Kobo Abe is, arguably, the perfect gateway writer for readers wanting to explore the best of Japanese fiction. Deep divers who face the future with the certainty of its being filled with wondrous miracles only half-understood might well kick off their addiction with Yukio Mishima, but for those wanting to make the exploration a little easier on themselves, it is almost impossible to go wrong with Abe. And his short story collection, Beyond the Curve, is—again, arguably, perhaps—the perfect place to start with his writing.
The entryway into Japanese fiction—which is as a whole culturally different from western fiction on several significant levels—is eased by virtue of the fact that most of the stories in this collection by the author often termed the Japanese Kafka are not themselves distinctively Japanese in either setting or atmosphere. And,yet, they are very much not of the world of western fiction, either. There is an exotic quality to these odd, bizarre, and surreal tales that situates them in a kind of netherworld existing between or beyond the east and the west. It is not so much in the details that Abe presents these stories as representatives of Japanese fiction as it is in the mood or tone. These stories could take place in Europe and some might even feel at home in certain parts of America, but they definitely have a feel to them of operating well outside the environs of middle America.
Which is as perfect a description of Japanese fiction as there is: so much of it feels like it could take place in other regions of the world, while most definitely feeling out of place in Duluth or Topeka. This element is precisely the thing which makes Beyond the Curve such an ideal beginning point for the reader wishing to explore the fiction of Japan’s greatest writers. Because you know the writer is himself Japanese yet the stories are not exclusively Japanese. The opening tale is a film noir-ish paranoid thriller in which the city it is set in is never named. It could just as easily be New York or L.A. as Tokyo. On the other hand, “Dendrocaclia” could only be set in a very tiny little chunk of Japan because that is the only place where the title vegetation grows. And yet, here too, the setting is purposely kept vague; the story might be taking place anywhere.
This is a premise upon which the entire collection is based. Places as well as character names are kept minimal—most of the major characters are identified only by a single initial with very few exceptions. The reason why this collection makes a great starting point for entry into Japanese fiction is because the reader knows the writer is Japanese, but his characters don’t. And that is the ideal way for a reader to approach the literature of any foreign country. By first understanding that people are people before they are Japanese or Bohemian or American or whatever.
