Maximilian Vlock

Yasunari Kawabata’s One Arm, published in 1964, tells the story of a man who embarks on an obsessive relationship with a woman’s arm over the course of one wet, gloomy night in a city clouded by a thick purple fog. Throughout the surreal story, Kawabata offers the reader a window into the protagonist’s thoughts as the relationship develops, flourishes, and spirals. Through this window, the reader gains an intimate understanding of the man’s unique view of isolation and relationships. The close perspective provided in the narrative and its rich symbolism, in terms of both color and dream imagery, make the story ripe for a Freudian psychoanalytic reading, which can provide an even deeper understanding of the protagonist’s conscious and unconscious mind. One Arm is laced with covert meaning and color symbolism that Kawabata uses as gateways into the lead character’s darkest fears and most passionate desires. By using psychoanalytic criticism to analyze the content of Kawabata’s One Arm, one can explore the unconscious of the main character, specifically in his attitude toward women, isolation, and sexuality.

The protagonist’s view of women is central in One Arm, as is his fixation on purity, which keeps him from forming important connections. The main character meets and speaks to a woman at the beginning of the story and becomes obsessed with her arm – importantly, only one part of a whole. Apparently unable to cultivate a healthy relationship with another individual, he opts for a simpler relationship, forging a connection with one of the woman’s limbs, instead of with her whole being. However, this is not to say that the man has never been in a “normal” relationship. Partway through the story, a flashback reveals to the reader that he was previously in a relationship with a whole woman: “I remembered. It was like the voice of a woman who had decided to give herself to me, one not as beautiful as the girl who had lent me the arm” (357). During this flashback, he remembers “a hairpin had pierced the skin” (357) of the woman he was with. Freudian psychoanalysis is often associated with the assignment of sexual meaning to objects, especially in dreams or memories (Barry, 7). As such, a Freudian interpretation of this scene might suggest that this hairpin, a phallic symbol, represents the man’s penis, and the drops of blood from the woman’s head represent the tearing of the hymen after the loss of virginity. From the perspective of the protagonist, a man who we learn is obsessed with purity and isolation, the loss of virginity is a form of complete surrender.

Indeed, the man views the loss of virginity as so calamitous that it is, to him, a type of death: “And it was only with her the one time. The silver thread was cut, the golden bowl destroyed” (Kawabata, 357). The first part of this quote is an allusion to the fact that virginity is only with a person once, and after that point, it is lost. The last half of the quote is a reference to the Bible, specifically to Ecclesiastes 12:6-7, in which the destruction of the golden bowl and the cutting of the silver thread refers to the death of the body. In the same way, the protagonist believes that loss of virginity is a form of destruction and loss akin to death itself. He finds this loss so distressing that he develops an aversion to intimacy and connection. Instead, he finds comfort in solitude, choosing to live alone.

Multiple events in the story emphasize the main character’s isolation. The most striking example of his need for separation and autonomy occurs at the climax of the story. The protagonist, after attaching the woman’s arm to his own body, falls into a deep, comfortable sleep. However, upon regaining consciousness, he tears the woman’s arm off in a panic, attaching his own right arm to its socket: “I saw the arm in one instant, and the next I had torn the girl’s from my shoulder and put back my own” (362). This frantic, desperate action demonstrates the protagonist’s conscious fear of connecting with others and his comfort in isolation. He instinctively returns to the safety of isolation to avoid the loss that he so gravely fears. By even taking the woman’s arm home, he has ventured far outside his comfort zone, acting in contrast to his conscious desires while unknowingly satisfying his unconscious ones.

The contrast between conscious and unconscious desires is of utmost importance in One Arm. As is now obvious, the protagonist is driven by a conscious fear of connection, which forces him into isolation. However, his unconscious also influences him throughout the story, and by exploring its influence, one can conclude that – contrary to his conscious fears – he unconsciously desires connection and intimacy. At one point, he even implies that his unique perspective on the loss of virginity might come from “some spiritual debility [he] suffer[s] from” (357). To some extent, he is aware that his conscious is not at peace with his unconscious, but he does not understand his unconscious desires themselves. One could argue that the character’s attempted relationship with the woman’s arm is the result of his unconscious exerting its influence on him, compelling him to form a connection with someone – or something – outside of himself. This explains his motive for attempting to kindle a relationship in the first place, especially given that, if it were only up to his conscious, he would have no reason to fan the flames of his fear of connection.

The best evidence to support the claim that the main character’s unconscious truly does desire connection comes at the end of the story. It is implied that the man is not fully aware of his actions when he removes his own arm and attaches the woman’s: “‘I’ll have it.’ I was not conscious of muttering the words. In a trance, I removed my right arm and substituted the girl’s” (359). At this point in the story, the protagonist’s unconscious has almost fully taken over, and he has succumbed to his deepest, most carnal desires. Only after this point does he experience connection, and, by extension, happiness. He intimately touches the arm while it is attached to him, savoring the connection. With his conscious fears no longer repressing his true desires, he achieves a sort of emotional stability and comfort that is only attainable once the conscious and unconscious are in alignment. The unconscious mind, home to primitive, sexual urges, as well as the need for connection, has gently and subtly assumed control over the protagonist.

If the conscious were still in control, the events that unfold during the final part of the story would be intolerable to the main character, especially when he connects the woman’s arm to his body. After he connects the woman’s arm to his body, his conscious does linger a little longer, and it manifests itself in his concern for the woman’s body once he returns her arm at the conclusion of his relationship with it: “…but would there not be unpleasantness when the arm was returned to the girl, this dirty male blood flowing through it? What if it would not attach itself to her shoulder?” (362). After the arm reassures him that “[i]t will be all right” (362), he falls into a deep slumber. Now the protagonist experiences the best rest of his life, thinking to himself that he “had never before known sleep so warm, so sweet” (362). Alas, once he wakes from his sleep, the unconscious falls beneath the surface, and the conscious assumes control. The man immediately discards the arm, and instead of the calm happiness he had felt just moments before in his sleep, he feels only terror as he looks upon the arm – and the connection – that he has forsaken. Unfortunately for him, his unconscious desires will always clash with his conscious fears, and the unconscious will always resurface. As Peter Barry writes in his chapter on psychoanalytic criticism, repressed feelings “[remain] alive in the unconscious, like radioactive matter buried beneath the ocean” (Barry, 7). Interestingly, in this case, this dynamic is reversed. The protagonist’s fears are at the surface, residing in his conscious, while his more pleasant and hopeful feelings for connection are the ones that end up buried in his unconscious. This inversion is likely the cause of much of his emotional turbulence. For as long as he fears connection and believes that intimacy and togetherness are dangerous, he will never achieve lasting inner peace.

Kawabata harnesses color symbolism to reinforce the themes of connection and separation that he explores in One Arm. Red is the color of blood, circulation, and, by extension, connection, while purple represents isolation. These colors recur throughout the story, emphasizing the dichotomy between isolation and connection. Color symbolism is especially significant in avant-garde stories such as One Arm, and Kawabata uses it to great effect.

The first time the color red appears in the story is during the protagonist’s walk home after his meeting with the woman. As he crosses the street with the arm, he sees a car driving toward him. He waits on the curb for the car to pass and notices that a “young woman in vermilion [is] driving” (Kawabata, 353) the car. Upon noticing the color of the woman’s clothes, he begins to panic. He worries that she is coming to take the arm from him – to taint it by touching it and breaking the barrier of isolation. For this reason, he is especially protective of the woman’s arm. It is no coincidence that the driver is a woman: she represents the main character’s view of women and their purity as sacred and untouchable, so seeing her dressed in red, the color that represents connection, startles him. After the woman drives away, he takes extra care “not to encounter another of the sex before [he] reached [his] apartment” (353), emphasizing how truly shaken he is after this incident.

After he makes it back to his apartment with the arm, the color red appears once again in the form of a vision: “On the ninth floor of a hotel, two little girls in wide red skirts were playing in the window… Very similar children in similar clothes, perhaps twins, Occidentals” (356). As the man watches them, they begin to pound at the window, and he worries that they will fall through it, plummeting to the ground. He expresses concern for the girls because he sees them as pure. Falling through the window to the ground would result in the death of their purity as well as their literal death. He associates the girls with the arm of the woman, describing its roundness as “that of a beautiful Occidental girl” (352). The girls’ red attire emphasizes the theme of connection and represents the intensification of his anxiety as his relationship with the arm deepens.

After the strange vision, the color red appears once again in a flashback, as the man recalls the incident in which the hairpin pricked the scalp of the woman he used to be with. When the hairpin pierces the woman’s skin, she begins to bleed. The protagonist parts the woman’s hair and “put[s] [his] lips to the drop of blood swelling on her head” (357). Interacting with red blood, one of the main symbols of connection in the story, in such an intimate way implies that he significantly valued connection in the past. One can assume that at some point between the relationship shown in his flashback and the events of One Arm, the main character has experienced some form of trauma that resulted in his fear of connection. Despite this possible trauma, however, the unconscious desire for connection wins out near the end of the story, when the protagonist attaches the woman’s arm to his body. This is the most literal example of the association of red with connection in the story, as the red blood of the man mixes with the blood of the woman’s arm in the ultimate act of connection. The color red not only represents connection and is associated with the main character’s unconscious, but is also an important symbol that adds depth to the story and provides room for additional interpretations.

In contrast to his use of the color red, Kawabata utilizes the color purple in One Arm to represent the protagonist’s obsession with isolation. Unlike red, purple represents lack of connection, and lack of circulation. When a limb does not receive sufficient oxygen via the circulatory system, it begins to turn purple. Isolation is also a lack of circulation in a social sense, and the main character of One Arm is associated with isolation – by extension, with the color purple – during the events of the story. Just like the color red, purple first appears in One Arm during the scene with the woman in vermilion driving past the protagonist. The headlights of the car are purple – as the main character notes, it is a “strange color for headlights” (353). The purple in this scene is significant specifically for its juxtaposition with the red worn by the driver. The woman driver dressed in red is a representation of unconscious desire literally taking the wheel and asserting control over conscious fear, which is exactly what occurs when the man finally decides to attach the woman’s arm to his body at the end of the story.

The color purple recurs later on in the story, mentioned in a broadcast that issues from the man’s radio in the form of a warning: “Strange-colored fogs are noxious. Listeners should therefore lock their doors if the fog should change to pink or purple” (358). This strange warning is likely a message from his subconscious. Under the layer of his conscious, his unconscious desperately desires connection. The warning, telling him to avoid the purple fog, is his unconscious telling him not to remain enveloped in isolation; instead, it wants him to give in to his primal desires, which, of course, he eventually does. After the warning, the man looks out his window and sees “[a] great, blurred sphere of faint purple” (358) coming toward him. He remembers how “the head and tail beams of the car driven by the woman in vermilion had come up indistinctly in the fog” (358). In warning the protagonist against being engulfed by the purple fog, the unconscious acts to assert its dominance. As Barry notes, unconscious desires that are difficult to face “constantly [seek] a way back into the conscious mind, always succeeding eventually” (Barry, 7).

Only a short while after this final reminder, the main character’s inevitable fate comes to pass and he gives in to his unconscious, slipping into an only half-conscious state as he attaches the woman’s arm to his own shoulder. Once the woman’s arm is attached, he looks through its fingers, seeing “a blur of purple. And inside it little circles, little beads of red and gold, whirling around and around” (Kawabata, 361). As his unconscious assumes control, he sees a representation of the loss of conscious control in the form of color. The beads of red swirling in the purple blur represent the protagonist’s unconscious desire for connection steadily replacing his conscious fear of it. Finally, when he falls asleep, his conscious has completely lost control, and he has a vivid dream. In the Freudian dream work, which is “the process by which real events or desires are transformed into dream images” (Barry, 5), the motives and desires of characters “are represented in a very ‘literary’ way, involving the translation, by the dream work, of abstract ideas or feelings into concrete images” (Barry, 5). Thus, the image of the man floating atop a great wave of purple fog is representative of his true unconscious desire: to surmount isolation and engage in intimacy with others, hence the presence of the woman’s arm in the dream. Of course, due to the tragic chasm that separates the man’s conscious and unconscious, he is unable to preserve this intimacy for long. Upon waking, his conscious reasserts control and he panics, rejecting the blissful sense of intimacy he enjoyed in the dream and tearing the woman’s arm from his shoulder.

In conclusion, psychoanalytic criticism is highly valuable in the analysis of One Arm for the unique perspective it provides on conscious thought and unconscious drives, and its use in picking apart the protagonist’s fears and desires associated with connection and isolation. Color symbolism also greatly enriches the story. By paying close attention to Kawabata’s use of color, one is able to peel back layers of meaning to find an established pattern of fears and desires, clearly denoted by the colors red and purple. The exploration of the main character’s intimate past, paired with the observation of his present thoughts and behaviors, creates contrasting scenes from which the reader derives important insight into the effects of isolation and obsession on the human mind. Through the analysis of the Freudian dream work, one can find additional meaning hidden within the unconscious of the main character that pertains to his ultimate desires. Yasunari Kawabata’s One Arm serves as a cautionary tale, warning the reader of the turmoil that can result from the struggle between conscious and unconscious desire.

Works Cited

Halpern, Daniel, and Yasunari Kawabata. “One Arm.” The Art of the Tale: An International Anthology of Short Stories, 1945-1985, Viking, New York, NY, 1986, pp. 351–363.

Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. 4th ed., Manchester University Press, 2017.