was a Japanese writer of short stories and novels.

Biography

Born in

Hiroshima is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture in Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 1,199,391. The gross domestic product (GDP) in Greater Hiroshima, Hiroshima Urban Employment Area, was US$61.3 billion as of 2010. Kazumi Matsui h ...

and grown up in

Kanagawa Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Kantō region of Honshu. Kanagawa Prefecture is the second-most populous prefecture of Japan at 9,221,129 (1 April 2022) and third-densest at . Its geographic area of makes it fifth-smallest. Kana ...

, Abe graduated from the University of Tokyo with a degree in French literature and worked as a director for Radio Tokyo (now TBS) until 1971, when he became a full-time writer. His literary career began in 1962 with the publication of his debut work ''Kodomobeya'' (lit. "Children's room"), for which he received the Bungakukai Newcomer Award (Bungakukai shinjinshō). Most of his stories draw upon his biography and his family in a contemporary

I-novel The I-novel (, , ) is a literary genre in Japanese literature used to describe a type of confessional literature where the events in the story correspond to events in the author's life. This genre was founded based on the Japanese reception of n ...

style known as "mental state novel" (shinkyō shōsetsu). Other major works include the 1970 novel ''Shirei no kyūka'' (lit. "The commander's holiday") about his military officer father, and the 1972 short story ''Peaches'' (''Momo''), which, like ''Kodomobeya'', deals with personal childhood memories. He received the

Mainichi Publishing Culture Award is an annual award given to distinguished literary works and activities in the sectors literature and art, humanities and social science, natural science, and encyclopedic work, plus a special award. It was founded in 1947 and is sponsored by the M ...

for his 1973 short story ''Sennen'' (lit. "Thousand years"). Abe died of heart failure at the age of 54. A fourteen volume edition of his collected works, ''Abe Akira shū'', was published by

Iwanami Shoten is a Japanese publishing company based in Tokyo.Louis Frédéric, ''Japan Encyclopedia'', Harvard University Press, 2005, p. 409. Iwanami Shoten was founded in 1913 by Iwanami Shigeo. Its first major publication was Natsume Sōseki's novel ''Ko ...

in 1991–1992.

Selected works

* 1962: ''Kodomobeya'' * 1970: ''Shirei no kyūka'' * 1970: ''Friends'' (''Hibi no tomo'') * 1972: ''Peaches'' (''Momo'') * 1973: ''Sennen'' * 1976: ''Jinsei no ichinichi'' * 1982: ''A Napping Cove'' (''Madoromu irie'')

Translations

Of Abe's short stories, ''Friends'', ''Peaches'' and ''A Napping Cove'' have been translated into English. The novel ''Shirei no kyūka'' has been translated into German as ''Urlaub für die Ewigkeit''.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Abe, Akira 1934 births 1989 deaths Writers from Hiroshima University of Tokyo alumni 20th-century Japanese writers