Beginning of Essay
Boku, thirty years old, is in many respects an average middle-class citizen who, free from excessive financial worries, enjoys the kind of independence his status bestows. A product of 1960’s, he takes endless pleasure in smoking, drinking, and eating in bars, c ....

Middle of Essay
.... Japanese culture, which is revealed to be under the thumb of the right-wing leader by virtue of his financial holdings; it is this man who indirectly draws Boku into the maelstrom of the sheep chase and robs him of his independence. No wonder, then, that there is no core, only vacuity, to Boku's being. He is literally without a past (or a future, for that matter). Victims of erasure, neither his family nor his divorced wife, for instance, impinge much on his consciousness. Paradoxically, he is often filled with a sense of loss, though the content of that loss is not clearly spelled out. There are, at most, references to the style and climate ....