Abe Kobo Research Articles

Where community denial leads : A study on Abe Kobo’s novel The Face of Another

Where community denial leads : A study on Abe Kobo’s novel The Face of Another

All That Is Solid Turns into Sand: Woman in the Dunes across Page and Screen

This paper attempts a close study of Abe Kobo’s novel Woman in the Dunes and its screen adaptation (dir. Teshigahara Hiroshi 1964). Engaging adaptation studies, media studies, and sound studies, this paper moves from the conventional focus on the linear transfer of text from a source to a result, to examine adaptation as a multilevel, multisensory, and multidirectional process of remediation. By mediating documentary cinema and avant-garde tradition, the filmic adaptation, as the paper argues, not only provokes and enhances its literary original, but also illuminates existentialist concerns that gained critical currency in the 1960s. The paper moves on to analyze Takemitsu Toru’s score in relation to Teshigahara’s surrealist imagery; in doing so, it elucidates the way the film gives the sand a form of human agency alluded to yet not fully realized in Abe’s novel. Scrutiny of Abe and Takemitsu’s early years in Japan-occupied Manchuria further connects Abe’s work to the issue of postcolonial identity while opening Woman in the Dunes to more interpretative possibilities as an I-Novel. Through mediating collective history and personal memory, adaptation opens a dialogic intersubjective horizon where questions of identity and affect intersect in the post-war media environment.

Men from Manchuria and Women in Japan after the Asia-Pacific War：The Meaning of “Meaninglessness” in Abe Kobo’s Two “The Wall” Novels

It is widely known that in his two novels, “At the Guidepost at the End of the Road” (1948) and “The Wall – The Crime of S. Karma” (1951), Abe Kobo depicted the main characters’ anguish after the Japanese defeat in the Asia-Pacific war as the result of “meaninglessness”. He came to this perspective on the basis of struggling with this feeling in his own life. This article analyzes the female Japanese characters, who form a contrast with the main male Japanese characters, in order to explore the question of why this sense of meaninglessness came about. In these novels, Japanese female characters are represented as those who cure the distress men feel because of the latter’s awareness of their responsibility for the aggressive war that took place, and because of their hedonic enjoyment of the liberated society after the war, which these male characters experience as “meaningful” as it allows them to not reflect on the war. The contrasting women characters reflect the social conditions at the time the story was written. Japanese women were not accused of war crimes, nor were they responsible for the subordinate female gender roles which persisted before the war. As a result, the female characters are free of the sense of meaninglessness, and they form a contrast with Japanese male characters who feel anguish at their awareness of their responsibility for the war, and their resultant sense of meaninglessness.

전향의 논리와 아베 고보 비평의 교차 -『모래의 여자』관련 비평언설과 전후 ‘정치와 문학’ 논쟁－

전향의 논리와 아베 고보 비평의 교차 -『모래의 여자』관련 비평언설과 전후 ‘정치와 문학’ 논쟁－

A Memorandum on the Photograph: Movement and Time in Blurs and Stills

A Memorandum on the Photograph: Movement and Time in Blurs and Stills Kanai Mieko (bio) Translated by Hannah Osborne (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Yoneda Tomoko, Abe Kobo’s Glasses–Viewing the Manuscript of The Box Man, from the series Between Visible and Invisible, 2013. Gelatin silver print. © Tomoko Yoneda. Courtesy of the artist. [End Page 226] Prints taken and developed by a photographer used to be called “pictures,” and films taken by a cinematographer used to be called “photographs,” nowadays, however, we never see or hear these words being used in this way; except by those who delight in bucking the current trend (or, at least, appearing to), with the pride of a computer geek.1 Of course, this kind of inverted snobbery may well have been shared by the avant-garde who set themselves against bourgeois perspectives on Art, as defined by Gustave Flaubert’s Dictionary of Received Ideas: “What is its point now that its place has been taken by mechanical processes that are ‘faster and superior’?” And it is precisely from such bourgeois conceptions of Art that “paintings,” “photographs,” and “films” might in turn be seen as graduated technological advancements with each development superseding the last, so that whereas daguerreotypes simply “take the shine off painting,” photographs “consign painting to the dustbin.”2 Having said that, there are a few instances where various terms used to describe projected images were initially formed in relation to their specific technological innovations—“plate” for the icon that the pinhole camera obscura copied onto a silver coated plate; “paper prints” for the printed image of the photograph upon paper; and finally “film” for the material on to which photographs are strung together to make moving images—but have now shifted in the application of their meaning. At first, then, naming these parts was simply a matter of technical accuracy; calling “videotapes” that we watch on our television screens “films” as we do now, however, seems like a completely different exercise. [End Page 227] ________ When I started this essay, I intended to write about how photographs appear in films; but before I do so, I wish to write about how, within the moment of the unmoving fixed image of a photograph (or drawing of light)—a moment measured by the speed of the camera’s shutter—there lives a subtle cinematograph (or drawing of movement): In summer, canna lilies of all colors bloomed. In our garden they grew taller than the adults, and to me they seemed like a grove of trees. One day, our whole family formed two lines in front of those lilies. I can picture it now; a box-shaped camera pointing toward us, next to which stood a man I didn’t know. I was being held by my mother at the end of one line. We faced the main road, so our main residence was off to the left; and I could see my grandmother perched on its veranda. My elder sister and brother took turns to go and speak to her about something, but she didn’t get up. So then, having decided to leave my grandmother out, we must have all turned toward the box-shaped thing; but, this time, the strange man started talking very earnestly to me. Saying things like, “Hey, wait for the lil birdie to pop up!” he tried very hard to catch me smiling, as he pointed to the box covered with a black cloth. In our house we never once used baby words like lil birdie, so I remember that phrase extremely well; and I of course realized that the man was doing his best to divert me. Well, that lil birdie never did show its face. And it wasn’t until many years later, when looking at the photograph, that I realized what had been going on at that moment. While everyone else had appropriate smiles fixed upon their faces, only I, being held by mother, have this smudgy blur. Although I remember the scene well, I was surprised to see that I’d been so young that I’d not been able to stay still even for the duration of a photograph...

The Woman in the Dunes as Border Crossings:Abe Kobo, T.S. Eliot, and Paul Bowles

The Woman in the Dunes as Border Crossings:Abe Kobo, T.S. Eliot, and Paul Bowles

Eastern European uprising and the conversion of the thought of Japan in 1950s : Focus on Abe Kobo’s I go to the Eastern Europe.

Eastern European uprising and the conversion of the thought of Japan in 1950s : Focus on Abe Kobo’s I go to the Eastern Europe.

Japanese Literature class discussion of Active Learning - Abe kobo "The Woman in the Dunes" for example -

Japanese Literature class discussion of Active Learning - Abe kobo "The Woman in the Dunes" for example -

Similarities between Abe kobo and Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Similarities between Abe kobo and Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Abe Kobo’s The Face of Another Focused on problem of the subject

Abe Kobo’s The Face of Another Focused on problem of the subject

Abe Kobo's Neutral Body and a Study about the formation process of the Abe Kobo System

Abe Kobo's Neutral Body and a Study about the formation process of the Abe Kobo System

The Closed Hand: Images of the Japanese in Modern Peruvian Literature by Rebecca Riger Tsurumi (review)

Reviewed by: The Closed Hand: Images of the Japanese in Modern Peruvian Literature by Rebecca Riger Tsurumi César Ferreira Riger Tsurumi, Rebecca. The Closed Hand: Images of the Japanese in Modern Peruvian Literature. West Lafayette: Purdue UP, 2012. Pp. 313. ISBN 978-1-55753-607-5. The theme of The Closed Hand: Images of the Japanese in Modern Peruvian Literature is the role of Japanese culture in contemporary Peruvian letters. Rebecca Riger Tsurumi posits that Peruvian writers present conflicting views about Japanese culture and its place in mainstream society. Japanese characters are seen either negatively or as the object of satire or victims of Peruvian nationalism after WWII. She also examines Nisei (second generation) writers who provide perceptions of immigration and personal experiences. While documenting Japanese emigration to Latin America at the end of the nineteenth century, the author also focuses on initial literary expressions of Japanese culture by contextualizing Japanese immigration that was triggered by the lack of manual labor. Even though Japanese assimilation was difficult throughout the twentieth century, Japanese-Peruvians came to the forefront when Alberto Fujimori, a Nisei son of emigrants from Japan, became president in 1990. The Nisei are the largest group among the approximately 80 000 Peruvians of Japanese descent. The first manifestations of oriental imagery in Latin American literature appeared in modernista prose and poetry by Rubén Darío, José Martí, and others, who first stressed the ideographic nature of Japanese literature and haikus in Spanish. In another chapter, the author examines Fushía, a Japanese-Brazilian adventurer in Mario Vargas Llosa’s La casa verde (1966). His dark past begins in Brazil and ends in the Peruvian Amazon. After becoming a cult figure that plundered Indians and routinely kidnapped women, he is ravaged by disease, persecuted by the authorities, dying, and seeks refuge at a leper colony. Riger Tsurumi questions this portrayal of Fushía, who undermines the traditionally positive image of the Japanese community in Peru. In passing, she also examines two minor female characters in Vargas Llosa’s Travesuras de la niña mala (2006). The author proceeds to examine images of Japanese people in the stories “Matavilela” and “Muerte de Sevilla en Madrid” by Miguel Gutiérrez and Alfredo Bryce Echenique, respectively. Gutiérrez explores social tensions by examining the persecution of Japanese-Peruvians during World War II; seen through the eyes of a child, this story narrates an assault on a store owned by a Japanese family in the 1940s. In contrast to this hard-core realism, Bryce Echenique tells the story of a Japanese tourist who accompanies the protagonist Sevilla in a humorously absurd trip to Spain. According to Riger Tsurumi, the tourist’s caricaturesque portrayal and the protagonist’s tragic journey illustrate the thorny lack of communication between East and West. [End Page 162] In other chapters, the author focuses on Las dos caras del deseo (1994) by Carmen Ollé and Puñales escondidos (1998) by Pilar Dughi. Ollé’s novel examines the role of a young Japanese descendant, who seemingly embodies traditional Japanese values, but her youthful approach to race and sexuality permits the novel’s protagonist to abandon her monotonous lifestyle and deal with her lesbian desires. In Dughi’s novel, Japanese literature also serves as a catalyst for change for the protagonist. This thriller explores her personal transformation through Japanese writers Endo Shusaku, Abe Kobo, Dasai Osamu, and Mishima Yukio, which stimulates her to rethink traditional views about society, religion, and love. In another chapter, the author discusses two short novels by Mario Bellatin, who questions the relationship between reality and fantasy in his works. El jardín de la Señora Murakami (2000) focuses on a young female whose misfortunes typify the contradictions between tradition and modernity in Japanese culture. And irony and satire abound in Shiki Nagaoka: Una nariz de ficción (2001), which tells the story of an aspiring writer whose fascination with text and photography make him a cult figure upon his death. Known for his experimental writing and his explorations of Japanese culture, Bellatin’s fiction always draws attention to the art of storytelling. While several writers discussed in this study depict Japanese culture from an...

The Memory and Description of the Repatriate Experience in Abe Kobo's Text

The Memory and Description of the Repatriate Experience in Abe Kobo's Text

Sublime voices: the fictional science and scientific fiction of Abe Kobo

Sublime voices: the fictional science and scientific fiction of Abe Kobo

Cinematic Techniques in Abe Kobo's The Ruined Map

Cinematic Techniques in Abe Kobo's The Ruined Map

Abe Kobo, Literary Strategist: The Evolution of His Agenda and Rhetoric in the Context of Postwar Japanese Avant-garde and Communist Artists' Movements (review)

Abe Kobo, Literary Strategist: The Evolution of His Agenda and Rhetoric in the Context of Postwar Japanese Avant-garde and Communist Artists' Movements (review)

Abe Kōbō e L’incontro segreto

The present article is a survey of Abe Kobo’s novel Mikkai (The Secret Rendez-vous, 1977) through the analysis of the new elements it shows. This writer, who is mainly known thanks to his novels of the Fifties and Sixties, such as Kabe or Suna no onna , wrote, beginning from the Seventies, some very peculiar novels. In them is very evident the intent of the author to write using a new and experimental method. In order to show that, I concentrated on the structure and the narrative method, focusing on the oneiric narrative, and the distortions in the time structure.

La terza via del nuovo teatro. Intervista a Satō Masafumi e Shiota Eiko, attori dell’Abe Kōbō Studio

The aim of the present article is to make a survey of Abe Kobo's experimental theatre through an interview with two actors of Abe Kobo Studio's, the theatrical group he founded in the 1973. In particular, Sato Masafumi and Shiota Eiko answer about the new training system for actors created by Abe, and they also talk about their experience working together with him.

On Shimizu Kunio's Play: May Even Lunatics Die in Peace

Inoue Yoshie's article, "On Shimizu Kunio's Play: May Even Lunatics Die in Peace" (Shimizu Kunio "Kyojin naomote Ojo o togu—Mukashi Bokutachi Aishita") is published in Twentieth-Century Japanese Drama II (Nijusseiki no Engeki II —Nihon Kindai Gikyoku no Tenkai), edited by the Japan Modern Theatre History Research Group (2001). This comprehensive collection of criticism by twenty-eight critics covers fifty-one playwrights and their plays written between 1946 and 1973. Beginning with playwright Hotta Kiyomi and his play Untenko no Musuko (The Son of a Machine Operator, 1947), the book treats works by noted playwrights such as Mishima Yukio, Abe Kobo, Tanaka Chikao, Kishida Kunio, Kubo Sakae, Betsuyaku Minoru, and Terayama Shuji. It also discusses playwrights who are not so well known overseas such as Yamada Tokiko, Suzuki Masao, Mafune Yutaka, and Nakano Minoru.

Abe Kobo: An Exploration of His Prose, Drama, and Theatre

Abe Kobo: An Exploration of His Prose, Drama, and Theatre