During my impoverished student years, I used to work at a local grocery store to meet ends. It was about two blocks away from my house. Everyday, my walks to work included terrifying encounters with a raggedy woman brimming with delusional paranoia of the world ending amid armageddon showers; her constant yelling was eerie and scared the daylights out of me.Enter the world of 'Mole'- a middle-aged, stout man who stays true to his nickname; dwelling in an abandon stone-quarry in an obscure landscape away from civilization. He is a poster child for misanthropy and delusional paranoia. A self-confessed "Noah", presumes to build an ark to save mankind from future nuclear holocaust. Unlike Noah, I deem that his celestial prophecies were strictly induced from large amount of caffeine that he guzzled along with cheap beers. So, with the mirage of being "the savior", he goes on a monthly excursion to the malls to recruit the choicest specimens (people) who he finds worth giving a ticket to his futuristic ship. During one of his outings he assembles a trio- an insect seller, and a couple of shills. The group ultimately lands in the stone quarry and an onset of surreal and macabre atmosphere reveals the incongruous circumstances. The rest of the manuscript discusses an array of topics from old age in the form of the Broom Brigade, environmentalism, survival, murder, allegiance, sex, humanity and nuclear devastation.The vocabulary commences strongly with personalized characterization of every actor, revealing idiosyncrasies with gritty metaphors making the individuals authentic thriving in their recluse milieu. The insect seller-Komono, who trades these paper-like fictitious insects-‘eupcaccia’, find affinity towards Mole; identifying these insects to be a placard of his own misanthropic lifestyle. Lacking friends or family, Mole compares himself to the eupcaccia, a fictional self-contained bug that feeds on its own feces. The concept of alienation shines with every passage giving a deep sense of the hermit life-styles and an acquired misanthropic quality with the fear of being ridiculed.Abe’s bringing into play of creatures to be a metaphor to human life can be seen in his other book 'Woman in Dunes' correlating the mechanism of creepy-crawly manners to human philosophy."Take the anthropoids, which are thought to share a common ancestor with the human race. They exhibit two distinct tendencies: one is to make groups and build societies—the aggrandizing tendency—and the other are for each animal to huddle in its own territory and build its own castle —the settling tendency. For whatever reason, both these contradictory impulses survive in the human psyche. On the one hand, humans have acquired the ability to spread across the earth, thanks to an adaptability superior even to that of rats and cockroaches; on the other, they have acquired a demonic capability for intense mutual hatred and destruction."Kobo Abe a proficient in surrealism and absurdity lacks lucidity in this particular manuscript. The assembly of classic outcasts and uncanny personality is quiet attention-grabbing with little quirks spilling from every character’s movements through the coherent narration. However, with introduction of new characters and embellishments of senseless jargon, the tale turns into this muddled cauldron of jumbling and irksome recitation.Through endless yawns and blank stares, I eventually drifted building my own castle in the sky with flying ponies.
The Ark Sakura is a wonderfully bizarre novel. Mole (AKA Pig) lives in the vast underground maze of an abandoned mine, which he likens to a ship. There he has made preparations to survive a nuclear holocaust. But every ship needs a crew, so periodically Mole goes out to identify and recruit those he deems worthy of boarding his Ark. Very few are, and in fact our story begins right about the time Mole, on the spur of the moment, finally hands out his first boarding pass. This to an insect dealer, or more accurately to a con man selling fake insects. Trouble is the con's two shills have managed to make off with another boarding pass (key and map). Mole and the insect dealer race back to the Ark hoping to beat the shills there, but failing. What follows is an amazing and surreal story. As the men engage in a power struggle, for which the prize seems to be the female shill; as the female shill struggles to play one against the other in order to keep herself from becoming a prize; as new characters are introduced, and histories revealed Abe's theme becomes clearer. These disparate characters, all with their own histories, their own reasons, share one thing; they all belong to the fringes of society. The Ark Sakura is a novel about alienation, and above all the deep, all consuming nature of loneliness.
What do You think about The Ark Sakura (1989)?
I've only read this work (twice now) and an early work - the Box Man, and I think this is a much more accessible novel that illuminates and frames a modern Japan that is familiar and alien - almost surreal. I'm still digesting the meaning but certainly there is the idea of estranged people who don't fit in and the Ark (actually an abandoned underground mining facility) becomes almost a perceived sanctuary for these outcasts. A small cast of characters weaving in, out and around each other in a odd, disquieting tableau of control and lost wishes. Each ultimately unable to resolve their sense of who they are or who they want to be. Much to think on both as a story of people who have lost themselves and perhaps a social tale of Japanese society. If one likes to read Murakami then they should find comfort in the puzzlements of Abe writings as he clearly is an influence on Haromi.
—Chris Laskey
My third Abe. In The Ark Sakura, he proves himself to be the vital forerunner to Murakami, and writes a novel starring a foul troglodyte with more than a few axes to grind. His dream is of a bunker beneath the earth where humans can survive the nuclear holocaust that noted cosmic corpsefucker Ronald Reagan seemed to be inviting in the mid-'80s. Weird and quixotic as it is, it's still his dream, and he tries to get over his shit and actually do it. You feel a bit bad for him, as incapable and gullible and Mittyish as he is.I once called this concept the "ur-bro," and you feel bad for Mole in the same way you feel bad for Charlie in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. He is the flipside of the male ego, the person that nearly all men fear becoming when the world rejects us, sexually, materially, emotionally, and intellectually.
—Andrew
The only other novel by Kobo Abe I've read is "Woman in the Dunes" but I thought I would give this a shot since I enjoyed that novel so much. I'd like to share my thoughts after finished up the book, though I think it deserves a re-read and certainly a lot more thought than just what I initially perceive. An overweight recluse who prefers to be called "Mole" lives in solitude in a gigantic abandoned mining facility which he turns into his "ark" for surviving the nuclear holocaust. To go along with this he makes a select number of tickets who he will eventually pass out to people he feels able enough to survive with him - tickets to life after the apocalypse. Once he passes out his first tickets he finds things are much more complicated than he thought. Living together with people for the first time proves to be a new experience for Mole that he might not be able to handle. Furthermore, the Ark may not be as secure as he once thought. Abe still has his knack for detail as did in woman in the dunes. His in-depth(and often seemingly unnecessary and sporadic) scientific explanations appear a couple times at the start of the novel. Sure, Abe never practiced with his medical degree but sometimes he explains the inner workings of trivial things with the knowledge of a doctor or scientist. In the end, Abe conveyed the same message as he did in "Woman in the Dunes"(Why do we exist and who determines our fate?) but I felt he took way too long to get it to us. For a bulk of the novel, maybe the first three quarters, the plot goes almost nowhere at an incredibly slow pace. Then suddenly things happen incredibly fast(even for the characters things move at an alarming pace towards the end) and the real content starts coming up but it feels like such a trip to get there. Perhaps for me the novel was a bit too wordy, even though reading Abe is always enjoyable for some reason or another. Even if I enjoyed reading it, the plot went far too long without going places for me to warrant this a must-read to anyone. I'd like to read it again sometime to see what I can really get out of it.
—Chris Cabrera
