He was born in Tokyo, grew up in Manchuria and graduated in 1948 with a medical degree from Tokyo Imperial University on the condition that he wouldn't practice. He published his first novel in 1948 and worked as an avant-garde novelist and playwright, but it wasn't until he published The Woman in the Dunes in 1962 that he won widespread international acclaim.
In the 1960s, he collaborated with Japanese director Hiroshi Teshigahara in adapting to film The Pitfall, Woman in the Dunes, The Face of Another and The Ruined Map.
Abe's surreal and often nightmarish explorations of the individual in contemporary society earned him comparisons to Kafka and his influence extended well beyond Japan, particularly with the success of Woman in the Dunes at the Cannes Film Festival.
Abe was born in Kita, Tokyo, grew up in then Mukden, (now Shen-yang) in Manchuria.
Abe's surreal and often nightmarish explorations of the individual in contemporary society earned him comparisons to Kafka and his influence extended well beyond Japan, particularly with the success of Woman in the Dunes at the Cannes Film Festival.
Abe grew up in Manchuria, or Manchukuo as the Japanese leasehold/puppet state was known at the time.
Abe joined a small literary/artistic/philosophical group called Yoru no kai (Night Association), and soon after his introduction to its leader, philosopher Hanada Kiyoteru, Abe joined the Japanese Communist Party (along with most of the rest of Japan's intelligentsia) and began experimenting with Marxism and surrealism in his literature.
It is in these novels that Abe captures the social impact of Japan's rapidly urbanizing, growth-centered corporate society on the individual.
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