On March 7, 1924, while his father was conducting research in Tokyo, Japan, Kobo Abe was born. Abe's father, Asakichi, a citizen of Japan and a physician, had a medical clinic in Mukden, Manchuria, where he would return with his family one year after his son's birth. Abe spent most of his youth living in a Japanese colony in Mukden with his father and his mother, Yorimi. According to Shields, who interviewed the playwright for her book Fake Fish, Abe remembered this city of his youth as a "terrifying place." Abe reportedly told Shields that there were no laws in the streets of the city, and "sometimes children were sold as slaves." This Manchurian city, as Abe describes, was made up of "barren spaces, city mazes, and solitary human figures." These images, thrown together inside high, dirty walls that were built to keep the drifting sand of the...