SOURCE: Dallas, Tony. Review of Three Plays, by Kōbō Abé. Antioch Review 52, no. 4 (fall 1994): 651-52.

In the following laudatory review of Three Plays, Dallas perceives “this witty, lyrical, eminently theatrical collection a welcome change from the confessional realism that pervades most contemporary American drama.”

American readers familiar only with Abe's dark 1962 novel, Woman in the Dunes, might find this translation surprising for its humor and fantastical theatricality. As Keene informs the reader in his introduction, Abe for many years ran his own theater company in Tokyo and was respected in Japan not only as a writer but as a theater director as well. (Abe died last year at the age of 69.)

Involuntary Homicide (1971), the first and darkest play in the collection [Three Plays] is about the complicity of a group of islanders in the beating death of the owner of the island's pachinko parlor. The play is...