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Three Plays: Involuntary Homicide / The Green Stockings / The Ghost Is Here
Kobo Abe (1924-1993) was one of Japan's most prominent contemporary writers. Born in Japan but raised in Manchuria, he is perhaps best known for his 1962 novel, The Woman in the Dunes, though he was also a prominent screenwriter, producer and director. Like the works of Beckett and Ionesco, Abe's plays address universal and contemporary concerns, often with an eye for the absurd.
233 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1993
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About the author
Kōbō Abe
219 books2,081 followersKōbō Abe (安部 公房 Abe Kōbō), pseudonym of Kimifusa Abe, was a Japanese writer, playwright, 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.
Abe has been often compared to Franz Kafka and Alberto Moravia for his surreal, often nightmarish explorations of individuals in contemporary society and his modernist sensibilities.
He was first published as a poet in 1947 with Mumei shishu ("Poems of an unknown poet") and as a novelist the following year with Owarishi michi no shirube ni ("The Road Sign at the End of the Street"), which established his reputation. Though he did much work as an avant-garde novelist and playwright, it was not until the publication of The Woman in the Dunes in 1962 that he won widespread international acclaim.
In the 1960s, he collaborated with Japanese director Hiroshi Teshigahara in the film adaptations of The Pitfall, Woman in the Dunes, The Face of Another and The Ruined Map. In 1973, he founded an acting studio in Tokyo, where he trained performers and directed plays. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1977.
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.
Abe has been often compared to Franz Kafka and Alberto Moravia for his surreal, often nightmarish explorations of individuals in contemporary society and his modernist sensibilities.
He was first published as a poet in 1947 with Mumei shishu ("Poems of an unknown poet") and as a novelist the following year with Owarishi michi no shirube ni ("The Road Sign at the End of the Street"), which established his reputation. Though he did much work as an avant-garde novelist and playwright, it was not until the publication of The Woman in the Dunes in 1962 that he won widespread international acclaim.
In the 1960s, he collaborated with Japanese director Hiroshi Teshigahara in the film adaptations of The Pitfall, Woman in the Dunes, The Face of Another and The Ruined Map. In 1973, he founded an acting studio in Tokyo, where he trained performers and directed plays. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1977.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
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July 28, 2015"The Green Stockings" was exactly what I had hoped to find by picking up some of Kobo Abe's dramatic work. It is as good as some of his best novels. Very much in line with The Box Man and Secret Rendezvous. "The Ghost is Here" was also quite a delight, plenty of Kobo Abe's typically sheepish protagonists running around and trying to swindle people with various Ghost-related scams. "Involuntary Homicide" was borderline skippable, but its inclusion makes this collection of plays much more representative of Kobo Abe's total body of work.
May 3, 2025
Some strange and humorous scenes. A good starting point for exploring.
December 11, 2016
Being a fan, I loved it. Involuntary Homicide was repetitious in nature, centered around a disturbing event, focused on moral conundrums and populated with characters you both identify with and are alternately disgusted with. That is to say - classic Kobo Abe. The physical setting and faux 'court room drama' style felt a bit rudimentary for Abe, but was quite easy to imagine on the stage. The Green Stockings was deliciously on the outer edge of weirdness in the Abe canon, which made it the most wild streak of his imagination and most compelling for me. The Ghost is Here seemed more like a film script than the other two, in that the setting wasn't so austere, nor the ground covered as erratic; so it fell into a complete narrative world one might expect from a film of his. The characters were by far the more developed and storyline the most intricately crafted. All in all, I was very happy to have read these three examples of what he accomplished with plays - and wish the rest of his work in that arena would be translated into English.
June 1, 2008
The best part of this collection of Kobo Abe's plays is the insistence on the part of the translator that these are not definitive texts in either his or Abe's thinking, but merely placeholders for a producing company to use as a starter. I can't think of a better miniature for theatre as an art form. A friend of mine adapted "The Green Stockings" from this collection, which was fun to revisit as I read the original. I also found an addition to my Director's Wish List from this collection. Worth a look.
November 11, 2015
More detailed review to come soon.
Involuntary Homicide: 3.5/5
The Green Stockings: 5/5
The Ghost is Here: 3.5/5
Involuntary Homicide: 3.5/5
The Green Stockings: 5/5
The Ghost is Here: 3.5/5
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews