The Urban Writing Of Kobo Abe’s Novels

In the last century,Kobo Abe,Kenzaburo Oe and Yukio Mishima formed the unique landscape of contemporary Japanese avant-garde literature.Abe’s works have been translated and published in more than 30 countries,and he is regarded as one of the most popular Japanese writers.As an explorer of modern Japanese urban literature,Abe not only paid attention to the detailed description of urban things in his creation,but also cared about the relationship between individuals and society and their living conditions.He achieved grasping the reality from the dual structure of object and consciousness.Nowadays,China is in the period of urban revitalization and rapid economic development,which has a great similarity with Japan in the novels of Abe at that time.The study of Abe’s literary works can not only open a new way for the domestic academic community to understand Japanese literary culture,but also provide a reference for the creation of Chinese urban literature.This paper focuses on the relationship between people and things and people in the city,discusses the basic features of urbanites in the consumer society under the rule of visual culture,and summarizes the urban aesthetics contained in the writing of Abe.The paper will mainly discuss from three aspects:In chapter one,I will analyze the relationship between Japanese cities and Japanese urban literature.Starting from the reconstruction of Japanese cities after the war,this paper analyzes the development trajectory of Japanese cities from ruin to reconstruction to prosperity,and examines the influence of Japanese urban renewal on literature.This paper focuses on the changes of literary writing objects,the spiritual changes of people in urban literature,and reveals the creative techniques and aesthetic ideas of urban literature.In chapter two,I will analyze the urban appearance of Japan written by Abe,basing on the works created in the early 1950 s,red cocoon and the wall,as well as six important works created in the 1960 s.I will use the monitoring theory in Foucault′s concept of the power and landscape concept as a thinking framework,analyzing the characteristics of urban people in Abe’s novels and the adjustment of power under vision,explores the formation of various landscapes/images in the city and the brainwashing of people by the huge illusion of landscape,and reveals the basic features of people and things in the city.In Chapter three,I will explore the style and aesthetic significance of Abe’s urban writing.His urban novels focus on the changing times and depict the nature of Japanese life in a consumer society full of landscape/image illusions,exposing the "urban ecology" of Japan to the readers.Abe’s novel aims at the problem of the loss of subjectivity faced by all mankind in the era of electronic media.The narrative style absorbs the western modern creation techniques and expression techniques,gives a new connotation to the concept of "mononoaware" in the traditional Japanese aesthetic concept,and creates the unique aesthetic meaning,leaving a treasure to Japanese literature and world literature.