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The sands never rested…. they invaded and destroyed the surface of the earth.
Kobo Abe, The Woman in the Dunes: p.14
… you want to distinguish between yourself and the puppets by making yourself a puppeteer. p.112
… one admits of spiritual rape as a necessary evil. p.138
The Woman in the Dunes (砂の女, 1962, film 1964) focuses on the disappearance of a teacher and aspiring entomologist named Niki Jumpei, who journeys into the desert to discover a new form of insect which will land him in the history books. Night falls as he wanders through the desert, and he is given shelter in a village where certain residences are sunk in great cavities in the sand. The villagers imprison him within the dunes to provide companionship for a destitute woman residing there. He cannot escape, and the narrative is concerned with his desperation for freedom amid this wretched life in the dunes, with only a sand-weathered woman to accompany him. Life is barren in these bleak recesses. Niki is entombed in a cadaverous, putrid, rotting, dilapidated hovel swarmed with sand and fleas, an internment devoid of freedom, pleasure, and distraction. He complains that life in the sand is meaningless stagnation. It's miserable, hopeless, futile repetition. The day is spent toiling in the falling sand, digging out the collapsing dunes and sand cataracts to prevent burial and death. In a fit of despondency, Niki asks whether the woman exists “only for the purpose of clearing away the sand” (39).1 He likens shoveling sand to piling up rocks in the River of Hades, only to have the devils snatch them away as fast as one hurls them in. “It's infernal punishment precisely because nothing happens” (188). It's Sisyphean incarceration, meaninglessness, cruelty, ontological death.
Desperate to escape, Niki conceives a diversity of plans to scale the dunes. But they all fail. Even when he finally surmounts his wasteland internment, he's pursued until drowning in quicksand. Rescued by his tormenters, Niki is returned he