THE BOX MAN by KOBO ABE SUMMARY AND ANALYSIS

THE BOX MAN by KOBO ABE

SUMMARY

It begins with a police introduction report, detailing the treatment of “vagrants” by japanese police. Among the homeless was a “box man”, and the police report begins to detail how the box in question is made.  It takes courage, the narrator says, to put the box on, partly because box men stick out in public, because he is conspicuous for trying to conceal himself.  In one example, a box man was annoying a tenant, and after unsuccessful pleas to friends, neighbors, and police, the tenant ends up shooting the man with an air rifle. Days pass, and the man is plagued by paranoia.   He believes that the ricochet of the bullet is bouncing around in his head, buys a new refrigerator, and gradually begins to hide in the box, abandoning his apartment for the streets.

The man in the box reveals himself to be the narrator, and details an anonymous offer he's received from a nurse to abandon his box for five thousand yen, which translates to 51 dollars today, but the novel is set in 1973. He discovers that another man has accepted the offer, and he watches the other box man talk with the nurse while he develops strong feelings for the young nurse, who is conducting a study on behalf of a doctor. The other box man turns out to be a famous photographer who suddenly quit his profession to become a box man, and, through his story, the narrator realizes that he was the one who shot the photographer. Before the photographer can reveal him to be the killer, he attacks, shooting the worn-out box man, but not fatally, and then attacking the doctor.

Next, the doctor gives an affidavit about this incident, reporting the reasoning behind his study, including the fact that he, the doctor, has been struggling with the temptation of becoming a box man, and was studying box men in order to learn how to fight his psychological issues. The man does not have a name that he can give to police, because he has been practicing under the name of his mentor. His mentor was declining, and the nameless doctor believed he was helping by feeding the old man drugs, and eventually, he began sleeping with the old man's much younger wife, the nurse. The old man convinced himself that his wife was working for him by sleeping with the nameless doctor, even though this was not the case. The doctor describes the process he anticipates the police will take in killing him and in disposing of his body. He recalls the process he and the nurse went through to dispose of the old man.

A story begins about a young boy who is in love with his piano teacher. He goes to her house to spy on her naked but she catches him, and makes him strip in front of her. The boy takes off his clothes and begins ejaculating uncontrollably, and awakens from his daydream, urinating in front of the nurse. They run away together and begin living in the old doctor's abandoned practice. She is naked, and he is naked within his box. Against his wishes, she puts her clothes back on, and he proceeds to block any exit from the practice. The young nurse flings herself off of a balcony that he didn't know existed, as it is hidden by trash.

ANALYSIS

You cannot control every aspect of the world. You, as an adult, need to grow up, learn to accept the things you cannot change, and take it upon yourself to change the things you can. I am lucky in this pursuit, as I have religion to give me strength. Yes, my analysis is based on the stereotypical AA mantra, but I am not an alcoholic.

• a man who has a disease which causes him to hide in a cardboard box in public is introduced 
• the process of the development of the disease is discussed 
• the people with the disease eventually kill themselves 
• paranoia and social inversion are the destruction of man 
• part of the cause behind this public shyness is discomfort with our naked bodies 

SOURCE
Abe, Kōbō. The Box Man. New York: Knopf; [distributed by Random House, 1974. Print.  Book about a rare disease which makes people introverted and ultimately suicidal.

THE KANGAROO NOTEBOOK by KOBO ABE SUMMARY AND ANALYSIS

THE KANGAROO NOTEBOOK by KOBO ABE

SUMMARY
Kangaroo notebook starts out with a man, living in Japan, presumably, who develops an interesting infection of radish sprouts growing on his body.  He's like a slow-developing werewolf, essentially, so he heads over to the clinic, where they tell him to wait in line, and stop exaggerating his condition, because they don't believe it.  In the waiting room are many children who are having their innocence ruined by a crude nurse.
Anyway, once the main character gets in to see the doctor, the doctor flips his shit and orders a bunch of test, but in the meanwhile tells the guy to get in the hospital bed.  He is prescribed treatment in Hell Springs valley.  At this juncture in the novel, the hospital bed begins moving on its own free will, and he wakes up, being questioned by a rude guard.  The guard tells him he's addressed like a package, and that he should be going to Hell Springs valley.  Off the bed flies down the street, as he veers off into the night.  A river passageway blocking his path reveals a kangaroo that rises out of the water.
Eventually, he arrives at the valley, where he sees demon children singing that they want to be helped by the friendly staff.  He, too, wants to be helped, so he joins in.  While he is there, he finds the image of one demon girl particularly haunting.
The bed whisks him about, and he ends up at the house of an adult woman, who rescues him from a hospital where he won't find any good treatment.  She instructs him to sit on a kangaroo fur by the door, so that he doesn't get any of his sickness in her house.  He eats with her and her husband, observing their life, and realizes that she is unhappy.  The mail service is bad, and she doesn't want to be a part of the vampire society any more.  In the society where all of this is occurring, many euthanasia possibilities are available to elderly people, including the karate service run by the nurse's husband that doubles as a euthanasia clinic.
After leaving the nurse, he ends up at an old folk's home.  There is a native Japanese man there, a man in a wheelchair, and a man with a neck brace.  Students come to the old folks' home, smuggling in extra food and drugs while they wait there to die.  While there, the main character witnesses a young boy euthanize an old man with a drugged cloth, and stays with the haunted child as the boy comes to grips with what he has done.  The man does not want to wait around.  He asks the boy to sneak him out of the old folks' home, and they leave through an unheated vent, where the narrator ends up in a whirlwind on the beach.
He goes over the pornographic picture he keeps with him, and realizes that the girl in the photo, the vampire nurse, and the demon child, are all the same person.  Suddenly, the bed transports him to be with the girl in the photo as she puts on makeup, trying to lure a kidnapper into her home to take her away from her misery.  She explains that the kidnappers lost interest in children, so children now pursue kidnappers.  Finally, the old man dies.

ANALYSIS
Kobo Abe asks the question in the book, 'what is the meaning of life?'  Apparently, he doesn't know, which means that he's humble.  Seems like an OK guy.  Too bad he's dead.  I digress, I liked his book because it implied that we are like kangaroos.  We carry children in our pouch as we bound about in lives of sin.  By exposing children to our flaws, we are carrying them with us towards hell by influencing them, awhile none of us truly know where we are going but are absolutely positive that we don't want to wait to get there.  Humans have an internal need for bad things to happen to them, he asserts.  We seek constant pleasure in our lives.  By living in such an impersonal, go-go world, we have lost touch with our true humanity.  In order to reclaim this, we must yearn for some sort of spiritual guidance and question the world around us, instead of letting ourselves be zipped around by a magical hospital bed, by our parents, older brothers, friends, or by lust.  The narrator connected with his roots, pardon the pun, as he became overran by a plant, and came to grips with the errors of his society.  He then died.  Yippee.

• man has strange disease of vegetation growing on his body, goes to hospital his hospital bed takes him to hell his bed takes him to a home for people waiting to be euthanized 
• he sneaks out of the euthanasia home with a child 
• the bed whisks him back to the hospital where he speaks to his nurse one last time before dying 

SOURCE
Abe, Kobo.  The Kangaroo Notebook: A Novel.  New York.  Knopf, 1996.  Print.
About a guy in a magical hospital bed that whisks him off to hell.