Labyrinths
 

The Japanese language can funcdon very well
without subjects in sentences, a quality that ah
lows for a stiggestive andjiguity that has been
used by poets throughout the Japanese liter¬
ary tradition, as it is here. In the original,
above, the poem does not specify who wept,
or who smiled; it only suggests reciprocal
responses.

Abe himself left the world rather snddenh'.
Forttmateh' his work remains, and the Abe
Kobo Collection includes not only unique
items and autographed first editions, but pho¬
tocopies of all his articles, manuscripts, and
the contents of his study at the time of his
death. Postwar literary history is included in
discussions of his early friendship with the
Nobel laureate Oe Kenzaburo and the reasons
for the rift between them later on. In one let¬
ter Abe expresses envy of Oe's command of
English, which made travelling easier for him.
In addition, a strong sense of the num himself
emerges, from the clear block-st\le handwrit¬
ing of his letters and from his warnuh and
humor. Abe frequently addressed his corre¬
spondent Donald Keene using Chinese char-
actei\s to pun on the sotmds Donarudo, and
often signed his own name—as if gi\'ing a
sense of his perceptions—as OBOK. Each
spring he looked forward to Professor Keene's
return to Japan with imagined trips they
would take together, antl concluded his letters
with warm words of friendship. A letter dated
March 22, 1969, ends with the request: "Come
 

to Tokyo as soon as you can, and serve as
aspirin for me!"
 

1.    Tlirce Plays Ity Kobo Abe, translated and with an
Introduction by Donald Keene (New York: Clolumbia
University Press, 1993), x-xi.

2.  Donald Keene, "Abe Kobo: hito to bungaku" (Abe
Kobo: the Man and the Lileralure), in Abe Kobo Kojima
X'olnio shu (Tokyo: Chikuma shobo, 1976), 499.

3.  In a letter to Keene dated October II, 1967, Abe
wrote that he was glad that while they split the honor,
they each received the full amount of prize money.

4.   Friends: A Play In Kdlxi Abe, translated by Donald
Keene (New York: Gro\e Press, 1969), 1«-19.

5.  See the copies in the Collcciinn of Bungei 6 (March
1967): 85, and Al)e Kdlx) zensakuin. vol. 11 (Tokvo:
Shinchosha, 1973), 75.

6.  Three Plays, xii.

7.  See also Three Plays, x, n. I, where Donald Keene
notes that the new title mimics "the crv that gives the
.strange animals of the play their name. . .
 

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