The Literature and Politics of Abe Kobo: Farewell to Communism in Suna no Onna

Abstract

L r ITERATURE and politics are often closely intertwined in the social evolution of any given nation. Solznetsyn's work is a recent example of . {literary revolt in the '60s and after against the established government of the USSR. In the present post-cold-war era, it is ironic to find that some Japanese intellectuals and literati during the decade and a half after the Pacific War considered communism as the ultimate form of social justice and the Soviet Union as the first realization of that ideal. Such a union of art and politics, however, contained an inherent danger of dissolution. Although the goal of attaining a classless society was a utopian dream of those intellectuals, individual rights and freedom of speech were sacred to them as well. These avant-garde artists could not tolerate the literary censorship imposed by the leaders of the Japanese Communist Party, and there was a mass exodus of literati from the party in 1962. Abe Kobo % mR was among those who chose art over politics, to leave the party rather than compromise the fundamental right of artists: freedom of expression. Such an alliance and a subsequent dissolution of art and politics present an opportunity for literary critics to debate on the primacy of artistic goals: art or life? Without resorting to theoretical argument, however, two opposing views of Abe's works have emerged since the publication of Suna no Onna ;JeD (The Woman of the Dunes), written immediately after his expulsion from the communist party. Okaniwa Noboru rg values Abe's earlier works for their political ideology and condemns his later ones for their corruption and deterioration into popularism. Watanabe Hiroshi 9,37IY:i, on the other hand, sees literary maturity and artistic integrity in Abe's writings of the post-communist period. Suna no Onna is one of the best-known works not only of Abe but also of Japanese postwar literature. Although its popularity may partly result from its surrealistic film version, winning first prize for foreign films at Cannes, the