke up a short while ago, have come, feeling like taking an after-meal walk. Could the young girl's house be a part of the hotel? Or rather, could the hotel be a part of the young girl's room? The doctor is perturbed by his own ignorance. Had he known about this, there were many other ways he would have gone.

The doctor promptly leaps down from the window to the corridor. He stands blocking the other doctors' way, and begins prattling on about things like the shooting in front of the station in a shrill tone. He expected to see the astonished figures of the medical office staff running back in fear.

However, there is no real response on their part. Just then, a thunderous roaring sound rapidly approaches, saving the doctor from his predicament. It is a column of tanks. No, a freight train carrying tanks is running down the railway parallel to the corridor.

Having become desperate, the doctor speaks. 140

“Look at this, look! It's war! This is no time to be lazing around like this.”

The train begins to slow down; one of the turrets opens and an SDF soldier yells back to them.

“Don't spread rumors. We are mobilizing at the request of the United States armed forces. This incident is nothing more than a tank hijacking perpetrated by a number of soldiers who have gone mad.”

Slipping past the stupefied doctor's side, the group of medical office employees flock to the window of the young girl's room. Leading them was the aforementioned female doctor. As the young girl lets out a scream, she waves a thin arm in the direction of the medical office employees, seeking help from the doctor. The doctor breaks into a run. Along with the train, in the direction opposite the girl's window. Saying that the young woman and the members of the medical group were not conspirators would not guarantee salvation. The SDF soldier at the turret calls out. “Take him away.”

Another SDF soldier asks in reply, “Is he volunteering?”

“Yeah, he's a volunteer! He's volunteering!”

As he surrendered himself to the gloomy emptiness, the doctor grasped for the outstretched hand from the turret over and over again.

The inside of the tank was cool and smelled of iron. Someone crouching at his feet reached for the crotch of the doctor's pants and began fumbling around for the zipper. 141

TRANSLATION NOTES

80. A novel written by Abe Kōbō, published as Moetsukita Chizu in 1967.

81. A novel written by Abe Kōbō, published as Hako Otoko in 1973.

82. A screenplay written by Abe in 1975 which was a re-envisioning of an earlier play, Slave Hunting (Dorei gari), which he wrote in 1955.

83. Throughout this piece, Abe refers to Fujino with the honorific “kun” which is normally appended to names of people of a younger age or lower status than the speaker. Abe notes here that because Fujino was older than him, he ought to refer to him with the honorific “san” which is more polite and translates vaguely to the title “Mr.” in English. In order to give a sense of familiarity between Abe and Fujino, I have omitted any use of “kun” attached to his name and left it simply as “Fujino”, changing it to “Mr.Fujino” only when Abe uses the honorific “san”.

84. The titular character of a novel by the same name and the real-life mentor of the Chinese author Lu Xun.

85. In Japanese, the reading of the word hamster or “hamusta” and “Amuda” are somewhat similar, leading to the confusion.

86. Likewise, the words for human-like “ningen-sokuri” and mouse-like “nezumi-sokuri,” are rather similar and it is implied that the old man's Hokkaido accent made it difficult to tell the two apart.

87. Tatamiawashi, a type of Japanese food.

88. The hook here refers to the small hook found on the end of ear cleaners in Japan.

89. Abe compares the grandfather to azuki-mochi here, a traditional gelatinous sweet made from pounding glutinous rice into a moldable paste.

90. Tatami is a unit of measurement often used in describing the dimensions of Japanese homes; 1 tatami is roughly equivalent to 1.6 meters squared.

91. A large forested region of Hokkaido.

92. In Japanese, the phrase “I dreamt” or “I had a dream” literally translates to “I saw a dream” (yume wo mimashita). Since the subject of the essay concerns a dream in which the images of interest cannot be “seen”, Abe uses this to examine the conflict between the status of his invisible dream and the typical phrasing for having had a dream.

93. A type of card game in Japan.