The Woman in the Dunes

is a 1962 novel by Japanese writer Kōbō Abe. It won the Yomiuri Prize that year. It was translated into English by E. Dale Saunders in 1964. It also got made into an award-winning movie by Hiroshi Teshigahara.

Plot
It is August 1955. A school teacher from Tokyo called Jumpei Niki goes to a fishing village. He is there to collect insects. Jumpei misses the last bus back to Tokyo. Villagers lead him to a house in some dunes. In the house lives a widow. The house also keeps filling up with sand which the woman clears away.

The next day, Jumpei wakes up to find the ladder out of the house gone. To receive water from the villagers, he must live with the widow and dig away the sand. At one point, Jumpei escapes, but is chased down by the villagers.

The pair in the house discover a water reservoir while digging in the sand. Jumpei now has no reason to help dig away the sand, yet at this point, he continues his duty. Jumpei and the widow later become a couple, and the widow gets pregnant and delivers a baby. The ladder is left in the house, but Jumpei does not escape. Jumpei instead thinks about telling the villagers about the reservoir.

Seven years after Jumpei went missing, Jumpei's wife has her husband declared deceased.

 Meaning 
The Woman in the Dunes has been interpreted in many ways. George Mullins sees the lack of named characters as a way for the story to take a universal quality. He also says that the story is a metaphor for modern Japanese employment.

In his introduction of the novel, writer David Mitchell interprets the villagers as being burakumin. He sees the villager's actions as a logical reaction to the government abandoning them. They punish Jumpei with hard labor as the villagers believe he is part of the system that abandoned them.

 Reception 
The novel was well-received in Japan and abroad. Yukio Mishima and Jirō Osaragi have both praised the novel.Yukio Mishima, Suisenbun (The Woman in the Dunes; Hakourabun), Shinchosha, 1962Jirō Osaragi, Senpō 14th Yomiuri Literary Prize, Yomiuri Shimbun Evening Edition, January 28, 1963 In his review, Mullins describes the novel as thought-provoking. It won the Yomiuri Prize in 1962.

References

Category:1962 books
Category:Japanese novels