This morning I had a dream. And no, my name is not Martin, Luther, or King. That I was stood at Shinjuku station and I was lost. And no matter how fast I tried to move, my legs, due to the fact that they had suddenly turned into lead weights, would not move at all. There were people all around, as there usually are at Shinjuku station, swarming in and out of the various entrances, exits, vestibules, crevices and walkways of the labyrinth that is the station itself. And they were all laughing heartily, probably at me, but you never can tell with dreams. As the dream developed, I soon realised that no matter which of 200 odd exits I tried to use to get me out of the station (once I’d managed to get there due to my weird leg complaint, of course), I realised pretty fast that in fact I was going to be in the depths of the station for possibly the rest of my life. Or at least until the end of the dream. The station had entrapped me.

In just five short weeks, I won’t have to relay on my dreams to take me to Tokyo, as I’m going in person. I can’t wait. In fact, if I mention it to one more person, I think they’ll probably clatter me around the head with something and send me floating down Manchester Shipping Canal. I’m getting out of hand, and there’s not much that I can do to stop it. When I get to Shinjuku station though, as undoubtedly I will find myself passing through it at least forty times a day, I’m going to take heed of my surroundings. Three weeks lost in that place would not be the most enjoyable experience, I can tell you.

Though, that said, it does hold some resonance with reality. Well, with fiction actually, but I’ve really been reading it, rather than just dreaming about it, if that make any sense whatsoever… No, I didn’t think so.

You see, I’ve just finished the entirely crazy, and highly bizarre novel, Secret Rendezvous, by Kobo Abe. At just a mere 179 pages, it is probably one of the shortest novels I have read in a long time. I don’t like short stories as a rule, you see, though this one most definitely caught my attention. The blurb reads:

And no, I didn’t just make that up. I can’t even remember why I chose to buy this book, and now that I’ve read it, I’m not entirely sure that I know even now, but it’s a genius piece of writing all the same. What grabs me though, is the constant theme that drives itself through the book’s pages like the words imprinted through a stick of rock: entrapment.

The weird thing is, the more I think about it, the more I feel that actually this is a theme that Japanese fiction deals with, in all manner of modes and mediums, time and time again. And if you don’t believe me, then I’m sure you will by the end of this post. And if you don’t, then send it back in the state in which you found it and I’ll give you a full refund.

You see, Secret Rendezvous centres itself in a madcap hospital, the majority of which is underground and out of site from the rest of the world. The parts that are above ground are just as ridiculous as the ones below, and it would appear that patients go into this hospital and never come back out. The manager (that’s the one that thinks he’s a horse, by the way) is a lunatic, but at the same time, he’s bordering on psychopathic. He has an unhealthy obsession with surveillance, and though the book never explores what would happen if the protagonist decided to give up on his missing wife and make a run for it; I get the distinct impression that he wouldn’t get far.

For the whole novel then, the man is entrapped. And not just physically. Sure, he wanders aimlessly around the corridors of the ever-expanding hospital. Sure he comes to dead ends, ends up deeper underground, but it is not these things that entrap him the most. As he continues on his epic journey, his thoughts also begin to entrap him. He’s becoming desperate, his wife is still nowhere to be seen, and he has no idea what is going to happen to him. He has begun to crumble.

Take Spirited Away by the legendary Hayao Mityazaki. For sure, Chihiro is under Yubaba’s watchful eye continuously at the bathhouse, and absolutely she is entrapped within the confines of its grounds. The whole thing is built into the sea for pity’s sake, so even if she had have wanted to run for it, she would have drowned before too long. But for me, this film is much deeper than that.

As soon as Chihiro enters the bathhouse, Yubaba renames her Sen. Instantly she is entrapped within the confines of her own identity; in fact, she no longer has one. She is a nobody, just a somebody else. Haku is entrapped in the disguise of a boy, when in fact he is actually a dragon, just bursting to get out, and to remove himself from Yubaba’s evil spell, again another form of entrapment. And again, much like SR, Chihiro is entrapped by her relationship with her parents, and by their greed.

20th Century Boys, an unforgettable series of books written by the astounding Naoki Urasawa and recently reviewed by Tim Maughan, starts off as an innocent foray into the lives of a group of young boys, who have massive ambitions to take over the world, be successful, become famous. As the intertwined stories of the children begin to unwind, sure we see that one is entrapped by his lack of success, another is trapped by his weight and ridicule thereof from his peers throughout his life. What we realise to be a deeper form of entrapment though, is that humanity is intrinsically linked to these children, and that their life choices have entrapped the entire world.

And finally, what about the dystopia of Yuichi, the protagonist in Forbidden Colours, a novel written by Yukio Mishima exploring yet further entrapment? Yuichi is married, and believes himself to be happy, however as the story evolves, we soon learn of Yuichi’s apparently homosexual desires and his complete and utter contempt for women. Yuichi is blatantly entrapped by his sexuality, in a time in Japan when being gay was likened to having caught some inexorable disease, that much is obvious, however it is the entrapment of his marriage, again the relationship to other people within the pages of the book, that fuel his motivations and entrap him still further.

Mishima ended his own life most infamously by performing ritualised seppuku. Believed to be a nationalist due to his stoic allegiance to the ways of the samurai, I personally believe that he had become entrapped by his own persona and his seeming inability to reconcile his wants and desires with the way in which he was expected to act.

And that leads me nicely back to reality: from where then, has this theme developed? Why are the Japanese intent on discussing entrapment? Why has this theme become so intrinsic to the many imaginations of contemporary Japanese fiction writers?

For sure, I have only mentioned four examples, though if you think not so hard you will probably be able to come up with a thousand others. So, it would be very easy to make assumptions, though in order to get to the route cause, they do have to be explored. As I was dreaming about Shinjuku station, and its never-ending corridors and walkways, it was the realisation that actually this feeling was not just a dream, but indeed also reality, that woke me up. Japanese society is changing. The values and ideals that people strove for in the early part of the last two hundred years are intrinsically different to the latter. Socio-cultural norms have developed, evolved and retracted. Where once was almost a ritualistic approach to life, there is now much more liberalism. But it that always a good thing? I sometimes think that at some point, the world will become so liberal and so diverse, that there will be nothing left to distinguish one nation from the next. This often leads to me thinking that perhaps Japan is the test case for such a situation, but then I think: “This is the Japanese you’re talking about!” and suddenly it seems so ridiculous.

For sure though, historical importance is less so, and with that comes the erosion of the past. Women are much more on an even keel than they have ever been before. 敬語・keigo, or ‘honorific speech’ has lost its importance for many and is practiced consistently by the few, and even the physical constraints of Japan’s great cities are less so as people favour migration to the country rather than living in a match box in the centre of a heavily overpopulated metropolis.

My prediction is that (hold onto your hats…) as the subconscious of the Japanese unwinds, like a coiled spring being slowly permitted to release itself, connections to a past life will be dissolved, therefore what was once chastising people is now mused over, looked in on through a glass cabinet, as something to be discussed. I get the feeling though that the energy and enthusiasm for entrapment is much like a dying star: as the energy is released at great, unimaginable force, so the desire to discuss something gets bigger before dramatically ebbing away.

For now then, Japan is putting out some fantastic examples of entrapment. But before long, much like everything else in Japan, it will be swept away, forgotten; it will have had its time. And then, who knows?

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