# kobo abe kōbō abe ![[kinema-junpo-1967-january-special-3.jpg|300]] kōbō abe in 1967 native name: 安部 公房 born: kimifusa abe (安部 公房 abe kimifusa) march 7 1924 kita tokyo japan died: january 22 1993 (aged 68) tokyo japan occupation: writer language: japanese education: seijo high school alma mater: university of tokyo genre: absurdist fiction surrealism literary movement: modernism notable works: _the woman in the dunes _the face of another _the box man_ notable awards: akutagawa prize yomiuri prize tanizaki prize spouse: machi abe children: neri abe kimifusa abe (安部 公房 _abe kimifusa__; march 7 1924 - january 22 1993) known by ir pen name 'kōbō abe' (安部 公房 _abe kōbō_) was a japanese writer playwright and director. ir 1962 novel the woman in the dunes was made into an award-winning film by hiroshi teshigahara in 1964. abe has often been compared to franz kafka for ir modernist sensibilities and ir surreal often nightmarish explorations of individuals in contemporary society. ey died aged 68 of heart failure in tokyo after a brief illness abe was born on march 7 1924 in kita tokyo japan and grew up in mukden (now shenyang) in manchuria. abe's family was in tokyo at the time due to ir father's year of medical research in tokyo. ir mother had been raised in hokkaido while ey experienced childhood in manchuria. this triplicate assignment of origin was influential to abe who told nancy shields in a 1978 interview "i am essentially a man without a hometown. this may be what lies behind the 'hometown phobia' that runs in the depth of my feelings. all things that are valued for ir stability offend me." as a child abe was interested in insect-collecting mathematics and reading. ir favorite authors were fyodor dostoyevsky martin heidegger karl jaspers franz kafka friedrich nietzsche and edgar allan poe ![[abe_kobo_cooks_jiaozi.jpg|300]] abe prepares gyōza abe returned to tokyo briefly in april 1940 to study at seijo high school but a lung condition forced ir return to mukden where ey read jaspers heidegger dostoyevsky and edmund husserl. abe began to study medicine at tokyo imperial university in 1943 partially out of respect for ir father but also because "hose students who specialized in medicine were exempted from becoming soldiers. my friends who chose the humanities were killed in the war." ey returned to manchuria around the end of world war ii. specifically abe left the tokyo university medical school in october 1944 returning to ir father's clinic in mukden. that winter ir father died of eruptive typhus. returning to tokyo with ir father's ashes abe reentered the medical school. abe started writing novellas and short stories during ir last year in university. ey graduated in 1948 with a medical degree once joking that ey was allowed to graduate only on the condition that ey would not practice in 1945 abe married machi yamada an artist and stage director and the couple saw successes within ir fields in similar time frames. initially they lived in an old barracks within a bombed-out area of the city center. abe sold pickles and charcoal on the street to pay ir bills. the couple joined a number of artistic study groups such as yoru no kai (group of the night or the night society) and nihon bungaku gakko (japanese literary school). ir daughter abe neri was born in 1954 as the postwar period progressed abe's stance as an intellectual pacifist led to ir joining the japanese communist party with which ey worked to organize laborers in poor parts of tokyo. soon after receiving the akutagawa prize in 1951 abe began to feel the constraints of the communist party's rules and regulations alongside doubts about what meaningful artistic works could be created in the genre of "socialist realism." by 1956 abe began writing in solidarity with the polish workers who were protesting against ir communist government drawing the communist party's ire. the criticism reaffirmed ir stance: "the communist party put pressure on me to change the content of the article and apologize. but i refused. i said i would never change my opinion on the matter. this was my first break with the party.": 35 the next year abe traveled to eastern europe for the 20th convention of the soviet communist party. ey saw little of interest there but the arts gave ir some solace. ey visited kafka's house in prague read rilke and karel čapek reflected on ir idol lu xun and was moved by a mayakovsky play in brno the soviet invasion of hungary in 1956 disgusted abe. ey attempted to leave the communist party but resignations from the party were not accepted at the time. in 1960 ey participated in the anpo protests against revision of the us-japan security treaty as part of the pan-ideological young japan society. ey later wrote a play about the protests the day the stones speak which was staged several times in japan and china in 1960 and 1961. in the summer of 1961 abe joined a group of other authors in criticizing the cultural policies of the communist party. ey was forcibly expelled from the party the following year. ir political activity came to an end in 1967 in the form of a statement published by himself yukio mishima yasunari kawabata and jun ishikawa protesting the treatment of writers artists and intellectuals in communist china. according to translator john nathan this statement led to the falling-out between abe and fellow writer kenzaburō ōe ir experiences in manchuria were also deeply influential on ir writing imprinting terrors and fever dreams that became surrealist hallmarks of ir works. in ir recollections of mukden these markers are evident: "the fact is it may not have been trash in the center of the marsh at all; it may have been crows. i do have a memory of thousands of crows flying up from the swamp at dusk as if the surface of the swamp were being lifted up into the air." the trash of the marsh was a truth of life as were the crows yet abe's recollections of them tie them distinctively. further experiences with the swamp centered around its use as a staking ground for condemned criminals with " heads—now food for crows—appearing suddenly out of the darkness and disappearing again terrified and attracted to us." these ideas are present in much of abe's work abe was first published as a poet in 1947 with mumei-shishū ("poems of an unknown poet") which ey paid for himself and as a novelist the following year with owarishi michi no shirube ni ("the road sign at the end of the street") which established ir reputation. when ey received the akutagawa prize in 1951 ir ability to continue publishing was confirmed. though ey did much work as an avant-garde novelist and playwright it was not until the publication of the woman in the dunes in 1962 that abe won widespread international acclaim in the 1960s ey collaborated with japanese director hiroshi teshigahara on the film adaptations of the pitfall woman in the dunes the face of another and the man without a map. woman in the dunes received widespread critical acclaim and was released only four months after abe was expelled from the japanese communist party in 1971 ey founded the abe studio an acting studio in tokyo. until the end of the decade ey trained performers and directed plays. the decision to found the studio came two years after ey first directed ir own work in 1969 a production of the man who turned into a stick. the production's sets were designed by abe's wife and hisashi igawa starred. abe had become dissatisfied with ability of the theatre to materialize the abstract reducing it to a passive medium. until 1979 ey wrote directed and produced 14 plays at the abe studio. ey also published two novels box man (1973) and secret rendezvous (1977) alongside a series of essays musical scores and photographic exhibits. the seibu theater an avant-garde theater in the new department store parco was allegedly established in 1973 specifically for abe though many other artists were given the chance to use it. the abe studio production of the glasses of love are rose colored (1973) opened there. later the entirety of the seibu museum was used to present one of abe's photographic works an exhibition of images: i the abe studio provided a foil for much of the contemporary scene in japanese theater contrasting with the haiyuza's conventional productions opting to focus on dramatic as opposed to physical expression. it was a safe space for young performers whom abe would often recruit from the toho gakuen college in chofu city on the outskirts of tokyo where ey taught. the average age of the performers in the studio was about 27 throughout the decade as members left and fresh faces were brought in. abe "deftly" handled issues arising from difference in stage experience in 1977 abe was elected a foreign honorary member of the american academy of arts and sciences among the honors abe received were the akutagawa prize in 1951 for the crime of s. karuma the yomiuri prize in 1962 for the woman in the dunes and the tanizaki prize in 1967 for the play friends. kenzaburō ōe credited abe and other modern japanese authors for " the way to the nobel prize" which ey himself won. abe was mentioned multiple times as a possible recipient but ir early death precluded that possibility year: japanese title: english title: translations available: notes --- 1948: 終 りし道の標に owarishi michi no shirube ni: _at the guidepost at the end of the road_: : 1954: 飢 餓同盟 kiga doumei: _starving unions_: : 1957: け ものたちは故郷をめざす kemono tachi wa kokyou wo mezasu: _beasts head for home_: richard f. calichman: 1959: 第 四間氷期 dai-yon kampyōki: _inter ice age 4_: e. dale saunders: illustrated by abe machi 1960: 石 の眼 ishi no me: _stony eyes_: : 1962: 砂 の女 suna no onna: _the woman in the dunes_: e. dale saunders: adapted into an international film 1964: 他 人の顔 tanin no kao: _the face of another_: e. dale saunders: adapted into a film by the same title 1964: 榎 本武揚 enomoto takeaki: _the traitor_: mark gibeau: commissioned conversion to a play by theatrical company kumo and directed by hiroshi akutagawamixed reviews: keene preferred the novel to the play while oe considered it "genuinely new." 1966: 人 間そっくり ningen sokkuri: _the double of human being_: : 1967: 燃 えつきた地図 moetsukita chizu: _the ruined map_: e. dale saunders: 1973: 箱 男 hako otoko: _the box man_: e. dale saunders: 1977: 密 会 mikkai: _secret rendezvous_: juliet winters carpenter 1979: 1984: 方 舟さくら丸 hakobune sakura maru: _the ark sakura_: juliet winters carpenter 1988: 1991: カ ンガルー・ノート kangaruu noto: _kangaroo notebook_: maryellen toman mori: 1994: 飛 ぶ男 tobu otoko: _the flying man_: : incomplete # # collected short stories year: japanese title: english title: translations available: notes --- 1949: 唖 むすめ oshimusume: "the deaf girl": andrew horvat: collected in four stories by kobo abe_ 1949: デ ンドロカカリヤ dendorokakariya: "dendrocacalia": juliet winters carpenter: collected in beyond the curve_ 1949: 夢 の逃亡 yume no toubou: "the dream escape": : 1950: 赤 い繭 akai mayu: "the red cocoon": lane dunlop: collected in a late chrysanthemum: twenty-one stories from the japanese_ 1950: 洪 水 kouzui: "the flood": lane dunlop: collected in a late chrysanthemum: twenty-one stories from the japanese_ 1950: 棒 bou: "the stick": lane dunlop: collected in a late chrysanthemum: twenty-one stories from the japanese_ 1951: 魔 法のチョーク mahou no chouku: "the magic chalk": alison kibrick: collected in the showa anthology: modern japanese short stories_ 1951: 壁 ―s・カルマ氏の犯罪 kabe―s・karuma shi no hanzai: the wall ― the crime of s. karma: juliet winters carpenter: winner of the akutagawa prizeexcerpt collected in beyond the curve_ 1951: 手 te: "hand": ted mack: appears in columbia: a journal of literature and art no. 27 (winter 1996 - 97) pp. 50 - 57 1951: 闖 入者 chinnyusha: "intruders": juliet winters carpenter: collected in beyond the curve_ 1951: 詩 人の生涯 shijin no shougai: "the life of a poet": juliet winters carpenter: collected in beyond the curve_ 1951: 飢 えた皮膚 ueta hihu: "the starving skin": : 1952: ノ アの方舟 noa no hakobune: "noah's ark": juliet winters carpenter: collected in beyond the curve_ 1952: 水 中都市 suichu toshi: "the underwater city": : 1954: 犬 inu: "the dog": andrew horvat: collected in four stories by kobo abe_ 1954: 変 形の記録 henkei no kiroku: "record of a transformation": juliet winters carpenter: collected in beyond the curve_ 1954: shinda musume ga utatta: "song of a dead girl": stuart a. harrington: collected in the mother of dreams and other short stories: portrayals of women in modern japanese fiction_ 1956: r62 号の発明 r62 gou no hatumei: "inventions by no. r62": : 1957: 誘 惑者 yuwakusha: "beguiled": juliet winters carpenter: collected in beyond the curve_ 1957: 夢 の兵士 yume no heishi: "the dream soldier": first translation 1973 by andrew horvat second translation 1991 by juliet winters carpenter: first translation collected in four stories by kobo abe second translation collected in beyond the curve_ 1957: 鉛 の卵 namari no tamago: "the egg of pb": : 1958: 使 者 shisha: "the special envoy": juliet winters carpenter: collected in beyond the curve_ 1960: 賭 け kake: "the bet": juliet winters carpenter: collected in beyond the curve_ 1961: 無 関係な死 mukankei na shi: "an irrelevant death": juliet winters carpenter: collected in beyond the curve_ 1964: 時 の崖 toki no gake: "the cliff of time": andrew horvat: collected in four stories by kobo abe_.adapted into a short film in 1971 starring hisashi igawa that was directed by abe himself. 1966: カー ブの向う kabu no mukou: "beyond the curve": juliet winters carpenter: first collection published in english year: japanese title: english title: translations available: notes --- : 時 間の崖 jikan no gake: the cliff of time: donald keene: collected in the man who turned into a stick: three related plays_ : スー ツケース sūtsukēsu: suitcase: donald keene: collected in the man who turned into a stick: three related plays_ 1955: 制 服 seifuku: uniforms: : 1955: ど れい狩り dorei gari: slave hunting: : 1955: 快 速船 kaisoku sen: the speedy ship: : 1957: 棒 になった男 bou ni natta otoko: the man who turned into a stick: donald keene: collected in the man who turned into a stick: three related plays_the 1969 production was the first time abe directed ir own work. ir wife designed the set. 1958: 幽 霊はここにいる yuurei wa koko ni iru: the ghost is here: donald keene: collected in three plays by kōbō abe_award-winning production by koreya senda well received in east germany 1965: お まえにも罪がある omae nimo tsumi ga aru: you too are guilty: ted t. takaya: collected in modern japanese drama: an anthology_ 1967: 友 達 tomodachi: friends: donald keene: performed in english in honolulu akutagawa award winner 1967adapted into a film in 1988 directed by kjell-åke andersson 1967: 榎 本武揚 enomoto takeaki: takeaki enomoto: : alt. translation: enomoto buyodirected by the son of ryūnosuke akutagawa "father of the japanese short story" 1971: 未 必の故意 mihitsu no koi: involuntary homicide: donald keene: collected in three plays by kōbō abe_ 1971: ガ イド・ブック gaido bukku: guide book: : 1973: 愛 の眼鏡は色ガラス ai no megane wa iro garasu: loving glasses are colored ones: : 1974: 緑 色のストッキング midori iro no sutokkingu: green stockings: donald keene: collected in three plays by kōbō abe_ 1975: ウ エー（新どれい狩り） uē (shin dorei gari): ue (slave hunting new version) the animal hunter: james r. brandon: 1976: 案 内人guide book ii annai nin: the guide man guide book ii: : 1977: 水 中都市guide book iii suichu toshi: the underwater city guide book iii: : 1978: s・ カルマ氏の犯罪 s・karuma shi no hanzai: the crime of s. karuma: : 1979: 仔 象は死んだ kozou wa shinda: an elephant calf is dead: : adapted into a short film that was directed by abe himself in the same year. year: japanese title: english title: translations available: notes --- 1944: 詩 と詩人 (意識と無意識) shi to shijin: poetry and poets (consciousness and the unconscious): richard f. calichman: collected in the frontier within: essays by abe kōbō_ 1954: 文 学における理論と実践 bungaku ni okeru riron to jissen: theory and practice in literature: richard f. calichman: collected in the frontier within: essays by abe kōbō_ 1955: 猛 獣の心に計算機の手を:文学とは何か mōjū no kokoro ni keisanki no te wo: bungaku to ha nanika: the hand of a calculator with the heart of a beast: what is literature?: richard f. calichman: collected in the frontier within: essays by abe kōbō_ 1957: ア メリカ発見 amerika hakken: discovering america: richard f. calichman: collected in the frontier within: essays by abe kōbō_ 1960: 映 像は言語の壁を破壊するか eizō ha gengo no kabe wo hakai suru ka: does the visual image destroy the walls of language?: richard f. calichman: collected in the frontier within: essays by abe kōbō_ 1960: 芸 術の革命:芸術運動の理論 geijutsu no kakumei: geijutsu undō no riron: artistic revolution: theory of the art movement: richard f. calichman: collected in the frontier within: essays by abe kōbō_ 1965: 現 代における教育の可能性:人間存在の本質に触れて gendai ni okeru kyōiku no kanōsei: ningen sonzai no honshitsu ni furete: possibilities for education today: on the essence of human existence: richard f. calichman: collected in the frontier within: essays by abe kōbō_ 1966: 隣 人を超えるもの rinjin wo koeru mono: beyond the neighbor: richard f. calichman: collected in the frontier within: essays by abe kōbō_ 1968: ミ リタリールック miritarī rukku: the military look: richard f. calichman: collected in the frontier within: essays by abe kōbō_ 1968: 異 端のパスポート itan no pasupōto: passport of heresy: richard f. calichman: collected in the frontier within: essays by abe kōbō_ 1968: 内 なる辺境 uchi naru henkyō: the frontier within: richard f. calichman: collected in the frontier within: essays by abe kōbō_ 1969: 続: 内なる辺境 zoku: uchi naru henkyō: the frontier within part ii: richard f. calichman: collected in the frontier within: essays by abe kōbō_ 1975: 笑 う月 warau tsuki: the laughing moon: : 1981: 桜は異端諮問間の紋章sakura wa itan shinmonkan no monshō: the dark side of the cherry blossoms: donald keene: published in the washington post the guardian and the asahi shinbun year: japanese title: english title: translations available: notes --- 1947: 無 名詩集 mumei shishu: poems of an unknown poet 1978: 人 さらい hito sarai: kidnap // republic of bob