Let us pretend that this story does not happen in Japan, that it happens instead on the moon, and were it not for the occasional visitations by men who lower supplies by rope into the giant pit, we could be anywhere... Mauritania, the Gobi desert, Antarctica.
But there are certain concrete details: the village nearby has run out of water, the woman in the pit is charged with digging for water, her house will be engulfed if she does not keep digging. If her house is engulfed the village will be lost as well. If she stops digging the villagers come and shout at her to carry on. The villagers bring the entomologist to the hole into which he descends by rope ladder and then remove the ladder, ignoring his cries for help.
But what is it about this oddly surreal fable that makes it all the more believable, because it is set in Japan? What is it about our perceptions of Japan, and Japan's perceptions of itself that make this pared-down drama of a dual between a man and a woman seem all the more realistic than it would if were set in Europe or America?
It is a version of Robinson Crusoe, and Happy Days, but it is also a reverse of John Fowles' The Collector, in which a young man takes captive a young woman. The sexual passion which flares up between the two is a peculiar product of the imprisonment which in turn produces a child that in turn convinces the man remain in the pit with the woman, a spin on the old problem of getting stuck in a rut.