27 Facts About Tomoji Abe

Tomoji Abe was a Japanese novelist, social critic, humanist, and translator of English and American literature.

Tomoji Abe was born in Yunogo, Mimasaka, Okayama, the second son of Ryohei Abe, a junior-high-school teacher of natural history, and his wife Hayo Mori.

Ryohei's job postings took his family to Yonago in Tottori Prefecture and Kizuchi in Shimane Prefecture; Tomoji Abe attended Yoran elementary school, Himeji Middle School in Himeji, Hyogo and Dai-hachi High School in Nagoya.

In 1921, while in high school, Tomoji Abe took a one-year leave to recover from a lung illness, which proved to be non-threatening, and during this year began to write tanka poems under the guidance of Kohei.

In 1923, Tomoji Abe published his poems in Koyukai Zasshi magazine.

In 1924, after finishing high school, Tomoji Abe enrolled at Tokyo Imperial University's Department of English Literature.

Tomoji Abe was particularly interested in the British Romantic poets of the 19th century.

In 1927, Tomoji Abe graduated from Tokyo University with a thesis on Edgar Allan Poe as a poet and then enrolled in graduate school.

Tomoji Abe became acquainted with the editor of Shumon, writer Seiichi Funabashi, who in 1967 received the Noma Literary Prize for Suki na Onna no Munakazari.

In 1926, Tomoji Abe associated himself with Aozora, a coterie magazine published by the young writers Motojiro Kajii and Nakatani Takao, and the then-budding poet and literary critic Tatsuji Miyoshi.

In 1928, after Aozora folded in 1927, Tomoji Abe contributed to another coterie literary magazine Bungei Toshi with Seiichi Funabashi, the young writer Masuji Ibuse and the critic and writer Hidemi Kon.

In 1929, partly in response to Ryunosuke Akutagawa's suicide, Tomoji Abe wrote Shuchi-teki Bungaku-ron, which he published in Shi to Shiron magazine, founded in the previous year by Tatsuji Miyoshi and the writer Sakutaro Hagiwara.

Tomoji Abe's post-war writing had a humanistic and socio-critical nature.

Tomoji Abe opposed militarism and exploitation of human beings, and urged respect for human dignity.

Intellectually independent and uncompromising, Tomoji Abe was among the writers who believed in the need of rebirth of literature.

Tomoji Abe believed that literature, and writers, should be useful to society and stimulate its progress, and wrote, apart from works of fiction, numerous essays and theoretical works in which he expressed these views.

In July 1945, Tomoji Abe removed to Mimasaka in Okayama to escape the intensive bombing of Tokyo and in November, three months after Japan's capitulation, he joined his family in Himeji.

Tomoji Abe continued to be interested in Marxism but in the atmosphere of Cold War was cautious about revealing his interests and political views.

Tomoji Abe traveled to Europe in the summer and returned to Tokyo at the end of 1950.

In 1953, Tomoji Abe stood at the bar as special defender in connection with the May Day Incident of 1 May 1952, when, during the May Day demonstration, a Communist-led group forced its way to Imperial Plaza; in the subsequent clash between demonstrators and police people on both sides were killed and injured.

Tomoji Abe was a passionate and outspoken critic of the Vietnam War.

In March 1968, Tomoji Abe resigned from Meiji University and, with scientist Minoru Oda, called for a nationwide movement against the Vietnam War.

In 1969, on a trip with his wife to Europe, Tomoji Abe visited Edmund Blunden, his university lecturer.

In November 1971, Tomoji Abe was diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus and hospitalised.

Tomoji Abe died on 23 April 1973, leaving an unfinished novel, Hoshu, which he had been dictating in his last year of life and which was published posthumously.

Tomoji Abe was a prolific translator of English and American literature.

Tomoji Abe is known as the translator of the Sherlock Holmes series.