Teshigahara’s remarkable novel, noteworthy film

[Part 2]

As a result of Niki Jumpei’s experiences in the shack – as a result of the interaction between self and place – he acquires a new cognitive style which is indeed more contextualised, holistic and experimental-oriented. This shift in the cognitive style is closely associated with his newly emergent self.

The dialectic between self and place is at the base of The Woman in the Dunes. Kobo Abe has explored this with a great deal of sensitivity and specificity. His powerful visual imagination has captured this intersection with cogency and subtlety. As I commented earlier, this dialectic between self and place is one that the art of cinema handles with growing enthusiasm. This fact, more than anything else, in my judgement, has contributed t the stunningly successful cinematic trans-creation of Kobo Abe’s novel.

What Kobo Abe has sought to do is to remove his protagonist from his cultural space and to probe deeper and deeper into his psyche as a way of reaching a more authentic selfhood. However, it has to be said that culture plays such a formidable role in the constitution of the self that by merely removing him from his habitual cultural space, Kobo Abe is not able to achieve his goal. As a matter of fact, the dialectic between self and presence that is clearly a pervasive presence in the novel and the film gains much by way of force and definition from Niki Jumpei’s cultural reflexes.

Hiroshi Teshigahara

When exploring the conjunction of self and place in The Woman in the Dunes, it is very important to pay close attention to the concept of the body that is so central to the textual strategies and representational interests in both the novel and the film. Once Niki Jumpei is imprisoned in the sand pit, the only reality for him is the constantly present sand and his own body. Much of the communication, experience of varying emotions, imaginings, and speculations are anchored in the body. Indeed, many of the most memorable passages in the novel are associated with the human body.

Blurred shadow

‘She seemed to float like a blurred shadow before his tear-filled eyes. She lay face up on the matting, her whole body, except her head, exposed to view; she had placed her left hand slightly over her lower abdomen, which was smooth and full. The parts that one usually covered were completely bare, while the face, which anybody would show, was concealed under a towel. No doubt this towel was to protect her nose, mouth, and eyes from the sand, but the contrast seemed to make the naked body stand out even more.

The whole surface of the body was covered with a coat of fine sand, which hid the details and brought out the feminine lines; she seemed a statue gilded with sand. Suddenly saliva rose from under her tongue. But he could not possibly swallow it were he to swallow, the sand that had lodged between his teeth, would spread through his mouth. He turned towards the earthen floor and spat. No matter how he emptied his mouth the sand was still there more sand seemed to issue constantly from between his teeth.’

Here, Niki Jumpei is experiencing a strange and weird situation into which he has been plunged in terms of the body; indeed, the body becomes an instrument by which the strangeness and abnormality that surround him are measured and assessed.

Opponent

Similarly, the attractions and antagonisms that Niki Jumpei and the woman experience for each other are signified in terms of the body. The body becomes a site for the interplay of conflicting emotions. We see how the human body has assumed the stature of a master signifier in the novel

‘Without paying any attention, he poised his arms to strike, but the woman, screaming, rushed violently at him.

He put out his elbow and twisted his body in an effort to ward her off. But he had miscalculated, and instead of the woman he himself was swung around, instantly, he tried to counter, but she held on as if chained to the shovel.

He did not understand. At least he could not be defeated by force. They rolled over two or three times, thrashing about the earthen floor, and for a brief moment he thought he had pinned her down, but with the handle of the shovel as a shield she deftly flipped him over. Something was wrong with him; maybe his opponent was a woman. He jabbed his bended knee into her stomach’.

Throughout the novel we find tropes, passages of descriptions, which suggest that the human body as depicted in the novel has become the measure of achievement all things human. For example, the author says that,’ They say the level of civilisation is proportionate to the cleanliness of the skin.’ When discussing the dialectic of self and place in the woman in the dunes, it is very important that we not lose sight of the very important dimension of somatic signification.

The last two decades or so has seen a remarkable increase in the scholarly interest in the human body, ways in which it could be usefully conceptualised. There has been a concerted effort by humanists and social scientists to focus on the understanding of different modes in which the human body in constructed. The nature and significance of the human body as a constructed reality that is being continually being produced and reproduced in society is increasingly attracting scholarly attention. The mapping out of the modalities of construction of the human body, understandably enough, leads into discussions of politics, ethics and questions of power and knowledge, the path-breaking work of Foucault, Elias, Kantorawicz and the writings of Nietzsche from which they draw their inspiration have significantly inflected this newly generated interest.

Plurality

The human body, it should be noted, is at the centre of a plurality of discourses that produce and reproduce culture. It has, consequently, become a useful analytical tool with which to decode some of the cultural meanings embedded in fictional and film texts. For example, modern film theorists of a feminist persuasion are engaged in the task of symbolically reclaiming the body as a means of displacing patriarchal narratives that dominate mainstream filmic analyses. Focusing on an analytic of domination and submission, they seek to draw attention to the different ways in which women are situated as objects of male gaze and desire, and how the female body is turned into a spectacle as a conscious rhetorical strategy of male control over it.

In The Woman in the Dunes, the human body is portrayed as a central act of self; this fact about the body runs through the novel influencing all human emotions, perceptions and rationalisations. Indeed, it has a metaphysical dimension rooted in Japanese thought. It is interesting at this point to compare the attitude to body and mind in western and eastern intellectual traditions. The western tradition, by and large, subscribes to a Cartesian duality; many of the Western thinkers posit a distinct separation between the mind and body whereas eastern traditions uphold a complex unity between them. This unity is perceived as an achievement, an accomplishment.

Indeed the highest achievement of human effort is seen as both a physical and spiritual attainment. Truth is not perceived merely as. a way of examining the world, but I recognised as a mode of being in the world and a significant aspect of this has to do with our somatic existence. This line of thinking has a direct bearing on Niki Jumpei’s experience. As the philosopher Yuasa Yasuo remarks, true knowledge cannot be obtained simply through theoretical thinking; it can be obtained only through bodily recognition as realisation, that is, through the utilisation the totality of one’s body and mind.

Somatic experience

The body and the somatic experience associated with it play a crucial role in the novel bearing much of its existential meaning. And one thing that cinema in the hands of talented film-makers can do exceedingly well is to capture and reconfigure the nuanced experiences and complex responses of the human body.

Kobo Abe in writing his novel clearly has given much thought to questions of corporeality and embodiment and somaticity. Hiroshi Teshigahara, in translating the literary experience into cinematic experience has fully used the power and resilience and beauty of the human body. In my view, the centrality accorded to the human body in the novel is another reason that facilitated the trans-creation of it in cinema by Teshigahara.

After all, the cinema, with its focus on the moving image, depends so heavily on the actions of the body

In discussing the relative success of the novel and the film, and the ways which the novel had enabled its cinematic conversion, the question of male gaze which is closely related to the representation of the human body, deserves close attention. The Woman in the Dunes is largely a male-centered novel obeying the codes and convention of representation associated with patriarchy.

The novel in essence charts the physical experiences and the concomitant cognitive metamorphosis of Niki Jumpei and the woman in the dunes is the catalyst that brings about a transformation in the mental outlook of the protagonist. Indeed, the focus of interest in Niki Jumpei and the woman is perceived and evaluated through his eyes. This is, of course, to my mind, a limitation of the novel. Once again, this feature in the novel is one that ties very nicely with the dictates and imperatives of the medium of cinema as we know it today.

In western cinema – and Hiroshi Teshgahara is largely following the codes and conventions of western cinema – the female is generally constructed as a symbolic outcome of male desire. The female becomes an object of male gaze and her subjectivity is denied, entrapped as she is in the complex dictates of patriarchy. In cinematic representation, the woman being a product of male gaze continues to be an object devalued as the site of male voyeurism. She is relegated to a position of marginality, and that marginality is vital to the ahistorical, essentialist and negative image of woman created by cinema. Feminist film critics like Laura Mulvey have argued that women as represented within the economy of male libidinal pleasure obtainable in the dark world of fantasy of the theatre.

Dual entrapment

The female character in The Woman in the Dunes, it seems to me, suffers a dual entrapment. She is physically entrapped in the sand pit, and communicatively entrapped in the make gaze. And her plight, paradoxically, serves to underline the mechanisms of the pleasure of looking, what Freud refers to as ‘scopophilia’. What we find therefore, in the representation of the woman in the dunes in the film is the faithful adherence to the androcentric conventions of Western film-making. And once again, the built-in patriarchal biases in the novel assisted the film-maker considerably.

The relationship between the self and culture is another dimension that merits close analysis. Clearly, the distinction between society and culture is not an easy one to establish. Anthropologists such as Marcel Mauss who have pointed out the shaping role of society on the evolution of human self have also talked about the importance of culture. Other anthropologists like

A. Irving Hallowell, who have placed heavy emphasis on the role of culture in the creation of the self, have not ignored the crucial role played by society. The dividing line between society and culture is a finely drawn one, and it is with shifts of emphasis that we are primarily concerned here.

Building in these ideas and also challenging them modern anthropologists have laboured to underscore the salience of the idea of culture as a construct and its influence on personhood. The cultural construction of self has a direct bearing on the experience dramatised in The Woman in the Dunes. Kobo Abe has selected a middle class character that grew up in the city and transfers to him to a situation that is bizarre and culture-less. However, it has to be noted, that the way the protagonist behaves in this situation foregrounds his cultural upbringing, the way his newer self emerges from his unanticipated encounters and the way his attitudes are inflected can best be understood against the background of his culture.

Exteriority

Another important area that merits close analysis is the relationship between the self and the psyche. In the case of self and society, and of self and culture, the emphasis was largely on exteriority; now it shifts to the dynamics of inferiority. Here the writings of Freud and Jung and their respective followers can prove to be useful. Let us first consider the view of self expounded by Freud.

In a sense it is difficult to summarize Freud’s view because over a period of more than four decades of conceptualising and writing, it changed constantly. When analysing Freud’s view of the self, one can usefully talk of three stages – the somatic, the psychological and the meta-psychological – depending on which areas one chooses to emphasise. In the early period of his conceptualisations of self, during which he was primarily interested in the somatic nature of the self, Freud saw himself as a function of the organism’s physical drive, the sex-instinct and the ego instinct. During the next stage, when his emphasis was on the psychological, the dualism between the sex instinct and the ego instinct was transformed into the manifestation of a unitary psychic energy. In the meta-psychological stage, these two concepts were transformed into Eros (life instinct) and Thanatos (death instinct).

On the other hand, according to Jung the self is an inner guiding factor that is clearly different from the conscious personality. It can be grasped only by means of an investigation of one’s dreams. An analysis of dreams, in his opinion, will demonstrate the fact that the self is indeed the regulating center which serves to bring about an extension and maturation of the personality. Freud and Jung, and the many psychologists who have chosen to follow in their footsteps, define the self in terms of the psyche and inward experiences. This is, of course, not to suggest that they have totally ignored the social and cultural dimensions of human selfhood. However, their emphasis, in seeking to define self, has unmistakably been on the psychic as opposed to external reality.

Inwardness

This discussion of the self and psyche, just like the discussions on self and nature, shed interesting light on the experiences reconfigured in The Woman in the Dunes. The behaviour of Niki Jumpei in its most inwardness can best be understood in relation to the interplay between self and psyche. As a novelist, Kobo Abe has always been fascinated by this interplay, and The Woman in the Dunes bears powerful witness to his fact.

Hiroshi Teshigahara’s visual imagination and Kobo Abe’s literary imagination met productively on the terrain of self and psyche.

What I have sought to do in these columns is to explore one of the rare instances in which a highly successful novel has been made into a highly successful film, and to investigate into some of the reasons that many have contributed to this productive venture and union.

In this regard, I chose to focus on what I think are three key conceptual entities: self, place and body. Interestingly, in recent times, a vast theoretical literature has sprouted around all three concepts. I have only hinted at some of the compelling implications they carry.

A comparison of Kobo Abe’s novel and Hiroshi Teshigahara’s film compels us to think about the complex relations that exist between novels and films, and the way novels can be converted into successful films. Interestingly, this is an issue that is vitally connected to poetics of fiction and poetics of cinema. – a demanding terrain that has yet to be studied in its full complexity.

Concluded