One of the primary themes in this short story by Shinichi Hoshi is self-delusion, specifically the capacity of humans to engage in self-delusion on a social level. This is symbolized throughout the story in several ways, and Hoshi implies that it can take many forms. For example, the shrine which has stood for many years over the hole represents the capacity of societies to use religion, ritual, and artifice to distract themselves from things they do not want to think about, such as the hole which the shrine covered. When the shrine is suddenly torn away, the villagers immediately panic and determine that it should be rebuilt—even though they cannot remember what the shrine is really for or how long it has been there. Their impulse is to immediately conceal again the hole which has been uncovered by a change in the environment. The ultimate superficiality of the shrine itself is emphasized when, later on, another shrine (with an attached meeting hall) is built closer to the village, fulfilling the villagers' desire for a place of pilgrimage. This shrine has even less of an obvious purpose than the original, but it enables the villagers to distract themselves once more from the hole in another way, by performing religious rituals. 

The bottomless hole offers the people of the city a different avenue for self-delusion. While the hole originally serves as a disposal opportunity for producers of nuclear waste (and allows the people of the area to delude themselves about the possible after-effects of that waste on their environment), it soon becomes much more than this. The hole becomes a receptor for anything the society does not wish to confront directly. This includes animals who have been experimented upon in inhumane ways as well as social problems, such as homelessness, symbolized by the "unclaimed bodies of vagrants" which are thrown into the hole. The city which so enraptures the workman at the end of the story is a beautiful one, but it is not based on truth. This is not a world which has eradicated homelessness, or nuclear waste, or crime. On the contrary, it is simply a society which has convinced itself that it is free of "filth," because the hole allows people to conceal all their ugliness. However, as Hoshi implies in the conclusion of the story, we cannot delude ourselves forever. Eventually, the consequences of our actions will be revealed.

The points Hoshi makes in this story can, in many ways, be applied to various facets of society and humanity. However, there is certainly a specific focus on the environment and the ways in which we are destroying the natural world around us, without considering the possible aftermath. Specifically, Hoshi is concerned with the issue of nuclear waste and how this is disposed of; in the story, cavalier promises are made by the concessionaire, who is able to convince the villagers that there will not be any contamination as a result of using the hole for nuclear waste disposal. These promises are not based on any scientific grounds, but the villagers are happy to accept them, for financial reasons and because of a disinclination to think too much about the consequences of these actions. 

There is also, at the beginning of the story, a typhoon which uncovers the hole in the first place. This perhaps suggests weather changes and other alterations in our environment which represent the aftermath of some of the things humans have done to the earth over decades past: the typhoon is a consequence, and it uncovers other consequences in the shape of the...