Fake Fish: The Theater of Kobo Abe

by Nancy K. Shields

Book by Shields, Nancy

Genres: Japanese Literature

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

Reviews

[Ted Landrum · Rating 5 out of 5]

Among the most delightful books on experimental theatre and performance art. The book is very well illustrated and wide-ranging in covering the Theatrical works of a great novelist. Readers who want to learn about experimental theatre, whether in the context of Japan, or for interest in the genre as a whole, will not be disappointed. It is a major contribution to the field. Readers familiar with Kobo Abe's novels (eg. The Box Man, Face of Another, and Woman in the Dunes), will find much to expand their appreciation of the writer/artist and the worlds of imagination he playfully explored. Like all theatre, and most art, the work invites transformative, even metamorphic, participation. The book opens with two powerful quotes: "A fish has neither hands nor feet"; and "I can't say anything beyond your own imagination" (from Kobo Abe's "You, Too, Are Guilty"). Congratulation to Nancy K. Shields for this major work - it was important to me when I found it in the last 90s in NY, and will inspire readers today as well.

[Alexander Winzfield · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kobo Abe was considered one of the great prose writers of modern Japan. Often called "Kafkaesque", in truth his fiction was very much his own: bizarre, surreal, coolly detached at times and fraught with existential despair at others, no-one wrote quite like him then, or since.
While his international reputation rests on his writing accolades, what many outside of Japan may not know is that, for a number of years, Abe also ran his own theatre company. Directing many of his own scripts that ran the gamut from melodrama to musical to outright experimental, Abe's company was one of the most notorious in Japan for a time. This book remains one of the few English resources available for those who with to study the theatrical work of this very unique artist.