Issue 27 - Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art

5°
Everything Kobo Abe ever wrote—novels, plays, works of criticism—he
wrote with every power he possessed. He was determined to lead the way
in whatever he did, and although he was familiar with the best of modern
writing in many countries, he was never satisfied with the mere addition
offapanese coloring to an existing foreign model. His writings, popular not
only in Japan but in the many countries where translations have been
made, are monuments of Japanese literature of the twentieth century.
KOBO ABE
TRANSLATED BY TED MACK
Hand
—DONALD KEENE, PROFESSOR EMERITUS
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
THAT NIGHT A BLIZZARD raged throughout the town. From far
away, with a roar that seemed to emanate from the earth, the wind
blew the snow, amassing drifts when it stuck against telephone
poles, trees, and walls, mimicking the voices of cats, women, infants
and the infirm, mercilessly blowing through cracks so narrow that
even rain had overlooked them, and thus reminding people of the
inadequacies of their existence.
In the midst of the empty streets, their streetlights wrapped in
white powder, where the whole world seemed a vague, white
void, I stood as always. In the public square at the crossroads where
I was, there was nothing at all to block the wind. Worse, my skin
is almost a perfect conductor of heat and so I was chilled even
colder than the air around me, and the snow that adhered to my
body froze rough like a powder of quartz.
Suddenly, faintly, I saw something move in the midst of this
white void. As it approached, it took on human form. The form
came still closer, to the base of the pedestal on which I stood, and
looked up at me. It was a small man, swollen in a cotton overcoat
with a dog-hair lining,