Abe Kōbō

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Abe preparing Gyōza (1954)

Abe Kōbō ( Japanese 安 部 公房 ; * March 7, 1924 in Tokyo ; † January 22, 1993 in Tokyo), real name Abe Kimifusa with the same Japanese spelling, was a Japanese writer .

Life

Abe was in Tokyo born, but grew up in Mukden ( Manchuria on), where his father worked as a doctor. In 1941 he returned to Tokyo and studied medicine from 1943. In 1947 he published his first poems in the Rilke style. This was followed by essays , novels , socially critical writings and dramas . He showed interest in Edgar Allan Poe , Dostojewski , Friedrich Nietzsche , Martin Heidegger , Karl Jaspers and Franz Kafka . In 1948 he married his wife Machi ( 真知 , † September 28, 1993), took his final exam, but never practiced as a doctor. In the same year his first novel The Shield at the End of the Street appeared.

In 1949 Kōbō joined the Communist Party , in which he remained a member until 1962. Two years later (1951) Kōbō was awarded the Akutagawa Prize for The Crime of Mr. S. Karuma . He made contact with prominent groups of writers. On a trip to Europe in 1956, he visited Germany and France.

In 1962 he achieved his international breakthrough with the novel The Woman in the Dunes, his first novel translated into other languages, the award-winning film adaptation of which appeared in 1964. The novels The Face of the Other and The Burned City Map were also adapted for the screen. Abe Kōbō wrote the scripts for the films himself.

Like his role models Hanada Kiyoteru and Ishikawa Jun , he prefers allegorical representations of psychological processes to mere realistic portrayals of the environment. Having trained on Kafka and Sartre , he described, among other things, people in mass society in his novels. Manfred Osten writes in his portrait, which was created after a meeting with Abe: “For him, as an author, the only important thing is to ensure the fable has the highest degree of ambivalence in order to avoid it from the hasty grasp of logic. Literature is only fascinating where, following the logic of the dream, it creates a counterworld to the subtle, haughty demands of ratio and their purposeful dynamics. ”Recurring topoi of his works are topics such as alienation, isolation, loss of identity and metamorphosis.

In 1973 he founded the "Abe-Kōbō-Studio" (Japanese 安 部 公房 ス タ ジ オ , Abe Kōbō sutajio ), which performed his play The man who became a stick in the same year . Abe toured the United States from 1979 with this theater company.

Awards

Works (selection)

Poems

  • 1947 - "Poems by an Unknown Poet" ( 無名 詩集 , Mumei Shishū )

stories

  • 1951 - "The Crime of Mr. S. Karuma" ( 壁 ―S ・ カ ル マ 氏 の 犯罪 , Kabe - S. Karuma-shi no hanzai )
  • 1952 - "Noah's Ark" (German: Suhrkamp 1989 ISBN 3-518-38174-1 ) ( Noa no hakobune )
  • 1957 - "The egg made of lead" (German: Suhrkamp 1988 ISBN 3-518-38066-4 ) ( Namari no tamago )
  • 1964 - "Das Totaloskop" (German: The new Berlin 1966) ( Kanzen-Eiga )
  • 1997 - "The invention of the R 62" ( R62 号 の 発 明 , R62-gō no hatsumei ), German: Suhrkamp. Frankfurt am Main, 1997 ISBN 3-518-39059-7 , with the stories "The Invention of the R62", "The Egg Made of Lead", "Biography of a Mermaid", "Human Equality"

Novels

  • 1948 - "The sign at the end of the street" ( 終 り し 道 の 標 べ に , Owarishi michi no shirube ni ) (untranslated)
  • 1959 - "The fourth interglacial " ( 第四 間 氷期 , Daiyon kampyōki ) (German 1974 ISBN 3-458-05864-8 )
  • 1962 - " The woman in the dunes " ( 砂 の 女 , Suna no onna ), German Reinbek near Hamburg 1967 ISBN 3-499-11265-5 , filmed by Hiroshi Teshigahara 1964 (German 1966), radio play version by Kai Grehn for the NDR 2011
  • 1964 - "The face of the other" ( 他人 の 顔 , Tanin no kao ), German 1971 ISBN 3-498-00006-3 , filmed by Hiroshi Teshigahara , 1966　
  • 1967 - "The burned city map" ( 燃 え 尽 き た 地 図 , Moetsukita chizu ) (German 1994 ISBN 3-8218-0292-8 )
  • 1973 - "Der Schachtelmann" ( 箱 男 , Hako otoko ) (German 1992 Volume 90 Series Die Other Bibliothek ISBN 3-8218-4090-0 )　
  • 1977 - "Secret Encounters" ( 密 会 , Mikkai ) (untranslated)
  • 1984 - "The Shrine of Sakura" ( 方舟 さ く ら 丸 , Hakobune Sakura-maru ) (untranslated)
  • 1991 - "The Kangaroo Booklet" ( カ ン ガ ル ー ・ ノ ー ト , Kangarū Nōto ) (German 1996 ISBN 3-8218-0334-7 )

Plays

  • 1957 - "The man who became a stick" ( 棒 に な っ た 男 , Bō ni natta otoko ) (German 1971)
  • 1958 - "Ghosts in Kitahama" ( 幽 霊 は こ こ に い る , Yūrei wa koko ni iru ) (German 1971)
  • 1965 - "You are guilty too" ( お 前 に も 罪 が あ る , Omae nimo tsumi ga aru)
  • 1967 - “Friends. A black comedy in 12 acts, 13 pictures "( 友 達 , Tomodachi ) (German 1984)

literature

Web links

Commons : Kōbō Abe  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Irmela Hijiya-Kirschnereit : Japanese contemporary literature. A manual. Edition Text + Critique, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-88377-639-4 , p. 207.
  2. ↑ Manfred Osten: The eroticism of the peach. P. 19.
  3. ↑ The woman in the dunes. Internet Movie Database , accessed June 8, 2015 .
  4. ↑ Tanin no kao. Internet Movie Database , accessed June 8, 2015 .
Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . Thus, Abe is the family name, Kōbō the first name.
personal data
SURNAME Abe, Kōbō
ALTERNATIVE NAMES 安 部 公房 (Japanese); Abe Kimifusa (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Japanese writer
DATE OF BIRTH March 7, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH Tokyo , Japan
DATE OF DEATH January 22, 1993
Place of death Tokyo , Japan