What does it mean to tell a truth from a lie? Margaret Key introduces Abe Kōbō as a literary maverick, a heterodox figure in the postwar Japanese literary landscape. Against those who label Abe as an “anti-realist,” Key argues that his realist agenda, bound up with experimentation in reportage and documentary forms, was a crucial component of his life's work. She explains how Abe advanced a new genre of realism through integrating documentary and detective narrative form in reacting against ari no mama (“as is”) realism, which prevailed in the mainstream documentary literature of the 1950s and 1960s. To this end, Abe adopted avant-garde literary and documentary techniques as tools for challenging the audience to confront and expunge various forms of myth, such as kyōdōtai (collective body) and furusato (nostalgia for hometown). Aligned with leftist intellectuals of his time, Abe saw such ideals as a social veneer that prevents citizens...
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