In the aftermath of World War II, Kuki Kyūzō, a Japanese youth raised in the puppet state of Manchuria, struggles to return home to Japan. What follows is a wild journey involving drugs, smuggling, chases, and capture. Kyūzō finally makes his way to the waters off Japan but finds himself unable to disembark. His nation remains inaccessible to him, and now he questions its very existence. Beasts Head for Home is an acute novel of identity, belonging, and the vagaries of human behavior from an exceptional modern Japanese author.


Abe Kobo (1924-1993) was one of Japan’s greatest postwar writers, widely recognized for his imaginative fiction and plays of the absurd. Richard F. Calichman is professor of Japanese studies at the City College of New York, CUNY. He is also the translator and editor of The Frontier Within: Essays by Abe Kobo (Columbia, 2013).