Suna No Onna

W oman in the D unes (砂の女), is a 1964 n eW W ave masterpiece by h iroshi t eshigahara ,

based on a work by Nobel Prize nominated Japanese novelist Kobo Abe, published

two years earlier under the same name.

Hiroshi Teshigahara was a potter, calligrapher and a flower artist; but it is for

his long collaboration with Kobo Abe as an Academy Award-nominated film direc-

tor that he will be forever remembered. Just as Abe and Teshigahara’s other co-pro-

ductions—Pitfall (おとし穴) and The Face of Another (他人の顔)—Suna no Onna

explores the reaction and behaviour of a character forced to withdraw from society,

never to return.

Touching on themes earlier explored by Camus (L’Étranger, Le Mythe de

Sisyphe), Kafka (The Metamorphosis), and as far back as Greek mythology (Sisy-

phus), the book follows an ill-fated journey of a Tokyo entomologist to the sand

dunes of Tottori, only to find himself trapped in an ever-deepening pit with an ab-

surdist Japanese widow as his only companion, unable to reconcile his innate thirst

for physical freedom with the uncanny allure of life outside the equally-limiting

traditional social order:

“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 state-

ments, 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.” — entomologist n iki

J umpei in W oman in the D unes

Suna no Onna is undeniably one of those books whose adaptation to the silver screen

complements them so well that they are best viewed as a single whole. Teshigahara

Suna no Onna Philip Seyfi

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has managed to translate faithfully every bit of the story—from the eerie, surreal-

ist atmosphere, to existential,...