No happy endings in Beasts Head for Home

And...following up on yesterday's post...we don't get a "happy" ending in Kobe Abe's Beasts Head for Home (1957). I won't give away details, but will tip my figurative hat to Abe for building this narrative - story of two men crossing a vast winter landscape in Manchuria w/ virtually no provisions, trying to get to Japan while avoiding potential attacks from various competing armies - to an exciting, dramatic conclusion. We (and the protagonist, Kyuzo) have known for some time that the traveling partner (Ko) was a heroin smuggler who will use and discard Kyuzo or anyone else who gets in his path. Abe plays this drama out to the end in the final (4th) section of the novel, as Ko insists that Kyuzo hide out in an abandoned tower at a city park while he arranges their transport to Japan. Kyuzo, rightly, suspects that this is a set-up - and unsurprisingly Ko abandons Kyuzo, leaving him without food or funds or any connection in the city where he's been left. The final section of the novel follows Kyuzo in his pursuit of Ko - all pretty good and continuation of the trek motif as a Japanese officer (or so he seems) brings Kyuzo to a port where he boards a small boat headed for Japan. We know of course that he's not through w/ Ko, and they have a remarkable reunion on the boat, where several "secrets" are revealed and novel builds toward its conclusion. All told, this is a really good, cinematic adventure tale; is it anything more? Despite the special pleading in the nearly unreadable "introduction" (really, a scholarly essay) to the Columbia U Press edition, it doesn't seem to me as if Abe is making any great universal statement about human life and destiny, about identity, about the cultural conflicts in Manchuria as various armies scrapped for territory after the defeat of Japan in the WWII. This novel doesn't have the dreamlike sense of mystery in Abe's famous Woman in the Dunes, and I don't think Abe intended it to do so. It's more like a Western, in an exotic (to us) setting, with survival skills, drug smuggling, and doubling of identity - somewhat reminiscent of the doubling of character in The Secret Sharer, for ex. - just enough to give it the sheen and allure of psychological and sociological significance - but don't get lost seeking a world view within this novel; take it for what it is at its best, an exciting story of endurance and, perhaps, survival.