Tomoji Abe
Encyclopedia
was a Japanese novelist, social critic, humanist and translator of English and American literature. Although he began writing as a modernist
, in his later works he represented the intellectual movement in Japanese literature
. This movement departed from Japanese traditional thinking and from established forms of narration, which focused on esthetic values and emotional states of mind (such as appear in the works of Junichiro Tanizaki
and Ryunosuke Akutagawa
); it also departed from modernist views, which continued to be popular in world literature and in Japan (Japanese modernist writers included Haruo Satō, Sei Ito
, Tatsuo Hori, Riichi Yokomitsu and Yasunari Kawabata
). Abe's intellectual approach was incompatible with the socio-political atmosphere of Japan in the early Showa period
(1925–1945), with rising fascism
and militarism
, and the crusade to preserve Japanese feudal
traditions.
, the second son of Ryōhei Abe, a junior-high-school teacher of natural history, and his wife Hayo Mori. Ryōhei's job postings took his family to Yonago in Tottori Prefecture
and Kizuchi in Shimane Prefecture
; Tomoji attended Yōran elementary school, Himeji Middle School in Himeji, Hyōgo
and Dai-hachi High School in Nagoya. In 1921, while in high school, Abe took a one-year leave to recover from a lung illness, which proved to be non-threatening, and during this year began to write tanka
poems under the guidance of Kōhei. In 1923, Abe published his poems in Kōyukai Zasshi magazine. At this time he admired the tanka poet Akahiko Shimagi, and read the novels of Leo Tolstoy
and Anton Chekhov
. In 1924, after finishing high school, Abe enrolled at Tokyo Imperial University's
(now Tokyo University) Department of English Literature. He was particularly interested in the British Romantic poets
of the 19th century. Abe's personal contact with foreign thinking and attitudes was through one of his teachers, the English poet Edmund Blunden
who in 1924 taught English Literature there. Abe, together with Blunden's other students, at first surprised with the Englishman's informal and approachable manner and, perhaps with his pacifism
, liked and admired him, and Abe later said that Blunden was Japan's best friend and brought out the best in them. Abe became acquainted with British modernism
, and especially the concepts of intellectualism associated with T.E. Hulme, Herbert Read and T.S. Eliot.
In 1927, Abe graduated from Tokyo University with a thesis on Edgar Allan Poe
as a poet and then enrolled in graduate school.
for Suki na Onna no Munakazari . Abe, Funabashi and others advocated modernizm in opposition to Marxism. In 1926, Abe associated himself with Aozora (Blue Skies), a coterie magazine published by the young writers Motojirō Kajii
and Nakatani Takao, and the then-budding poet and literary critic Tatsuji Miyoshi
. In 1928, after Aozora folded in 1927, Abe contributed to another coterie literary magazine Bungei Toshi (Age of Art and Literature) with Seiichi Funabashi, the young writer Masuji Ibuse
and the critic and writer Hidemi Kon. In 1929, partly in response to Ryunosuke Akutagawa's suicide, Abe wrote Shuchi-teki Bungaku-ron (On Intellectualist Literature), which he published in Shi to Shiron (Poetry and Poetic Theory) magazine, founded in the previous year by Tatsuji Miyoshi and the writer Sakutarō Hagiwara
.
Abe's professional debut was Nichi-Doku Taiko Kyōgi (The Japan-Germany Athletic Games); it appeared in the January 1930 issue of the avant-garde literary magazine Shinchō
and was instantly welcomed as a promising young writer by the Shinkō Geijutsu (Modern Art) movement. The heroine, the young wife of an elderly professor, becomes erotically fascinated with German athletes, especially one of them, and in her thoughts succumbs to the sexual temptation though she never acts upon her impulses. The work is considered to have a feminist overtone because it exposes the unhappiness of an arranged marriage of a young woman to an elderly man.
1930 was the year in which Abe wrote several modernist-style short stories and in which Shuchi-teki Bungaku-ron was published by Kōseikaku in book form with other essays.
Abe's last modernistic work, written in 1936, was . It became his acclaimed work and the basis for his post-war writing. It is the story of a Japanese family split between the debauched, wasteful and cruel husband, Kamon Kirishima, and his devout Christian wife, Matsuko, sexually repressed, whose forbearance seems limitless. However, there is an undertone of desire to control in Masako's patience. The narrator, who witnesses their lives, recounts the story in calm, objective manner. Despite this cool, formal objectivism, however, the novel disconcerts by exposing the irrational complexity of human psyche with its antagonistic forces and repressed desires, the conflict between two fundamental elements of human nature—instinct and intelligence. On another level, Fuyu no Yado is seen as Abe's attack on Japan's strengthening nationalistic fascism, which is represented by Masako's manipulations to convert others to Christianity, while the negative consequences of her efforts, her declining health, the disintegration of the family and its final destruction, predicts the country’s future.
. Abe was a passionate and outspoken critic of the Vietman War. In May 1965, Abe, Rokurō Hidaka, a prominent academic and author of The Price of Affluence: Dilemmas of Contemporary Japan, and Yoshio Nakano, editor of the left-wing journal Heiwa ("Peace") protested against the Vietnam War and called for a united anti-war movement. In October 1966, Abe and Nakano called for a strike against the Vietnam War. In March 1968, Abe resigned from Meiji University and, with scientist Minoru Oda, called for a nationwide movement against the Vietnam War. In 1969, on a trip with his wife to Europe, Abe visited Edmund Blunden, his university lecturer.
In November 1971, Abe was diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus and hospitalised. He died on 23 April 1973, leaving an unfinished novel, Hoshū, which he had been dictating in his last year of life and which was published posthumously.
Abe's other literary translations include:
Oscar Wilde's De Profundis, 1935 and The Happy Prince, 1954; Thomas Hardy's Under the Greenwood Tree, 1936 and Tess, 1969; Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, 1952; Charles and Mary Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare, 1954; Jack London's Call of the Wild, 1955; Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Silver Blaze, 1958; Mark Twain's Adventures of Tom Sawyer, c. 1959; Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book, 1961; Jane Austen's Emma, 1965 and Persuasion, 1968; Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' The Yearling, 1965; Eleanor Farjeon's The Silver Curlew, 1968; Walter de la Mare's Stories from the Bible, 1970.
Nichi-Doku Taiko Kyogi (The Japan-Germany Athletic Games) trans. Misako Matsumura in Abe Tomoji, Japanese Modernist Novelist as Social Critic and Humanist, the Early Years (1925–19360). A Thesis Presented in Partial Fulfilment for the Degree Master of Arts in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University. 1998. Published online.
The Communist trans. Jay Gluck and Grace Suzuki. Ukiyo: stories of "the Floating World" of Postwar Japan, Jay Gluck, ed., 1963
Shinema no Kokujin (A Negro in Cinema) trans. Ayanna Bajita Doretha Hobbs. In Phallic Power of African American Men: a Study in Japanese Literature (1930–Present). A Thesis presented for the Degree Master of Arts in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University. 1999. Published online.
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
, in his later works he represented the intellectual movement 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...
. This movement departed from Japanese traditional thinking and from established forms of narration, which focused on esthetic values and emotional states of mind (such as appear in the works of Junichiro Tanizaki
Junichiro Tanizaki
was a Japanese author, one of the major writers of modern Japanese literature, and perhaps the most popular Japanese novelist after Natsume Sōseki. Some of his works present a rather shocking world of sexuality and destructive erotic obsessions; others, less sensational, subtly portray the dynamics...
and Ryunosuke Akutagawa
Ryunosuke Akutagawa
was a Japanese writer active in the Taishō period in Japan. He is regarded as the "Father of the Japanese short story". He committed suicide at age of 35 through an overdose of barbital.-Early life:...
); it also departed from modernist views, which continued to be popular in world literature and in Japan (Japanese modernist writers included Haruo Satō, Sei Ito
Sei Ito
a.k.a. was a Japanese poet, novelist, and translator.- Life and works :His original first name was "Hitoshi" , but he changed it at an early point. In 1926 he was published for the first time with a collection of poetry...
, Tatsuo Hori, Riichi Yokomitsu and 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...
). Abe's intellectual approach was incompatible with the socio-political atmosphere of Japan in the early Showa period
Showa period
The , or Shōwa era, is the period of Japanese history corresponding to the reign of the Shōwa Emperor, Hirohito, from December 25, 1926 through January 7, 1989.The Shōwa period was longer than the reign of any previous Japanese emperor...
(1925–1945), with rising fascism
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
and militarism
Militarism
Militarism is defined as: the belief or desire of a government or people that a country should maintain a strong military capability and be prepared to use it aggressively to defend or promote national interests....
, and the crusade to preserve Japanese feudal
Feudalism
Feudalism was a set of legal and military customs in medieval Europe that flourished between the 9th and 15th centuries, which, broadly defined, was a system for ordering society around relationships derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labour.Although derived from the...
traditions.
Early life
Tomoji Abe was born in Yunogō, Mimasaka, OkayamaMimasaka, Okayama
is a city located in Okayama, Japan.It is the result of a merger involving the former town of the same name. The merger took place on March 31, 2005 when the town of Katsuta from Katsuta District, the towns of Aida, Ōhara and Sakutō, and the village Higashiawakura, all from Aida District, were...
, the second son of Ryōhei Abe, a junior-high-school teacher of natural history, and his wife Hayo Mori. Ryōhei's job postings took his family to Yonago in Tottori Prefecture
Tottori Prefecture
is a prefecture of Japan located in the Chūgoku region. The capital is the city of Tottori. It is the least populous prefecture in Japan.- History :Before the Meiji Restoration, Tottori encompassed the old provinces of Hōki and Inaba...
and Kizuchi in Shimane Prefecture
Shimane Prefecture
is a prefecture of Japan located in the Chūgoku region on Honshū island. The capital is Matsue. It is the second least populous prefecture in Japan, after its eastern neighbor Tottori. The prefecture has an area elongated from east to west facing the Chūgoku Mountain Range on the south side and to...
; Tomoji attended Yōran elementary school, Himeji Middle School in Himeji, Hyōgo
Himeji, Hyogo
is a city located in Hyōgo Prefecture in the Kansai region of Japan. As of April 1, 2011, the city has an estimated population of 535,945, with 206,409 households. The total area is 534.43 km².- History :...
and Dai-hachi High School in Nagoya. In 1921, while in high school, Abe took a one-year leave to recover from a lung illness, which proved to be non-threatening, and during this year began to write tanka
Tanka
Tanka may refer to:* Tanka, a form of Japanese waka * Tanka prose, a literary genre which combines tanka poems and prose* Thangka, a pictorial representation in Tibetan Buddhism...
poems under the guidance of Kōhei. In 1923, Abe published his poems in Kōyukai Zasshi magazine. At this time he admired the tanka poet Akahiko Shimagi, and read the novels of Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist...
and Anton Chekhov
Anton Chekhov
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian physician, dramatist and author who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short stories in history. His career as a dramatist produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics...
. In 1924, after finishing high school, Abe enrolled at Tokyo Imperial University's
University of Tokyo
, abbreviated as , is a major research university located in Tokyo, Japan. The University has 10 faculties with a total of around 30,000 students, 2,100 of whom are foreign. Its five campuses are in Hongō, Komaba, Kashiwa, Shirokane and Nakano. It is considered to be the most prestigious university...
(now Tokyo University) Department of English Literature. He was particularly interested in the British Romantic poets
Romantic poetry
Romanticism, a philosophical, literary, artistic and cultural era which began in the mid/late-1700s as a reaction against the prevailing Enlightenment ideals of the day , also influenced poetry...
of the 19th century. Abe's personal contact with foreign thinking and attitudes was through one of his teachers, the English poet Edmund Blunden
Edmund Blunden
Edmund Charles Blunden, MC was an English poet, author and critic. Like his friend Siegfried Sassoon, he wrote of his experiences in World War I in both verse and prose. For most of his career, Blunden was also a reviewer for English publications and an academic in Tokyo and later Hong Kong...
who in 1924 taught English Literature there. Abe, together with Blunden's other students, at first surprised with the Englishman's informal and approachable manner and, perhaps with his pacifism
Pacifism
Pacifism is the opposition to war and violence. The term "pacifism" was coined by the French peace campaignerÉmile Arnaud and adopted by other peace activists at the tenth Universal Peace Congress inGlasgow in 1901.- Definition :...
, liked and admired him, and Abe later said that Blunden was Japan's best friend and brought out the best in them. Abe became acquainted with British modernism
Modernist poetry in English
Modernist poetry in English is generally considered to have emerged in the early years of the 20th century with the appearance of the Imagists. In common with many other modernists, these poets wrote in reaction to the perceived excesses of Victorian poetry, with its emphasis on traditional...
, and especially the concepts of intellectualism associated with T.E. Hulme, Herbert Read and T.S. Eliot.
In 1927, Abe graduated from Tokyo University with a thesis on Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...
as a poet and then enrolled in graduate school.
Early work
Tomoji Abe began his writing career as a modernist. In November 1925, while at university, he contributed his maiden work, Kasei (Metaplasia), and an essay, Kyoseisha no Tamashii (The Spirit of Rectifier) to Shumon (Red Gate), the Department of Literature's magazine. He became acquainted with the editor of Shumon, writer Seiichi Funabashi, who in 1967 received the Noma Literary PrizeNoma Literary Prize
The Noma Literary Prize was established in 1941 by the Noma Service Association in accordance with the last wishes of Noma Seiji , founder and first president of the Kōdansha publishing company. The Noma Literary Prize has been awarded annually to an outstanding new work published in Japan...
for Suki na Onna no Munakazari . Abe, Funabashi and others advocated modernizm in opposition to Marxism. In 1926, Abe associated himself with Aozora (Blue Skies), a coterie magazine published by the young writers Motojirō Kajii
Motojiro Kajii
was a Japanese author in the early Shōwa period of Japan. He left masterpieces of poetic short stories such as "The Lemon", "Winter Days", and "Under the Cherry Trees"...
and Nakatani Takao, and the then-budding poet and literary critic Tatsuji Miyoshi
Tatsuji Miyoshi
was a Japanese poet, literary critic, and literary editor active during the Shōwa period of Japan. He is known for his rather lengthy free verse poetry, which often portray loneliness and isolation as part of contemporary life, but which are written in a complex, highly literary style reminiscent...
. In 1928, after Aozora folded in 1927, Abe contributed to another coterie literary magazine Bungei Toshi (Age of Art and Literature) with Seiichi Funabashi, the young writer Masuji Ibuse
Masuji Ibuse
was a Japanese author.-Life and work:Ibuse was born in 1898 to a landowning family in the village of Kamo which is now part of Fukuyama, Hiroshima.At the age of 19 he started studying at Waseda University in Tokyo...
and the critic and writer Hidemi Kon. In 1929, partly in response to Ryunosuke Akutagawa's suicide, Abe wrote Shuchi-teki Bungaku-ron (On Intellectualist Literature), which he published in Shi to Shiron (Poetry and Poetic Theory) magazine, founded in the previous year by Tatsuji Miyoshi and the writer Sakutarō Hagiwara
Sakutarō Hagiwara
was a Japanese writer of free-style verse, active in the Taishō and early Shōwa periods of Japan. He liberated Japanese free verse from the grip of traditional rules, and he is considered the “father of modern colloquial poetry in Japan”...
.
Abe's professional debut was Nichi-Doku Taiko Kyōgi (The Japan-Germany Athletic Games); it appeared in the January 1930 issue of the avant-garde literary magazine Shinchō
Shincho
is a Japanese literary magazine published monthly by Shinchosha. Since its launching in 1904, it has published the works of many of Japan's leading writers....
and was instantly welcomed as a promising young writer by the Shinkō Geijutsu (Modern Art) movement. The heroine, the young wife of an elderly professor, becomes erotically fascinated with German athletes, especially one of them, and in her thoughts succumbs to the sexual temptation though she never acts upon her impulses. The work is considered to have a feminist overtone because it exposes the unhappiness of an arranged marriage of a young woman to an elderly man.
1930 was the year in which Abe wrote several modernist-style short stories and in which Shuchi-teki Bungaku-ron was published by Kōseikaku in book form with other essays.
Abe's last modernistic work, written in 1936, was . It became his acclaimed work and the basis for his post-war writing. It is the story of a Japanese family split between the debauched, wasteful and cruel husband, Kamon Kirishima, and his devout Christian wife, Matsuko, sexually repressed, whose forbearance seems limitless. However, there is an undertone of desire to control in Masako's patience. The narrator, who witnesses their lives, recounts the story in calm, objective manner. Despite this cool, formal objectivism, however, the novel disconcerts by exposing the irrational complexity of human psyche with its antagonistic forces and repressed desires, the conflict between two fundamental elements of human nature—instinct and intelligence. On another level, Fuyu no Yado is seen as Abe's attack on Japan's strengthening nationalistic fascism, which is represented by Masako's manipulations to convert others to Christianity, while the negative consequences of her efforts, her declining health, the disintegration of the family and its final destruction, predicts the country’s future.
Post-war work
Tomoji Abe's post-war writing had a humanistic and socio-critical nature. He opposed militarism and exploitation of human beings, and urged respect for human dignity (Ningen Besshi ni Kōshite —Resisting Contempt for Human Beings—essay, 1955). His novel Shiroi Tō (White Pillar), expressed anti-militaristic views and spoke against the excesses of financial/business monopolies. Intellectually independent and uncompromising, Abe was among the writers who believed in the need of rebirth of literature. He believed that literature, and writers, should be useful to society and stimulate its progress, and wrote, apart from works of fiction, numerous essays and theoretical works in which he expressed these views.Personal life
Abe married Sumiko Ohama in 1930. They had two sons, Yoshio (born 1932) who became a scholar and professor of French literature, and Nobuo (born 1948) who became a critic and chief curator at the Bridgestone Art Museum, and three daughters, Hiroko (born 1937), Michiko (born 1941), and Noriko (born 1944). In May 1944, his family evacuated to Himeji to escape expected bombing while he remained in Tokyo; in the same month his father died. In July 1945, Abe removed to Mimasaka in Okayama to escape the intensive bombing of Tokyo and in November, three months after Japan's capitulation, he joined his family in Himeji. In April 1950, Abe traveled to Hiroshima with other writers, among them Yasunari Kawabata) for a meeting of the Japan Pen Club and delivered a lecture on "War and Peace". He continued to be interested in Marxism but in the atmosphere of Cold War was cautious about revealing his interests and political views. Abe returned to Tokyo at the end of 1950. In 1953, Abe stood at the bar as special defender in connection with the May Day Incident of 1 May 1952, when, during the May Day demonstration, a Communist-led group forced its way to Imperial Plaza; in the subsequent clash between demonstrators and police people on both sides were killed and injured. In March 1959, Abe and Kiyoshi Aono issued a written protest against the revision of the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and JapanTreaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan
The was signed between the United States and Japan in Washington, D.C. on January 19, 1960. It strengthened Japan's ties to the West during the Cold War era...
. Abe was a passionate and outspoken critic of the Vietman War. In May 1965, Abe, Rokurō Hidaka, a prominent academic and author of The Price of Affluence: Dilemmas of Contemporary Japan, and Yoshio Nakano, editor of the left-wing journal Heiwa ("Peace") protested against the Vietnam War and called for a united anti-war movement. In October 1966, Abe and Nakano called for a strike against the Vietnam War. In March 1968, Abe resigned from Meiji University and, with scientist Minoru Oda, called for a nationwide movement against the Vietnam War. In 1969, on a trip with his wife to Europe, Abe visited Edmund Blunden, his university lecturer.
In November 1971, Abe was diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus and hospitalised. He died on 23 April 1973, leaving an unfinished novel, Hoshū, which he had been dictating in his last year of life and which was published posthumously.
Published works
- Kasei (Metaplasia) and Kyoseisha-no Tamashii (The Spirit of Rectifier), essays, Shumon. 1925
- Shuchi-teki Bungakuron (On Intellectualist Literature), essay, Shi-to Shiron. 1929; book, Kōseikaku. 1930 (The Japan–Germany Athletic Games), short story, Shinchō 1930
- Shiroi Shikan (White Officer), short story, Shinchō. 1930 (Love and Africa), short story, Shinchō. 1930 (A Negro in Cinema), short story. 1930 (Caress of the Sea), short story, Shinchō. 1930
- Bungaku to Rinrisei (Literature and Morality), essay, Kōdō. 1933
- Riarizumu to Shinjitsu (Realism and the Truth), essay, Kōdō. 1934
- Bungaku to Nikutai (Literature and the Flesh), essay, Kōdō. 1934
- Bungaku no Kōsatsu (A Study of Literature), collection of essays, Kinokuniya. 1934
- Merubiru (Melville), critical biography, Kenkyūsha. 1934
- Arechi (Wasteland), short story, Kōdō. 1935 (A Winter Lodging), novel, Bungakkai (January–October issues, 1936); book (November), Dai-ichi Shobō. 1936 (Illusion), short story, Shinchō. 1936
- Shi to Renai (Poems and Love), trans. PB Shelley's poems and essays, Daiichi Shobō. 1936 (Happiness), Kawade Shobō. 1937
- Bairon (Byron), critical biography, Kenkyūsha. 1937 (Peking), Dai-ichi Shobō. 1938
- Bairon Shishū (Byron's Poems Collection), Shinchōsha. 1938 (Wind and Snow), first installments in Nihon Hyōron. 1938
- Bungakuronshū (A Compilation of Literary Theories), Kawade Shobō. 1938
- Kage (Shadow), Bungakkai. 1939 (Town), Shinchōsha. 1939
- Oki ni Mesu Mama (As You Like It), trans. of W. Shakespeare's play, Iwanami Bunko. 1939 (Wind and Snow), book, Sōgensha. 1939 (Light and Shadow), Shinchōsha. 1939
- Merubiru Hakugei (Melville's Moby Dick), partial trans., Chisei. 1940 (Report from Jawa, the Island of Fire, and from Bali), collection of essays. 1944 (Green Robe), Shinchōsha. 1946 (Flower of Death), Sekai. 1946
- Jojō to Hyōgen (Liricism and Expression), collection of essays, Yōtokusha. 1948 (Black Shadow), Hosokawa Shoten. 1949 (The Castle: Letters from the Countryside), short stories collection, Tokyo, Sōgensha. 1949 (Moby Dick I), book, Chikuma Shobō. 1949 (Moby Dick II), book, Chikuma Shobō. 1950 (A Fake Garden), Gunzō, (in 1954 made into film Onna no Sono). 1953 (Moby Dick III), book, Chikuma Shobō. 1954
- Chisei ni Tsuite (About Intelligence), essay. 1954
- Ningen Besshi ni Kōshite (Resisting Contempt for Human Beings), essay, Bungei (Kawade Shobō Shinsha). 1955
- Genbaku to Bungaku (Atom Bomb and Literature), essay, Mita Bungaku. 1955 (The Great Road), trans. of Agnes Smedley's The Great Road: The Life and Times of Chu The, Iwanami Shoten. 1955
- Rekishi no Naka e (Inside History), collection of essays, Ōtsuki Shoten. 1955
- Shōsetsu no Yomikata (How to Read Novels), essay, Shibundō. 1955 (Windows to the Sun and Moon), Kōdansha. 1955, trans. of C.Bronte's Jane Eyre, Kawade Shobō Shinsha. 1955, trans. of E.Bronte's Wuthering Heights, Iwanami Shoten. 1955
- Gūwa (Allegory), trans. of W. Faulkner's novel, Iwanami Shoten. 1955, trans. of Somerset Maugham's The Moon and Sixpence, Sekai Bungaku Zenshu (Kawade Shobō Shinsha). 1961
- Sekai Bungaku no Nagare (Currents in World Literature), literary theory, Kawade Shobō Shinsha. 1963 (White Pillar), novel, Iwanami Shoten. 1963
- Takarajima, trans. of R.L. Stevenson's Treasure Island, Iwanami Bunko. 1963, trans. of J. Austen's Pride and Prejudice, Kawade Shobō Shinsha. 1963 (The Philosophy Behind Conscientious Objection). 1969 (Captive), novel, began writing in August,1971; work interrupted by illness; continued, dictating, in 1972. Unfinished novel published posthumously. 1973
Other published translations
Abe was a prolific translator of English and American literature. He is known as the translator of the Sherlock Holmes series (1960). He also translated other foreign works from English; for example the Polish Nobel Prize winning author Władysław Reymont'’s Peasants (2nd Vol) (1939) and Valmiki Ramayana (1966).Abe's other literary translations include:
Oscar Wilde's De Profundis, 1935 and The Happy Prince, 1954; Thomas Hardy's Under the Greenwood Tree, 1936 and Tess, 1969; Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, 1952; Charles and Mary Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare, 1954; Jack London's Call of the Wild, 1955; Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Silver Blaze, 1958; Mark Twain's Adventures of Tom Sawyer, c. 1959; Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book, 1961; Jane Austen's Emma, 1965 and Persuasion, 1968; Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' The Yearling, 1965; Eleanor Farjeon's The Silver Curlew, 1968; Walter de la Mare's Stories from the Bible, 1970.
Works translated into foreign languages
Fuyu no Yado (Polish Zimowa kwatera) trans. Ewelina Tchórzewska-Adamowska, Książka i Wiedza. 1973Nichi-Doku Taiko Kyogi (The Japan-Germany Athletic Games) trans. Misako Matsumura in Abe Tomoji, Japanese Modernist Novelist as Social Critic and Humanist, the Early Years (1925–19360). A Thesis Presented in Partial Fulfilment for the Degree Master of Arts in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University. 1998. Published online.
The Communist trans. Jay Gluck and Grace Suzuki. Ukiyo: stories of "the Floating World" of Postwar Japan, Jay Gluck, ed., 1963
Shinema no Kokujin (A Negro in Cinema) trans. Ayanna Bajita Doretha Hobbs. In Phallic Power of African American Men: a Study in Japanese Literature (1930–Present). A Thesis presented for the Degree Master of Arts in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University. 1999. Published online.