A Wild Sheep Chase

The secretary gives the narrator some background on the Boss. He tells the narrator that the narrator is “mediocre” but that this is not his own fault: “The world is mediocre […] The mediocratization began when people separated the means of production from daily life. For when Karl Marx posited the proletariat, he thereby cemented their mediocrity” (135). The secretary is also against the individualism and consciousness-raising of the 1960s, of which the narrator is a product: “The expansion of consciousness your generation underwent […] at the end of the sixties ended in complete and utter failure because it was still rooted in the individual” (142).

What the secretary does believe in is an entity that he calls “the Will” and that is interchangeable for him with the figure of the Boss (140). He confirms for the narrator that the Boss has a brain cyst, and that he has had it for years, at least since he was captured as a war criminal in 1946. He tells the narrator that it was US Army doctors who discovered the cyst, which led them to transfer the Boss to a hospital, where top-secret tests were performed on him. The secretary speculates that the Army doctors may have had a number of shadowy motives for these tests, such as brainwashing or interrogation.

The secretary tells the narrator that he believes that the Boss first acquired the cyst in the 1930s, when he was a political prisoner. He also believes that this cyst enhanced the Boss’s powers, rather than diminished them, causing him to transform from an unexceptional, directionless young man into a phenomenon. He believes that the cyst, and the changes that came with it, were the result of the Boss having been psychically invaded by the marked sheep in the photograph: “Very likely the sheep found its way into the Boss” (144). He reveals the drawing that he earlier showed the narrator to have been the work of the Boss during his time in the US Army hospital, and tells the narrator that he has two months to locate the sheep in question. At the same time, he admits to the narrator that his quest is both meaningless and probably impossible: not only might the narrator be trying to find a sheep that is nonexistent, but even if he were to find the sheep, it would not alter the fact of the Boss’s dying. 

Back in the limousine, the narrator has a brief, strange conversation with the chauffeur. He observes to the chauffeur that the traffic is very bad; the chauffeur agrees that it is, but counters that it will surely end some time, and that “[t]o get irritated is to lose our way of life” (149). The narrator observes that this declaration has a religious ring to it, and the chauffeur confirms that he is a Christian. The narrator asks the chauffeur if he does not have a problem, as a Christian, working for a figure like the Boss, and the chauffeur tells the narrator: “The Boss is an honorable man. After the Lord, the most godly person I’ve ever met” (149).

The narrator takes this statement literally–or pretends to—and asks the chauffeur if he has really met God. The chauffeur replies that he telephones Him every night, even while he doesn’t go to church. He offers the narrator God’s phone number, and the narrator writes it down, while demurring that he is not himself a Christian. The chauffeur tells him that this does not matter, and that the narrator needs simply to speak to Him with openness and sincerity. 

The chauffeur drops off the narrator at a bar in a high-rise hotel, as the narrator wants neither to return to work nor go home. From the bar, he attempts to first call his girlfriend and then, when his girlfriend does not answer the phone, his ex-wife. He reconsiders after the phone has rung only twice, and hangs up.

He is counting the money that the secretary has given him, and compulsively snacking on peanuts, sandwiches and beer, when he receives a phone call at the bar. It is the secretary, telling the narrator that due to a sudden deterioration in the Boss’s condition, the narrator has only one month, rather than two months, to find the special sheep. The narrator asks the secretary how he was able to find him at the bar, and the secretary replies that his organization is “on top of most things” (154). The narrator then points out that this omniscience does not seem to apply to finding the sheep; the secretary agrees with him, but in turn points out that the entire situation is the narrator’s own fault. The narrator silently agrees with the secretary. 

The narrator’s girlfriend visits him in his apartment that evening, and he tells her about the events of the day and the quest that is before him. His girlfriend’s attitude about this quest is strangely game and relaxed: “All that said and done, she didn’t seem taken aback in the least” (156). She tells the narrator that she thinks that the expedition will be “fun,” and that she will go along with him (156). She declares that she would like to see the sheep herself, and that she does not believe that finding it will be difficult, even while she also tells the narrator that there are 5,000 sheep in Hokkaido, the place where they are going.

The compulsory nature of the quest does not bother the girlfriend in the way that it does the narrator. Neither does the randomness of it. She accepts both of these things as daily realities. She tells the narrator: “To a greater or lesser extent, everybody’s always being ordered and threatened and pushed around. There may not be anything better we could hope for” (158).

Alone in his apartment the following morning, the narrator decides to call the secretary. He begins by asking the secretary a random question about a photograph of a horse and rider that he saw in the paper that morning, then tells him that he does not like being monitored so closely. He tells him that he will do what the secretary has asked him to do, but that he will do it in his own way: “‘When I talk, I will talk as I like, I mean I have the right to make small talk if I want’” (163). He also points out to the secretary that, being a “mediocrity,” he does not have very much to lose.

The secretary replies by saying that everyone has something to lose: “Humans by necessity have a midway point between their desires and their pride. Just as all objects must have a center of gravity” (163-64). They hang up, and the narrator prepares for his trip, buying train tickets and provisions for his cat. His girlfriend returns that afternoon, along with a big suitcase, and he frets to her some more about the trip. He points out to her that if their quest fails, they might end up on the run forever, as The Rat has been: “The only difference is that he’s escaping out of his own choice and I’m being ricocheted about” (166).

The two then make love. The narrator finds both solace and loneliness in the act: “Women with their clothes off have a frightening similarity. Always throws me for a loop” (168). The narrator’s girlfriend murmurs to him afterwards that she feels as if they are “having a picnic,” evoking the picnic in the novel’s Prologue (167).

The narrator’s girlfriend reminds him that, in planning for their trip, the narrator has forgotten to make provisions for his cat. The narrator calls the secretary to ask him to please take his cat while he is gone. The secretary protests at first, saying that the Boss does not like cats and that the cat will kill all of the birds in the garden. The narrator points out to the secretary: “The Boss is unconscious, and the cat has no strength to chase down birds” (170).

The narrator then gives the secretary very exact instructions on how to take care of his elderly, lice-ridden cat. After calling the secretary, he calls his partner at the agency and explains his situation to him. He gives his partner instructions as well, on how to take care of the business while he is gone. His partner protests that he cannot handle the business alone, and the narrator reassures him and exhorts him to think of his children.

The chapter’s title is a quote from Sherlock Holmes, which the narrator is reading. It is how Sherlock Holmes describes the quality of his colleague Watson’s mind, and also perhaps refers to the narrow, obsessive nature of the narrator’s plans and instructions around his upcoming trip. 

The narrator and his girlfriend depart Tokyo, along with the narrator’s cat. They are picked up at the narrator’s apartment by the same chauffeur who drove the narrator to the Boss’s mansion. In the car, the three of them have a conversation that is by turns playful, banal and philosophical. They discuss the presence of God in everything, even automobiles, and the randomness inherent in naming some things (boats, stadiums) while merely numbering other things (buses, planes). The chauffeur is surprised to hear that their cat does not have a name, and suggests for him the name Kipper: “You were treating him like a herring [that is, not naming him], after all” (179).

The chauffeur drops off the narrator and his girlfriend at the airport. The narrator’s girlfriend is disappointed that they will not be served a meal on the plane, as the flight to Sapporo is only an hour long. The narrator tells his girlfriend that such a short flight saves time, and his girlfriend asks him (both seriously and nonsensically): “And where does the extra time go?” (183).

The narrator and his girlfriend fly to Sapporo. Once there, they make plans about how to go about their search for the sheep: the narrator tells his girlfriend that he will look for the scene displayed in the Rat’s photograph, while his girlfriend can make an inventory of sheep breeds and sheep ranches in Hokkaido. The two of them then watch a double feature and adjust to the suddenness of being somewhere else.

After the movie, they walk around the town, dine and then look for lodging. The girlfriend is drawn to a hotel called the Dolphin, although it is a shabby and nondescript hotel. They go in and wake up the sleeping desk clerk to get a room; the hotel is as run-down on the inside as on the outside. There are cockroaches in their room, and a noisy water faucet. As the girlfriend showers, the narrator finds himself contemplating his ex-wife. He tries to recall the exact number of times that they had sex, and remembers that she herself kept a journal about their sex life: “The woman–save for the month or so prior to our divorce–was singularly methodical in her thinking. She had an absolutely realistic grasp on her life” (197-98). 

The narrator and his girlfriend begin the search for the sheep. They have little luck at first. The narrator consults tourist agencies and local guides in his search for the same landscape that is in the Rat’s photograph, while the narrator’s girlfriend consults local registries of livestock. She tells the narrator that sheep are viewed as unimportant in the area and are no longer officially registered. Nevertheless, her attitude towards the sheep hunt remains more upbeat than the narrator’s: “Let me tell you, this is more fun than sleeping with strangers or flashing my ears or proofreading biographical dictionaries. This is living” (202).

The narrator’s girlfriend proposes to him that they put an ad out in the local paper, attempting to target the Rat. They do so, but the ad yields only a series of strange phone calls. First, there is a prank phone call, then a lonely woman wishing simply to speak to the narrator, then a man wanting to speak to the narrator about rats in Siberian internment camps.

Their luck changes when they have a chat one evening with the desk clerk, who turns out to be the owner of the hotel. He tells them that the hotel was previously the building for the Hokkaido Ovine Association, and that the director for the association was his own father. He tells them that his father, along with his sheep memorabilia and records, continues to occupy the entire second floor of the hotel. The narrator shows the owner the Rat’s photo, and the owner takes down a framed picture from the lobby wall, which turns out to display the same landscape as the one in the photograph. He tells the narrator that his father is known as the Sheep Professor.  

The hotel owner gives the narrator some further background on the Sheep Professor. He tells him that his father was a child prodigy, and that he went into the Ministry of Agriculture against the wishes of his cultivated family. There, he was put in charge of establishing a program for sheep cultivation in Japan. While researching sheep cultivation methods in China, he disappeared for several days; when he reappeared at his camp, he was haggard and altered in manner. The rumor grew that he had had a strange bond with a sheep, and he confirmed this rumor in an interview with a superior, telling him that the bond was a spiritual one. As a result, the Sheep Professor was fired from his post, whereupon he became a shepherd.

The Sheep Professor is now a surly and isolated old man, estranged from his own son even though he lives with him. The narrator and his girlfriend visit him in his second-floor quarters, bringing him his dinner; he at first yells at them to go away, but opens his door to them when the narrator mentions that he wishes to discuss a sheep. The Sheep Professor gives the narrator his own version of the events that his son has related to him. He tells the narrator that he was spiritually invaded by the sheep with the star on its back, but that the sheep then left him and he has been a shell ever since. He tells the narrator that Japan has been deficient in not recognizing, as the Chinese do, the spiritual meaning of sheep, and only seeing them as farm animals: “The basic stupidity of modern Japan is that we’ve learned absolutely nothing from our contact with other Asian people” (222).

The narrator in turn tells the Sheep Professor about the sheep’s trajectory through the Boss. He asks the Sheep Professor what the sheep is seeking in entering and leaving people, and the Sheep Professor tells him that it is not for him to know: “What the sheep seeks is the embodiment of sheep thought” (225). He tells the narrator that the scene in the photograph–and in the painting in the lobby–is the place where he lived for nine years: “Appropriated right after the war by the American Forces, and when they repatriated the place to me I sold it to some rich man as a vacation home with a pasture” (225). He also tells the narrator that another man before him was asking about the scene in the photograph: a man of roughly the narrator’s age, who told the Sheep Professor that he was planning to write a novel. The narrator, from the Sheep Professor’s description, recognizes this person as being the Rat. 

The narrator and his girlfriend get ready for their trip to the mountains. The girlfriend insists on packing her dresses, high heels and makeup, for a trip that requires warm, practical clothing. The narrator reflects: “There was no reasoning with her” (229).

They take their leave of the hotel owner, who tells them sorrowfully that he himself has never had a quest in his life, unlike his father, whose life has been defined by a quest. The girlfriend reassures the hotel owner that at least he has his hotel, and the narrator tells him that they are now taking over the sheep search, so that the Sheep Professor can rest.

The narrator and his girlfriend then discuss the hotel owner and his father in private; the girlfriend declares that she likes them both, and the narrator tells her that he thinks that they will be all right together now. They then–as the narrator puts it–have “intercourse,” and then go to watch a movie of people doing the same thing: “Nothing wrong with watching others having intercourse, after all” (230). 

On the train from Sapporo to Asahikawa, the narrator reads a history of the Junitaki Township, where the Sheep Professor’s old homestead was located. It is an area that was once a barren wilderness, and was gradually transformed by settlers into first a shepherding and then a logging community. The settlers were on the lam for unpaid debts, and for this reason wanted to settle in as remote a place as possible, regardless of the barrenness of the area. They were aided in their quest by a young Ainu (an indigenous Japanese people) guide, who gradually became a part of their community. He took a Japanese name, married the daughter of a settler, and had three children, one of whom was conscripted and killed in the Russo- Japanese war. Once the Japanese government provided the township with materials for shepherding–doing so in the interests of self-sufficiency during the Russo-Japanese war–Ainu became a shepherd.

The narrator tells us that once Ainu’s story–one of assimilation and disenchantment–is over, the history becomes less compelling: “The author himself seemed to have gotten bored by the events of the thirties on, his reportage becoming spotty and fragmentary. Even the writing style faltered, losing the clarity of his discussion of the Ainu youth” (243). He tells us that Junitaki is now mainly known to be a bleak, dull place. 

The narrator and his girlfriend take a train first to Asahikawa and then to Junitaki: following, as the narrator points out, the same route as the settlers in the history that he has just read. In the Asahikawa train station, the narrator writes an outline of this history to his girlfriend. He summarizes the key developments of the township on one side of a piece of paper; on the other side, he notes key developments in Japan as a whole during this same period. Regarding this outline, his girlfriend observes, “[…] we Japanese seem to live from war to war” (247).

They take a run-down train to their final destination: a town of abandoned warehouses, overgrown fields, and incongruous shiny new cars sitting in the middle of nowhere: “The new pioneers of advertising were carving a mean streak deep into the country” (249). They find lodging at an inn, and the narrator visits the Livestock Section at the local town hall. The livestock officer there tells him that the meadow in the Rat’s photograph is now “on loan” to the town, having first been overtaken by the US Army during the war and then bought by a rich man. He tells the narrator that the meadow is used every summer for a sheep pasture, by a local shepherd.

The livestock officer then drives the narrator to the shepherd’s farm. During the drive, the officer sadly muses that his whole town is “dying”: “It’s a curious thing, a town dying. A person dying I can understand. But a whole town dying...” (256). At the sheep farm, the narrator first encounters the herd of sheep in their pens: “Their eyes were an unnatural blue, looking like tiny wellsprings flowing from the sides of their faces. They shone like glass eyes which reflected light from straight on” (258).

The shepherd is a former military man, rough in his manner but friendly. The narrator shows him the Rat’s photograph, which the shepherd recognizes immediately as his summer pasture, although he does not recognize the sheep with the star on its back. He tells the narrator that the house next to the pasture is not–as the livestock officer had earlier told him–uninhabited. He tells the narrator that a young man has been squatting there; from his description, the narrator knows this young man to be the Rat. The Rat has told the shepherd to keep his presence in the house a secret, and has paid the shepherd to deliver food and fuel to him.

The narrator negotiates with the shepherd about taking him and his girlfriend up to the pasture the following morning. They agree that the shepherd will pick them up at the inn at 8 a.m.; the shepherd warns the narrator that the ground might be too soft for driving, and that he and his girlfriend might have to walk part of the way.

Walking back home to the inn, the narrator suddenly recalls that the Rat’s family had had a vacation villa in Hokkaido; he realizes that the Rat’s father was “the rich man” whom both the Sheep Professor and the livestock officer had mentioned. The narrator and his girlfriend eat dinner in the hotel–the narrator is freezing and hungry after the long walk–and that night the narrator lies awake, reflecting on the history and disintegration of the town: “Holding my breath in the darkness, I let images of the town melt and ooze all around me. The houses rotted away, the rails rusted and were gone, weeds overwhelmed the farmland […] All the works of man faded into nothingness, yet still the sheep remained” (265).