Tomoji Abe | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 26 June 1903 Yunogō, Mimasaka, Okayama |
| Died | 23 April 1973 (aged 69) |
| Language | Japanese |
| Nationality | Japanese |
| Alma mater | Tokyo Imperial University's |
| Literary movement | Modernism |
| Spouse | Sumiko Ohama |
Tomoji Abe (阿部 知二, Abe Tomoji, 26 June 1903 – 23 April 1973) 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.[1] 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 Shōwa period (1925–1945), with rising fascism and militarism, and the crusade to preserve Japanese feudal traditions.[1]