This book offers a rereading of the well-known Japanese writer Abe Kōbō, focusing on his essays as well as his fiction. Central attention is devoted to the concepts of time, writing, and community. For Abe, following Heidegger, the question of ontology was to be understood on the basis of time. Time, conceived ecstatically as that which is always outside of itself, demands that all temporal entities in the world be understood as bereft of any proper or original identity. In this account, identity can only be attributed retroactively in a movement that helps reveal the disjointed nature of time ... More

This book offers a rereading of the well-known Japanese writer Abe Kōbō, focusing on his essays as well as his fiction. Central attention is devoted to the concepts of time, writing, and community. For Abe, following Heidegger, the question of ontology was to be understood on the basis of time. Time, conceived ecstatically as that which is always outside of itself, demands that all temporal entities in the world be understood as bereft of any proper or original identity. In this account, identity can only be attributed retroactively in a movement that helps reveal the disjointed nature of time. The notion of writing appears as intrinsically linked to time, for time only gives itself through an inscription that remains from the past and carries on into the present and future. The relation between time and writing necessarily affects the manner in which community is formed, for no community can simply be grounded on a preexisting identity. Directly to the contrary, the creation of such collective identity must be made in all contingency. The book provides readings of such canonical Abe texts as Suna no onna [The Woman in the Dunes] and Tanin no kao [The Face of Another] while also analyzing lesser- known works such as the essay “Uchinaru henkyō” [The Frontier Within] and the interview collection (with Donald Keene) entitled Hangekiteki ningen [The Anti-Theater Person].