Taken from the point of view of a common disposable vessel, Hanmura Ryō’s short story “Cardboard Box” presents the “life” story of the eponymous box. The story recounts the box’s journey from its “birth” (in this case, the physical construction of its body), to its literal fulfillment with tangerines and corresponding fulfillment of its life purpose, and finally to its ultimate crisis of reckoning with the impermanence of its purpose and identity. Central to the meaning of this story is the correspondence between purpose and the physical form of the body. In anthropomorphizing an object whose entire purpose is a sole function of its body, Ryō explores the connections between body, soul, and meaning of life.

The beginning of the story conveys that the box exists solely as a physical vessel without inherent purpose apart from its capacity to contain more meaningful objects. Ryō introduces the box through its birth, writing, “Suddenly, I perceived myself. If that’s what you call birth, it was pretty disappointing.”[1] In noting the box’s disappointment with its birth, Ryō explains, “Perhaps I felt forlorn because I wasn’t used to an independent existence.”[2] The emotional distance that comes with the creation of the box’s body expresses that its form, structure, and body yield no inherent meaning independently. It is only through the box being filled with other objects that it will derive physical and emotional fulfillment.

Ryō conveys that filling the box constitutes both fulfillment of the body and of the soul. When the boxes realize that they will be filled, they celebrate wildly. The narrative box joins in, adding, “In a few moments I’d be filled. This body of mine would be filled completely. That was my vindication for living. That was my purpose in life.”[3] Ryō describes the narrative box’s fulfillment as an extremely carnal pleasure, writing, “For the first time since my birth I was numb with the pleasure driven into my body.… I will never forget the pleasure of that moment, mounting higher and higher, leaving me no time to even breathe.”[4] In correlating physical and emotional fulfillment, Ryō demonstrates that the “purpose in life” of these boxes is solely materialistic. The emotional and physical pleasure is derived not from their bodies themselves, but from their bodies in relation to something else. Unlike the empty box in its own right, the filled box is made content and satisfied by its fulfillment. Thus, the box’s purpose and soul become side effects of the use of its body.

Shortly after the fulfillment of the narrative box and its “comrades,” an older box challenges this materialistic fulfillment. The boxes are stuffed into a truck and taken away. During their transportation, the voice of an older box, called the “Hoarse Voice,” warns the boxes that their fulfillment is temporary. It warns that these boxes will be doomed to become useless after their contents, tangerines, are emptied. It describes the fickleness of their existence: “You were made to put tangerines in. They stuff tangerines into your bodies, and after they’ve all been taken out, not one left behind, nobody cares what’ll happen to you.”[5] In this bitter statement, the Hoarse Voice reflects on the necessarily dependent nature of the box’s body, as its purpose is only related to its material content.

As the narrative box’s journey continues, it slowly begins to embrace the impermanence and imperfection of its condition. The box is brought to a market, where it awaits the agony of having its tangerines slowly removed. As one of its comrades gives up its final tangerine and is taken away, it warns the narrative box, “Farewell! It was an empty life!”[6] However, the main box’s luck continues. After losing its tangerines, it becomes filled with trash and realizes that it does not have to only be filled with tangerines in order to feel complete; the physical relation of its body to its content is enough to keep the box content. The box claims, “…I was satisfied. It doesn’t matter what’s inside. Just so long as its body is filled, a box is satisfied.”[7] The box then is picked up as a plaything for some children, who wear it down. In becoming used as a toy, the box’s body is used not solely as a container, but as a toy. In that way, its body finally yields an inherent and independent purpose. It acquires this new purpose despite the fact that its original purpose of being a box is lost, as it is too worn out to be an effective container.

Despite these challenges to its identity and purpose, the box’s ultimate fulfillment is not recognized until the very end of the story. In a moment of despair after the children leave it, the box is blown over towards a lake, an “object of terror”[8] for cardboard boxes. Its avoidance of water is due to the fact that if it gets wet, it can no longer hold things in the way it was intended, and its foundational purpose is lost. However, upon being blown into the water, the box experiences a brand-new form of pleasure, as its body became filled in a new way for the first time. The box says, “It was an ecstasy like melting. Indeed, my body would no doubt dissolve in the water. Yet wasn’t that the same as dissolving in the ecstasy of being filled?”[9] This ending presents a significant diversion of purpose and body from before. As water invades the physical body of the box, it both ruins its initial purpose and fulfills its new one. The box holds water, but it does more than that; it becomes completely inundated with its content and fails to uphold the form and structure it prided itself on before. In the dissolution of the body as it fulfills its purpose, purpose becomes cleaved from the body, but unified with the soul.

There are clear anthropocentric ideas that coalesce in this story. One major comparison to be drawn here is with that of Zen Buddhism. One of the most salient aspects of Zen Buddhism is relinquishing connection to material objects and releasing the self from its separation as a distinct entity from its environment. In this spiritual sense, it recognizes the feebleness and impermanence of the body. As the body of this box from this story dissolves into the water, it dies through the act of completing its final purpose, content and free from its material base.

[1] Hanmura Ryō, “Cardboard Box,” in Speculative Japan: Outstanding Tales of Japanese Science Fiction and Fantasy, ed. Gene Van Troyer and Grania Davis, trans. Dana Lewis (Fukuoka: Kurodahan Press, 2007), 183.

[2] Ibid., 184.

[3] Ibid., 184.

[4] Ibid., 185.

[5] Ibid., 188.

[6] Ibid., 190.

[7] Ibid., 191.

[8] Ibid., 191.

[9] Ibid., 192.