Kobo Abe

Japanese writer, theatrical director, photographer and musician (7 March 1924, Kita, Tokyo — 22 January 1993, Tokyo). Kōbō Abe (安部 公房), born Kimifusa Abe (安部 公房), is widely regarded as one of Japan's leading absurdists and surrealists of his generation. He published 15 critically-acclaimed novels, dozens of short story collections and plays and won some of the most prestigious Japanese literary accolades. Abe's best-known books are Woman in the Dunes (1962) and Face of Another (64), both subsequently adopted by director Hiroshi Teshigahara as feature-length films. Abe Kimifusa was born in Tokyo but grew up in Mukden, Manchuria (now Shenyang, part of north-east China). He became an avid reader in early childhood. Abe's favorite authors and major influences included Fyodor Dostoevsky, Franz Kafka, Martin Heidegger, Karl Jaspers, Friedrich Nietzsche, Edgar Allan Poe, Rainer Maria Rilke, Karel Čapek, and Chinese writer and poet Lu Xun (鲁迅). In 1943, Abe returned to Japan and studied medicine at the Tokyo Imperial University. Around the end of World War II, Kobo had to interrupt his studies and went back to Manchuria to help around the father's clinic. Abe subsequently returned to Tokyo and graduated in 1948 with his medical degree; however, he never practiced. Kobo Abe's debut novel, 終りし道の標に ("At the Guidepost at the End of the Road"), came out during his last year at University's Medical School. In the late 1940s, Kobo Abe joined the Communist Party of Japan, driven primarily by its work to organize laborers in Tokyo's poor neighborhoods. (At the time, communism in Japan was associated more with "intellectual opposition" to imperialism than oppressive regimes in neighboring countries and the Soviet Union.) However, soon after receiving the prestigious Akutagawa Prize for his 1951 short stories collection, The Wall — The Crime of S. Karma (壁—S・カルマ氏の犯罪), Abe began doubting his decision to associate with the Party. By 1956, as the USSR invaded Hungary, Kobo Abe was utterly disillusioned and disgusted with communism; he attempted to quit the Japanese Communist Party, but voluntary resignation was not an option. In 1957, Abe briefly traveled to the Czech Republic, attending the 20th Convention of the Soviet Communist Party, where he had an opportunity to visit Kafka's house in Prague. Kobo Abe participated in anti-communist protests and joined a group of Japanese writers openly criticizing communists in 1961. The following year, he was finally expelled from the Party. In 1967, Kōbō Abe co-published a controversial statement with Yukio Mishima and Yasunari Kawabata, which condemned the treatment of artists and intellectuals in Communist China. It was one of Abe's last significant political actions and, reportedly, cost him friendship with fellow writer Kenzaburo Oe (b. 1935). In 1971, Abe co-founded an eponymous acting studio in Tokyo, where he trained performers and directed theatrical plays.