Wild sheep chase

On such a morning in 1978, the protagonist of A Wild Sheep Chase returns home from the funeral of an old girlfriend, a few glasses of whiskey between the austere ceremony and his front door. His wife waits inside with the papers to finalize their divorce. As a newly eligible bachelor, our man quickly takes up with an ear model cum call girl cum publishing assistant whom he meets through his job as an advertising executive. When revealed, her perfectly formed ears transform this new girlfriend into a stunning beauty with a well-developed sixth sense.

All in all, late 1978 is rather rough for the poor guy. First, the small advertising firm that he runs with a college friend comes

It is fall when they arrive on that northernmost Japanese island. The two find the poorest lodgings available in the city of Sapporo, a ramshackle five-story dump with the ill-fitting appellation, "The Dolphin Hotel." Happily enough, the hotel is the former home of the Hokkaido Ovine Hall, and the owner's father, the so-called Sheep Professor, maintains the old collection of sheep resources. Before the war, the Sheep Professor was possessed by the magic sheep himself, an experience which marked the beginning of his obsession with sheep.

Iwamoto rightly characterizes the protagonist as highly sensual--extremely alert to tastes, textures, and sounds. He neglects to notice that the protagonist also possesses a keen sense of time. The protagonist takes note of years, months, days, and hours. His narration abounds with chronological memoranda, from dates of birth to the exact moment when his girlfriend arrives home. He calculates, down to the minute, the duration of activities such as travel. The protagonist's preoccupation with time reflects his vain struggle to assert his existence in some "real" space. A Wild Sheep Chase includes three time-lines which document the history of sheep in Japan, the life of the Sheep Professor, and the rise and fall of Junitaki Village, respectively. From the latter two, especially, arises the idea that the past of an individual, insofar as it documents "a life," constitutes being. As the protagonist keeps track of time, he assures himself that his life happenings are not only in his mind, but also enjoy a tangible existence in time. And, by extension, it is a "real," or whole, protagonist who experiences the "real" event.

He has, in fact, committed suicide only a week before the protagonist's arrival on the mountain. His ghost occupies the body of the Sheepman, a reclusive man who is never seen without his sheep costume fashioned from the hides of real sheep. As the Sheepman, the Rat drives the protagonist's girlfriend from the mountain. He pays regular visits to the protagonist, who whiles away the days cooking and cleaning, but he does not reveal himself to be the Rat until the protagonist realizes that the Sheepman is a ghost because he has no reflection.

Some topics in this essay:
Alice Wonderland, Jean-Paul Sartre, Sheepman Rat, Wonderland World, Sheep Chase, II Boss, Sapporo Hokkaido, Sheep Professor, Search Sheep, Junitaki Village, sheep professor, wild sheep, sheep chase, wild sheep chase, postmodern world, protagonist wild sheep, real unreal, protagonist able, wasn't seeing, events protagonist, possessed sheep, personal history,