The Ark Sakura

by: Kobo Abe

Published by: Vintage International

Reviewed by Nick Capo, Assistant Professor of English, Illinois College

Kobo Abe, a Japanese novelist and playwright who died in 1993, is one of the major Japanese writers of the last century. With The Ark Sakura, he places himself in the long tradition of dystopian novelists like Huxley and Orwell.

The Ark Sakura begins as its main character and narrator—Mole is his preferred nickname—seeks to find a suitable crew for his ark. This “ark” is a massive underground quarry that he has turned into a seventy-room survival shelter to protect a chosen crew from nuclear devastation and environmental catastrophe. Its most unique feature is a massive high-pressure toilet that serves a key role in the plot.

Unfortunately, though Mole carries keys to the quarry in his pocket during his monthly recruiting excursions into contemporary society, which is portrayed as a wasteland of consumerism and intellectual apathy and a battleground for the young and the old. There he struggles to find his crewmembers. Perhaps his passive pitch is the problem: “Preparations for sailing are virtually complete; in fact, all I lack now is the crew. Despite the urgency of the situation, however, I have no intention of conducting any recruiting campaigns. Why should I? In payment for their labors, crew members will receive a gift of incalculable value—the gift of life itself.”

An early intellectual and political affiliation with Marxism and Communism perhaps explains some of Abe’s bitingly humorous interest in how good intentions can misfire and how the ideals of collectivities often fail to translate well into the reality of individual existence.

First published in Japanese in 1984, The Ark Sakura still stands as a wonderfully funny and disturbing dystopian novel. Juliet Winters Carpenter, the translator of this edition, has done good service in recasting this story for readers of English.

Interest in Japanese literature has increased in the United States in recent years, and Kobo Abe was a literary trailblazer for writers like Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore) and Natsuo Kirino (Out). In this work, Abe explores issues of human survival and violence that continue to interest contemporary authors.

Armchair Interviews says: This book is surprisingly timely today.