For almost forty years until his death in 1993, Abe Kb occupied a central position among avant-garde artists in Japan. Active as a novelist, a writer of film scenarios, a dramatist, and a director of theater pieces, Abe's protean literary activities during complex postwar times in Japan helped strengthen creative currents drawn from international developments in literature rather than from purely Japanese sources. In addition, because Abe's work was appreciated abroad and often translated into English and other languages, he helped attract international attention to issues in postwar Japanese life.

At first examination Abe's work seems removed from the kinds of aesthetic vision and strategies employed by older writers such as Kawabata Yasunari or Tanizaki Jun'ichir, who were still active after the war and creatively and selectively used themes and attitudes familiar from more traditional literature. Abe's vision appeared to take nothing from the past. Japan as presented in...