Impossible to Return: Abe Kōbō, Repatriation, and Postwar Japan

Abstract

This essay examines Abe Kōbō's 1957 novel Kemono-tachi wa kokyō o mezasu (Beasts head for home), a relatively neglected work among Abe's oeuvre because of its atypically realistic plot and lucid style. In contrast to previous interpretations, which linked the novel to the author's own experiences of repatriation, this essay argues that Abe was writing against the putative genre of autobiographical repatriation narratives and that the novel invokes notions of the impossibility of "return" and the elusiveness of "home" (kokyō) to envision an alternative history of decolonization, one that challenges the temporal break between the wartime past and the postwar present.