Dissatisfaction with the modern world was a consistent motif within the works of Abe Kobo. He believed that the conventions of industrial society could not fully measure a human's value or worth, however scientific or rational they appeared. Instead, he believed that these definitions limited human potential by providing incomplete and generic stereotypes which modern man would strive to fulfill but not transcend. Believing that capitalism fostered jealousy and destroyed community solidarity by placing men on a hierarchy of worth, he found modern society to be alienating. His views led him to create characters which unsuccessfully strove for complete withdrawal from modern society due to their unwillingness to assimilate. This adheres to the Japanese Communist Party's (JCP) belief that capitalism could not be reformed from within and that a radical revolution was inevitable. His falling out with the JCP in 1962, however, led him to create Woman of the Dunes, a more hopeful story in which the main character was able to embrace society by redefining his goals and values. The main character chose to remain in the oppressive society in order to contribute to the community in ways which would garner him the respect of his peers. The main character enjoyed a freedom which was different from the complete independence which he originally strove for. Due to a belief in the plasticity of identity, Abe Kobo believed that freely accepting a burdensome society in the interest of changing it for the better could be more fulfilling than completely escaping from society. While he was disdainful of the roles that modern society constructed for men, he accepted the fact that integration into society was necessary to some extent if one wished to remold man's collective identity. While he believed that freedom was essential in allowing men to define themselves and fulfill their potential, he understood that reputation and the desire to be recognized by one's peers motivated men to act and drove them to improve society. In Woman of the Dunes, Abe Kobo cautiously endorsed integration into society to the extent that one could contribute creatively while maintaining a sense of fulfillment. His move toward hopeful acceptance of society paralleled the increased freedom of expression and choice within Japanese society which came with the departure of the American occupation force and economic independence.
From the start of his career, Abe Kobo was dissatisfied with the tasks that industrial society assigned to people, believing that they disfigured a man's identity. First of all, he believed that the industrial world compartmentalized humans in such a way that they could not find fulfillment performing their duties1. He found that the repetitious physical labor required by industrial society was dehumanizing and that it transformed people into the mere units of a collective which was at the service of a few men. The main character of Woman of the Dunes expressed his dissatisfaction with his task of endlessly shoveling sand when he stated that the work was fit for a monkey and that a rational society should utilize the people based on their skills and talents2. He felt as if he was being ruthlessly exploited by the people who were making profits from his coerced labor.
Abe Kobo believed that the mindless work provided by industrial society disfigured humans' personalities by restricting them from performing creative tasks and developing unique identities, which was unimportant according to society's measures of a man's worth3. He was mostly disenchanted with society's habit of rating men and creating divisions between them which would lead to conflict. The main character of Woman of the Dunes echoed this dissatisfaction when he described a falling out with his wife which should not have occurred based purely on society's certificates, which assured that he was a good productive citizen4. Men were driven to increase their standing in modern society, and as a result they were focused on appearing qualified and trustworthy rather than on searching for their unique role within the community. Abe Kobo expressed this in his 1974 novel The Box Man, a story of men who live in large cardboard boxes to retreat from society. One of the box men criticized people for trying to fit into society's ideal types when he said that they wear clothes and cut their hair to appear identical to one another5. European philosophy led Abe Kobo to believe that human language was incapable of completely capturing the essence of reality because it simplified the world into concepts which could be understood by humans, and as a result he rejected society's attempts to measure an individual's contribution to the social good6.
Abe Kobo believed that industrial society divided people into types and created class differences which destroyed community solidarity. He was especially upset by the strong desire for privacy and personal property which drove neighbors to conceal the bad parts of their lives from one another while making each other jealous with their possessions7. Abe Kobo concluded that the modern day crisis of man was his desire to escape from the alienation engendered by social conventions8. In The Box Man, for example, the man said that he would not need to conceal himself from society in the box if he could be free of envy and a sense of inferiority9. Similarly, the main character of Face of Another concealed his disfigured face with a mask in order to be protected from society's destructive judgments. The doctor who created this man's new face said that drinking alcohol was similar to wearing a mask in that they both provide a person the freedom to act without worrying about others' judgments10. People had such a strong desire to get drunk because it could be used as an excuse for acting however they pleased. The main character of The Box Man expressed a similar desire for insulation from outside evaluation when he described his dreams of a city of friendly hospitable strangers11. The doctor from Face of Another described a similar city in which people put on masks to change their identities so that name, position, and occupation would not matter, allowing people to live without restraint12. In these examples Abe Kobo expressed his desire for a world in which people could act freely upon their whims and fancies without the fear of a loss of reputation which could endanger their prospects.
The majority of Abe Kobo's characters could not come to terms with society yet could not escape from it, leading them to fulfill their own desires and resign from constructive activity. This came from characters' desire to escape the collective rationalities of modern society which cannot capture reality's complexity13. Due to his dissatisfaction with a society that limited human potential by assigning people menial or exploitative tasks, Abe Kobo joined the Japanese Communist Party, the only organization which strove to destroy artificial divisions between men and was consistently opposed to the militarism and ultra-nationalism of the Japanese government under Tojo. The JCP introduced Abe Kobo to European socialists and philosophers who strove to reshape the people's values by creating a rational society which was free of conflict and hierarchy. The JCP endorsed revolution and direct action such as striking and boycotting in order to bring about this new society. The JCP was skeptical of the improvements which could be achieved through gradual parliamentary reform, and as a member of the party Abe Kobo's message had to support the views of the party. His works during this period endorse the Communist notion that capitalistic society could not be reformed cooperatively from within, and the characters who attempted to cope with this society were unfruitful.
As an alternative to accepting the limitations of society, Abe Kobo explored the possibility of complete independence from society. The protagonists of Face of Another and The Box Man both adopt an outer skin in order to escape from the social constraints which limit their action14. They believed that an escape from being seen by the outside world would allow them to act freely without remorse15. The relentless pursuit for freedom, however, does not lead to constructive activity for the main characters of these works. The masked man, free from all responsibility and accountability, murdered the doctor in the film version of Face of Another16. The box man's pursuit of freedom was similarly futile, as he expressed a loneliness and a longing to rejoin society if he could be rid of envy and class conflict17. The main character of Face of Another also felt the loneliness that came with freedom18.
Abe Kobo seemed to contend that resigning from society robbed man of his purpose, and that the struggle for freedom was a hopeless pursuit. Most of Abe Kobo's characters encountered an overwhelming social force which had the power to control and shape everyone and everything19. The main character of Woman of the Dunes, completely parched, imagined whole cities being swallowed by the sand and realized that struggling against the tide of society was as hopeless as trying to crawl out of the sand dune he had been trapped in20. The desire to escape from this control motivated the box man and the masked man to search for a way to free themselves from these constraints, but the transformations they undergo destroyed their identity and turn them into the types21. The box man's lack of any direction led him to totally resign from constructive activity22, while the masked man's unlimited freedom drove him to seduce his wife and to satisfy his fleeting desires rather than to carry on life as a normal productive human being. Ultimately, Abe Kobo believed that man's relentless pursuit of freedom was doomed for failure23.
Instead, Abe Kobo endorsed voluntary acceptance of the limitations of society in the interest of shaping society for the better. First of all, he believed that a human's identity was easily changed and influenced by outside factors, and that a man's personality was mainly determined by the sum total of his experiences24. The main character from Face of Another had so many selves that he was confused about how he should speak and act because the mask changed his personality in a way that he could not understand. The doctor points out, for example, that his change of clothing style was the mask asserting its power over shaping the man's actions and identity. The two parallel scenes of the masked man and the bandaged man renting rooms from the landlord showed that even the most subtle differences in treatment would cause a man to act immensely different25. Abe Kobo used the main character of Face of Another to show that a person's identity was pre-determined by his experiences with outside stimuli and could therefore be changed26. He observed that the American occupying force had achieved a radical transformation of the Japanese people's values27, shifting virtue away from selfless emperor worship and toward finding individual meaning and worth. He believed that many aspects of reality could be easily changed by altering the societal norms which shape men. Due to his embrace of the idea that human nature was not innate but socially cultivated28, Abe Kobo's Woman of the Dunes endorsed man's pursuit of rejoining society in the interest of reshaping it.
While the main character of Woman of the Dunes struggled against captivity for a large portion of the story, he chose to accept his position voluntarily when he was able to create the innovative water pump. From the beginning of the story the main character was interested in pursuing work which would gain him reputation and garner the respect of his peers. The main character mentioned more than once that his true motivation for exploring the dunes was to discover a new insect and to get his name in the bug book next to that entry. The man's struggle against captivity was ironically the motivation which led him to discover meaning in his life in the dunes. He was attempting to build a crow trap in the interest of using the birds for communication with the outside world, but instead he created a device for extracting water from the sand. When the main character was given the choice to escape from his desert captivity, he chose to stay so that he could win the respect of the villagers by showing them his new invention. Once the main character realized he could pursue his dreams of fame and recognition as a resident of the dunes, he became much less eager to rejoin urban life. The main character redefined his freedom by deciding that it would be just as fulfilling to work in the desert community away from the alienating social conventions of the materialistic world29. The main character had resigned to the fact that he must live in a constraining society of some sort, and he was able to fulfill his pursuit of gaining social recognition. Ultimately, the main character accepted the fact that his disenchantment with urban society had driven him to explore the dunes, and he chose to be hopeful of his new role in the desert community rather than to strive for unlimited freedom and to resign from all productive social activity.
Abe Kobo's disdain for modern social conventions did not drive him to endorse a struggle for freedom at any cost. Rather, he encouraged humans to find a new kind of freedom in accepting social constraints and striving to improve them. Believing that man could redefine himself and reshape the world to change people's values, Abe Kobo entreated men to contribute creatively to society. While he seemed to emphasize the importance of Buddhist self-cultivation in preparing one to contribute creatively to society, Abe Kobo also embraced the notion that enlightenment and independence could not be used to help others if one unconditionally pursued freedom and withdrew from society.
1Fumiko Yamamoto, “Metamorphosis in Abe Kobo's Works,” The Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese (November 1980), p. 171.
2Teshigahara Hiroshi, Woman of the Dunes.
3Yamamoto, “Metamorphosis,” p. 190.
4Teshigahara Hiroshi, Woman of the Dunes.
5Abe Kobo, The Box Man (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974), p. 86
6Bolton, Sublime Voices: The Fictional Science and Scientific Fiction of Abe Kobo (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2009), p. 37-8.
7McDonald, From Book to Screen: Modern Japanese Literature in Film (Armonk: East Gate Book, 2000), p. 271.
8McDonald, From Book to Screen, p. 276.
9Abe Kobo, The Box Man, p. 90-1.
10Abe Kobo, Face of Another.
11Abe Kobo, The Box Man, p. 14.
12Abe Kobo, Face of Another.
13Christoper Bolton, Sublime Voices, p. 39.
14Keiko McDonald, From Book to Screen, p. 272.
15Kobo Abe, The Box Man, p. 16.
16Teshigahara Hiroshi, Face of Another,
17Christopher Bolton, Sublime Voices, p. 198.
18Teshigahara Hiroshi, Face of Another,
19Fumiko Yamamoto, “Metamorphosis,” p. 170
20Teshigahara Hiroshi, Woman of the Dunes.
21Fumiko Yamamoto, “Metamorphosis,” p. 190.
22Abe Kobo, The Box Man, p. 19.
23Keiko McDonald, From Book to Screen, p. 284.
24Christopher Bolton, Sublime Voices, p. 167.
25Abe Kobo, Face of Another.
26Christopher Bolton, Sublime Voices, p. 167.
27Fumiko Yamamoto, “Metamorphosis,” p. 172.
28Fumiko Yamamoto, “Metamorphosis,” p. 173.
29Teshigahara Hiroshi, Woman of the Dunes.
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