Factbook

A Dynamic Compendium of Interesting Japanese Literary and Publishing Facts
If you would like to contribute to this compendium please submit your ideas here.
All will be considered for publication by our expert panel.
  • Factbook Keyword Search:
  • Share
    • Horror

    Kobo Abe is said to be ‘The Kafka of Japan’[UPDATED: 4-27-2021]

    Kobo Abe (1924-1992) is said to be ‘The Kafka of Japan’. He is best known for: The Road Sign at the End of the Street (1948), The Woman in the Dunes (1962), as well as being avant-garde, being expelled from the Japanese Communist Party, and collecting insects.

    His novella, The Wall, won the Akutagawa Prize and established his reputation. His best friend was Yukio Mishima (1925-1970) and he was also a friend of Harold Pinter (1930-2008).

    He didn’t give many interviews, but an interesting conversation with him is reported in the New York Times under the headline: Japan’s Kafka Goes on the Road, where his experimental theatre group is discussed. 

    He and his book The Woman in the Dunes in particular are still popular today amongst some of Japan’s most talented and creative individuals such as the up-and-coming film director Yuka Eda, director and screenwriter of the 2018 crowd-funded film Shojo Kaiko, Girls’ Encounter, and the 2019 TV drama 21st Century Girl.

    Eda cites Abe’s The Woman in the Dunes as one of the books that has had the most influence on her and one she returns to when she is looking for inspiration. She says she admires the novel’s kafkaesque tone and narrative style.

    Abe is also sometimes compared to Albert Camus (1913-1960) and Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) for the absurdist frameworks he deploys to observe and critique the individual and society in Japan and beyond.
    Kobo Abe is said to be ‘The Kafka of Japan’ Posted by Richard Nathan
  • Share
    • Horror

    Japan’s only convicted cannibal, who lives at large and now describes himself as a food critic, has written more than 20 books[UPDATED: 6-7-2019]

    Issei Sagawa killed and cannibalised a Dutch woman when he was living, and studying for a PhD in French literature, in Paris in 1981. The 25 year-old Dutch woman he murdered was his classmate at the Sorbonne. 

    Sagawa was found legally insane and unfit to stand trial in Paris. He was subsequently deported to Japan where he was initially housed in a mental hospital in Tokyo. 

    However, as the French authorities reportedly sealed all the court papers, dropped the charges, and did not hand over documents to the Japanese authorities, he could not legally be detained in Japan. 

    He was therefore in the unusual position of being able to check himself out of the Tokyo hospital in Japan in 1986, one year after he returned to Japan, and live at large. 

    Despite much criticism, there was apparently nothing that the Japanese authorities could do instantly making Sagawa even more famous. Sagawa’s notoriety helped him became a minor celebrity. 

    Today he is described on book and social media sites that promote the 20 or more books he has written since his return from France, as an essayist, author and food critic. 

    In addition to the many books he has written, he has penned restaurant reviews for the Japanese magazine Spa, starred in pornographic films, been a panellist on television talk shows and has even been featured in a lyric in a song by the Rolling Stones:  Too Much Blood (‘And when he ate her he took her bones/To the Bois de Boulogne’). 

    Sagawa, now wheelchair bound, lives with his brother outside Tokyo and still responds to media requests for interviews.
    Japan’s only convicted cannibal, who lives at large and now describes himself as a food critic, has written more than 20 books Posted by Richard Nathan