Kobo Abe

Kōbō Abe was a Japanese writer, playwright, musician, photographer, and inventor. He was the son of a doctor and studied medicine at Tokyo University. He never practised however, giving it up to join a literary group that aimed to apply surrealist techniques to Marxist ideology. He started writing novellas and short stories during his last year in university. He won the Akutagawa Prize for The Crime of S. Karuma, the Yomiuri Prize in 1962 for The Woman in the Dunes, which was also made into an Oscar nominated film, and the Tanizaki Prize in 1967 for the play Friends. Abe has often been compared to Franz Kafka for his modernist sensibilities and his surreal, often nightmarish explorations of individuals in contemporary society. He is best known for his novels The Woman in the Dunes, The Face of Another, and The Box Man, which deal with themes such as identity, alienation, and the absurdity of existence. He also wrote several plays, essays, and experimental works, such as Inter Ice Age 4, a science fiction novel about human genetic engineering. He was also an avid photographer and inventor, creating devices such as a one-stringed musical instrument and a machine that produced artificial rainbows. He died in 1993 from postoperative bowel obstruction. He was married to Machi Yamada, an artist and stage director, and had one son, Neri Abe, who is also a writer.