Elizabeth Scott

Professor Sabier

World Science Fiction

27 February, 2020

Doors to the Future: Themes and Warnings in Komatsu’s “Take Your Choice”

In Sakyo Komatsu’s “Take Your Choice”, a man is presented with three alternate futures, one with incredible technology, one rustically beautiful, and one where apocalypse is not only certain, but near. All he must do is pay an exorbitant amount of money, and step through a door. He picks the third one, and goes forth towards the end of the world with a light heart. After he is gone, the technicians who sent him into this future discuss the scam they have been pulling, as well as the implications of the fact that nearly everyone who pays for their services picks the one future where they will surely die in fire (Komatsu, 103). The man’s choice allows the story to explore the human need to feel important and the incredible fear of the unknown, while the technician’s discussion leaves the reader with a warning.

As the man returns to the same world he left moments before, which is unchanged in reality but entirely transformed to his eyes, he sees everything as if for the first time. He looks upon things that he once thought to be ugly, “the polluted sky”, “a snotty urchin, … and even flashing sign-boards” and their certain temporality renders them beautiful (Komatsu, 101). Suddenly, instead of being evidence of a futile and dreary existence, destined to be repeated and forgotten, everything is –to the narrator’s eyes– important. And no one is more important than the narrator himself. “I am the only one,” he says. “No one except me definitely knows the fate of this world” (Komatsu, 101). His knowledge lends him an elevated status in this doomed world, because as everyone else goes along with their lives, he is aware of the brutal fate to come from above. Even though, in reality, nothing about the world around him has changed, and he is no more or less important than he was before, his belief in his own importance allows him to feel, for the first time in ten years, fulfilled. 

In addition to feeling a new sense of purpose in a doomed world, the man was also relieved to know, with absolute certainty, what is coming. He says he can feel “at ease” in such a world, which seems a strange sounding sentiment (Komatsu 98). However, given the place and time in which this story was written, perhaps a certain death is more comforting than an uncertain life. Throughout his life, Komatsu was “haunted by memories” of the Hiroshima bombings, which occured when he was a teenager (Hevesi). Indeed, the description of the holocaust in his story mirrors those of Hiroshima. In “Take Your Choice”, the end of the world is signified by a “blinding flash” (95), while an eye witness of the a-bomb described it as a “lightning bolt” (Porter, 166). For Komatsu, the thought of such an event was likely one that plagued him often. Like the man in the story, the fear of the apocalypse was made that much greater by the fact that it could come at any time, without warning. When put in this reference, this fear of the unknown makes the man’s seemingly odd choice much more justifiable. 

At the end of the story, the technicians who pretended to send the man into this future discuss how, in this scam they’ve been pulling, customer after customer has selected the third door. Thousands of people have made this choice, and so, they have sent thousands of people out into the world with the idea in their head that it will end (Komatsu, 103). The technicians wonder what effect this will have, especially given that many of these people hold high offices in society. In this way, Komatsu is calling attention to the fact that while, the world might not end in fire like these people think, they’re thinking so could make it end all the same. Throughout history, there have always been those who believe that the end of the world is nearing, now more than ever. What will happen if those who believe such things are the ones deciding the future of our world? Will the prophecy, eventually, become self-fulfilling? Thus, Komatsu ends his story by warning the reader of two things. Firstly, of the dangers of a capitalistic society, where one man’s profit is put above the safety of the whole race. This is made evident by how the technicians in his story, even as they speculate about the damage they might be causing, rejoice in the cash they are reeling in (Komatsu 103). Secondly, he warns us not to be too willing for the apocalypse to come. If we are, we may just get our wish.

Thus, through playing with time travel, Komatsu is able to explore the importance of feeling important, the fear of the unknown in the wake of a near apocalypse, and the dangers of both a capitalist society and a society where destruction seems inevitable. By having his main character see new beauty in a doomed world, Komatsu shows us how humans crave anything that will give their life meaning. The man’s calm in the face of certain death demonstrates how the scariest thing conceivable is not definite destruction, but rather the looming threat of apocalypse, as was felt by those close to the tragedies at Hiroshima. Lastly, he leaves us with a warning, not only of capitalism, but also of our own outlooks upon the world. Because just like in the story, our future does not simply happen. It’s a choice.

Works Cited

Hevesi, Dennis. “Sakyo Komatsu, 80, Science Fiction Writer, Dies at 80.” The New York 

Times, The New York Times, 10 Aug. 2011, www.nytimes.com/2011/08/11/arts/sakyo-komatsu-science-fiction-writer-dies-at-80.html?_r=0.

Komatsu, Sakyo. “Take Your Choice.” The Best Japanese Science Fiction Stories, edited 

by Martin Harry Greenberg and John Apostolou, Barricade, 2000, pp. 85–103.

“The Lightning Bolt.” Japanese Reflections on World War II and the American

 Occupation, by Edgar A. Porter and Ran Ying Porter, Amsterdam University Press, 2018, pp. 161–167.