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Halle 2022-03-13 08:01:01

"Sand Girl" is the representative work of post-war Japanese existentialist writer Abe Kobo. The author reflects the lonely predicament of modern people and the survival confusion of modern people with a very realistic and grotesque allegory technique. , deeply explores the themes of human existence space and human existence value of a series of modern literature.

Echi Kawara Hiroshi and "Daughter of the Dune"
"Daughter of the Dune" is a work directed by Japanese director Echi Kawara Hiroshi in 1964. Hiroshi Kawahara is an internationally renowned film master, but in Japan, he is not only known for his film achievements, but also a famous pottery master.
Edict Kawara Hiroshi was born in 1927. His father Edict Kawara Sofeng was the founder of the Japanese flower arrangement art school "Sogetsu Ryu". Emissary Kawara Hiroshi studied fine arts in his early years, and began to shoot documentaries in the mid-to-late 1950s. In 1962, the imperial envoy Hiroshi Kawahara brought the novel "The Cave of the Mountain" (also known as "The Trap") by the famous existentialist novelist Kobo Abe (1924-1993) to the screen, which began to attract the attention of the film industry. "The Girl of the Sand Dune" is the second work of the imperial envoy Kawara Hiroshi after directing "The Cave of the Mountain". The film is also adapted from the novel "The Girl of the Sand Dune" of the same name by Abe Gongbo. Eiji Okada and Kishida Kyoko.
The film mainly tells the story of the entomologist played by Okada Eiji who came to a remote and backward village to collect insects. Unexpectedly, the villagers designed him and a widow (Kishida Kyoko) to be trapped in a wooden house in a sandpit. One man and one woman are like caged animals, and their every move is under the gaze of the villagers. An entomologist is like a widow's prey from a civilized world, and the two inevitably become entangled. The helpless entomologist tried many times to escape from the sand dunes but failed. Gradually, his lust for widows, love and hate, fear, hesitation, and despair intertwined. As time passed, deep in his heart, An unbreakable psychological cage was built. At the end of the film, even if he had the opportunity to walk out of the sand dunes where he was imprisoned, and a little yearning for freedom sprouted again in his heart, he struggled but finally returned to the cage numbly, and he could not escape

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Hiroshi Kawara used a cold camera, combined with a grotesque plot and a black style, so that the whole film was shrouded in a depressing and gloomy atmosphere. Coupled with the excellent soundtrack of the famous musician Toru Takemitsu, it vividly described an absurd and bizarre scene. world. The narrative of the entire film is very smooth. Under the control of Edict Kawahara Hiroshi, the existence of everything in the play seems to be taken for granted, and the plot is also easy to follow.
From the background of the times at that time, Japan in the 1960s was on the track of recovering from post-war trauma and embarking on the track of rapid economic development, followed by a large number of social problems, which implied many contradictions and crises. The director clearly recognized this. At one point, I was anxious and anxious, but I couldn't find a solution. Abe's novel "Daughter of the Dune" coincides with his point of view. The film foreshadows that even if individuals come from a developed society to primitive tribes to seek a peaceful state, they will eventually fall back into a new crisis, expressing the His pessimistic mood and uncertainty about the future are also reflected in the film. Similarly, the original author Abe's disgusting life in his early life is also reflected in the film. The village in the film may be Abe. The vague impression of hometown in the heart of the public house.
"Daughter of the Dunes" received rave reviews after its release, caused a sensation in the Japanese film industry, and also won high honors in foreign film festivals--Won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in France and the Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film. Hiroshi Kawara was famous for a while.

Emissary Kawara Hiroshi's later years photos
Since then, Emissary Kawara Hiroshi and Abe's public housing have continued to work hard. The two collaborated again to adapt Abe's novel "The Face of Others" into a movie, which was also widely praised. At the same time, the imperial envoy Kawara Hiroshi organized a group of film directors and named it "Sogetsu Studio" (apparently, the name was influenced by his father's school of flower arrangement, "Sogetsu-ryu"). The organization has gathered a large number of outstanding individual film writers, and has also created many outstanding works.
After 1972, Hiroshi Kawara gradually stopped film creation and became obsessed with ceramic art. He also achieved high attainments in this field. In 1985, the imperial envoy Hiroshi Kawara devoted himself to the production of traditional Japanese gardens.
In 1984, Hiroshi Kawara was ordered to return to the film industry after a long absence, and he directed the last three films of his life. Among them, "Rikyu" filmed in 1989 and "Hoji" in 1992 are more famous, but their style is different from that of the 1960s. The works are quite different. The above-mentioned two films are more about the insights that Takahara Hiroshi has gained from concentrating on traditional Japanese art for many years - that is, he is more about pursuing inner peace, harmony and purity.
The imperial envoy Hiroshi Kawahara passed away in 2001, and directed a total of 10 films. "The Girl of the Dune" ranked 82nd among the top 100 Japanese films of the 20th century.


The film director most influenced by Abe's public house was the imperial minister Hiroshi Kawahara. Representative works "Trap" (1962), "Sand Girl" (1964). A comment is reproduced below, author Song Lieyi.

In his novels, Kobo Abe always places his characters in a place different from our ordinary world, a different place, a closed space, where he makes the characters in his novels struggle like nightmares . Like the novel "Box Man", Kobo Abe carefully designed a small and suffocating space for the protagonist of his novel "Sand Girl" - a "sand hole" by the sea. In "Sand Cave", Abe Kobo had a male teacher named "Niki Junpei" fight against "Sand" and the "sandified" people around the sand, the invisible system. All the absurdities happened when the male teacher who came to the beach alone to collect insect specimens stumbled into the "sand cave".

According to Camus, the absurd often has a "ridiculous beginning", and "it acquires its nobility in this tragic birth" (Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus). Isn't that so? Kafka's novel The Metamorphoses begins its poignant journey into the absurd when the little salesman "Samsa" wakes up to find himself transformed into a beetle. We can regard Abe's novel "Sand Girl" as another kind of "Metamorphosis", but we can't find the fate of "Samsa" in "Sand Girl", which can be seen by turning the ceiling upside down the fate of a beetle. In "Sand Girl" there is no such human variation, but a spatial variation. But "alienation" is indeed a good thing, whether it is human or spatial, everything is marked with absurdity. In the stifling narration, the absurdity of Kobo Abe's novel "The Sand Girl" takes place and is as unstoppable as the "sand avalanche."

"One day in August, a man disappeared."--The beginning of the novel "Sand Girl" begins in a very steep way, as steep as the overhanging wall of "Sand Cave", which makes the narrative of the novel There is an unmistakable tone throughout. Well, let's fall into that hot "sand hole" with this "missing person". In this "alienated" space, sand and everything derived from sand are everywhere. Even the widow that the protagonist of the novel meets in the "sand cave" is like sand, flowing silently and speaking little. "Women stand in the darkness, darker than the darkness", "The actions and silences of women are unconsciously filled with a terrifying atmosphere." For the male protagonist "He", perhaps there is no sentence in this statement. Women are more disturbing and stressful than the constant sand avalanches. No one has ever been able to escape from the "sand cave", and the meaning of all life for those who live in the "sand cave" is to constantly "clear the sand", maintain the existence of the "sand cave", and prevent it from collapsing. Lose. Between "he" and the widow, "sand" has always acted as an "unexpected third party", and "sand" is also a symbol of eroticism: "When I took off my trousers, a handful of sand passed through the bases of my fingers and rushed straight to the ground. It spilled into the inner thighs..."

And did we really follow the "missing person" and fall into the "sand hole" completely? In fact, we were caught in a trap. We see the world outside the sand cave in the "sand cave", and see the "sand cave" through the outside world. In "Sand Cave", we can read a report in the newspaper together with "him" about a Japanese crane driver who was seriously injured by the collapsed sand and was sent to the hospital for emergency rescue. The deep meaning of the novel is: " Sand holes are everywhere. In the eyes of the "missing person", the "grey-skinned guys" around him lived a "gray life", so he took "extremely confidential" about his seaside trip. manner". Before the trip, the "missing man" lived a life in isolation, which made him a "mental venereal sufferer" who "must wear rubber" while he and his wife "go". However, tired of one "sand cave life", but fell into another "sand cave life". In "Sand Cave", we can also see the phenomenon of a hole within a hole. It was a trap called "Hope" dug by the "missing person" in the clearing to catch the crow, and he expected a letter of distress to be tied to the crow's leg. The novel seems to tell us that in the "sand cave", if there is a carrier pigeon, it is a crow, and it can only be a crow.

Abe Kobo seeks to enlighten us through his novels, a world of surveillance and surveillance, of capture and arrest. When the "missing person" was on the way to catch insects with his insecticidal bottle and potassium cyanide, he strayed into the "sand cave" and was captured by the "sand girl", and the "missing person" was in the "sand cave" "He lived a life of being under surveillance. The high "lookout post" kept control of his actions at all times. The people in the sand village used "big net baskets" to carry the sand, and also used "big net baskets" to control him. escape action. What is more worthy of our vigilance is that even if the "missing person" is in a desperate situation in the "sand cave", he still "inexplicably thinks of the potassium cyanide in the insecticidal bottle" from time to time. Who is he trying to capture? Are the readers us? In the novel "Sand Girl", everything falls into a kind of strange circle, and the novel explains this kind of strange circle as follows: "The so-called 'Mebius circle' is to twist a piece of paper, and then twist the back of the paper tape. One end of the paper tape is glued to the end of the surface of the paper tape, forming a ring, that is, a space that does not distinguish between inside and outside." The reality described in the novel is precisely such a world that does not distinguish between inside and outside, "the missing person" Both inside and outside the cave, the author asks the "missing person" to constantly reminisce about his life outside the cave, and makes him "return" to his wife's "'husband-lost' house" to see, which This writing intention emphasizes "no distinction between inside and outside". So all the efforts of the "missing person" to escape from the cave are meaningless. Everyone lives in a vicious circle, even the colleague of the "missing person" - a man who "always looks like he has just washed his face and has swollen eyelids", a person who is enthusiastic about the trade union movement, even " Associating the union movement with one's private life like a 'Mebius Circle'."

In this way, all the absurd secrets of the novel "Sand Girl" lie in this distortion of space, and it makes modern people encounter this distortion. It's more or less reminiscent of Escher's equally bizarre black-and-white prints, the terrifying reality of the distorted space. The reason why this kind of absurd can resonate with readers lies in the modernity of the absurd. In the novel "Sand Girl", we can also witness the fear and resistance to the "bureaucracy" in Kafka's novels. Around the "sand cave", there is an invisible "joint organization" commanded and controlled. A group of people who stand on "lookout posts" at all times and use binoculars to monitor, their task is not to let anyone caught in the "sand hole" escape, they "a week, ration of cigarettes and alcohol", make The "missing person" exists "as a cog that drives everyday life here". In addition, the novel infiltrates a large number of descriptions of modern industrial life in various ways that are not easily discernible: "Whether it is a mountaineer, a building cleaning window, an electrician on a TV tower, a trapeze in a circus, Or the sweeper of the power plant chimneys; if he gets distracted by what's going on down there, it's time for his demise." Sometimes the isolation and mental emptiness created by industrialization can fill a stomach. Don't let it go: "He managed to eat a bunch of sardines, a rice ball. His stomach was like a rubber glove, cold." We can also see that in the nightmarish industrial life, man retreats into animal characteristics, Here, "the woman shrunk her body into a wasp-spawning pose" and the collective carnival-style "male-female mating" sexual mischief can dissolve the repression of industrialization.

Although this terrifying novel by Abe Public House is absurd, it also bears some kind of autobiographical trace, but this trace is very light and light, and it is difficult to detect it. As an insect lover, Kobo Abe goes to great lengths to describe a large number of insects in the novel, and the metaphor of insects is used everywhere in the text, which creates a kind of mysterious atmosphere for the novel, which is "like the wings of the thin-feathered mayfly. , fragments that emit a faint light". As we roam the "Circle of Mébius" in Abe's public house, trying to uncover the bottom of those paradoxical riddles, let's not forget his warning: "Time, like a snake's belly, makes deep Deep wrinkles, folded in several layers. If you don't take a detour, you can't move forward."

View more about Woman in the Dunes reviews

Extended Reading
  • Adella 2022-03-21 09:03:26

    About the meaning of one's existence 9.4 points★★★★☆

  • Makayla 2022-04-22 07:01:55

    4.5 147 minute version. The degree of reduction to the novel is amazing, especially the description of the five senses of sand and wind in the original book, as well as the amazing erotic scene. Kishida Kyoko is completely the upper body of the woman in the book, especially when she speaks with the same speed and expression as I imagined. However, with reference to the progress of the plot in the book, I thought it would be the climax of the film, but I didn't expect it to be dealt with flatly.

Woman in the Dunes quotes

  • Entomologist Niki Jumpei: The certificates we use to make certain of one another: contracts, licenses, ID cards, permits, deeds, certifications, registrations, carry permits, union cards, testimonials, bills, IOUs, temporary permits, letters of consent, income statements, certificates of custody, even proof of pedigree. Is that all of them? Have I forgotten any? Men and women are slaves to their fear of being cheated. In turn they dream up new certificates to prove their innocence. No one can say where it will end. They seem endless.

  • Entomologist Niki Jumpei: Shall I - brush off the sand?

    Woman: But, aren't all the city girls prettier than me?

    Entomologist Niki Jumpei: Nonsense! Give me the cloth.