"The Man Who Turned Into A Stick"(棒になった男 - Bō ni natta otoko) is a one-act play written by Kōbō Abe

Kobo Abe

, pseudonym of was a Japanese writer, playwright, photographer and inventor. Abe has been often compared to Franz Kafka and Alberto Moravia for his surreal, often nightmarish explorations of individuals in contemporary society and his modernist sensibilities....

. It is the third of three plays written over twelve years (1957-1969) meant to symbolize the different stages of life, usually shown together. The first, representing birth, is "The Suitcase". The second, "The Cliff of Time," represents life itself, or "The Process," and the third, "The Man who Turned into a Stick," is death.

This play has been considered as a main example of the current of Magic Realism

Magic realism

Magic realism or magical realism is an aesthetic style or genre of fiction in which magical elements blend with the real world. The story explains these magical elements as real occurrences, presented in a straightforward manner that places the "real" and the "fantastic" in the same stream of...

 in Japanese Literature

Japanese literature

Early works of Japanese literature were heavily influenced by cultural contact with China and Chinese literature, often written in Classical Chinese. Indian literature also had an influence through the diffusion of Buddhism in Japan...

. Other Japanese authors with considerable literary contributions to this genre are: Yasunari Kawabata

Yasunari Kawabata

was a Japanese short story writer and novelist whose spare, lyrical, subtly-shaded prose works won him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968, the first Japanese author to receive the award...

, Oe Kenzaburo and Yasushi Inoue

Yasushi Inoue

Yasushi Inoue was a Japanese writer whose range of genres included poetry, essays, short fiction, and novels...

.