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Abe Kōbō

Kōbō Abe was a Japanese writer, playwright, musician, photographer, and inventor born in 1924 in Tokyo. He is best known for his 1962 novel The Woman in the Dunes, about a man who is trapped in a village where residents live in deep sand pits and must shovel sand to prevent being buried. The novel won several literary prizes and was adapted into an award-winning film. Abe used bizarre and allegorical situations in his works to explore themes of isolation and the sense of being rootless in modern urban life.

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506 views10 pages

Abe Kōbō

Kōbō Abe was a Japanese writer, playwright, musician, photographer, and inventor born in 1924 in Tokyo. He is best known for his 1962 novel The Woman in the Dunes, about a man who is trapped in a village where residents live in deep sand pits and must shovel sand to prevent being buried. The novel won several literary prizes and was adapted into an award-winning film. Abe used bizarre and allegorical situations in his works to explore themes of isolation and the sense of being rootless in modern urban life.

Uploaded by

Kyla Ciara Damgasen
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Abe Kōbō, pseudonym of 

Abe Kimifusa, Kōbō Abe, pen name of Kimifusa Abe,


(born March 7, 1924, Tokyo, Japan— was a Japanese writer, playwright,
died Jan. 22, 1993, Tokyo), Japanese musician, photographer, and inventor.
novelist and playwright noted for his He is best known for his 1962 novel The
use of bizarre and allegorical situations Woman in the Dunes that was made into
to underline the isolation of the an award-winning film by Hiroshi
individual. Teshigahara in 1964.

Kōbō Abe was born in Tokyo and raised An absurdist drama about the gradual
in Manchuria, with roots to the island of destruction of the individual. A family
Hokkaido from his mother's side, he enters the apartment of a young man
never felt at home in either of the and announces that they will save him
places and made this sense of from his loneliness by living with him.
rootlessness a major theme in his Slowly, they destroy everything, in the
writings. He became one of Japan's cheerful psychotic name of "brotherly
highly acclaimed postwar authors by love".
masterfully portraying haunting visions
of people senselessly trapped by
modern urban life.

I chose the representative text


because I appreciated the tension
created by the unjust captivity's
The Woman in the Dunes is a novel by circumstances, but also because I
the Japanese writer Kōbō Abe, sensed the strangeness of the setting,
published in 1962. It won the 1962 which gave the composition an alien feel.
Yomiuri Prize for literature, and an The protagonist's character was
English translation and a film adaptation particularly peculiar since he appeared
appeared in 1964. The protagonist of to be both intelligent and inventive
The Woman in the Dunes is Niki Jumpei, while at the same time being clumsy and
an amateur entomologist who, on a inept. This contradiction was
weekend trip from the city, discovers a frustrating, especially since it made it
bizarre village in the dunes where difficult for him to escape. Overall,
residents live in deep sand pits. despite a few bothersome aspects, I
Imprisoned with a widow in one of the like The Woman in the Dunes's plot.
pits, he must shovel the omnipresent
sand that threatens to bury the
community.

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