SOURCE: Keene, Donald. “The Plays of Kōbō Abé: An Introduction.” In Three Plays by Kōbō Abé, pp. ix-xiii. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993.

In the following introduction, Keene traces the development of Abé's career as a dramatist and underscores the problems with translating the author's work.

Kōbō Abe (1924-93) was a contemporary Japanese writer of world stature. Although he was best known as a novelist, especially for his Woman in the Dunes (1962), his achievements as a dramatist were almost equally important, and he published several outstanding volumes of criticism. He was frequently mentioned as a likely recipient of the Nobel Prize in literature, but his death in his sixty-ninth year, when he was still at the height of his powers, prevented him from obtaining this honor.

Ironically, Abe's career as a dramatist began as a purely temporary expedient. Late in 1954 he was under pressure...