The Box Man

Name: The Box Man
ISBN: 9787532797868

安部公房Shanghai Translation Publishing House2025

4.1

Word count: 82K words
Chapters: 6
Series: Kobo Abe Collected Works
ISBN: 9787532797868

Report an error Find this book

Summary

The Box Man is a novel by the Japanese writer Kobo Abe, published by Shinchosha in 1973. It appeared as a work of pure literature without prior serialization. The novel imagines a strange breed of urban outsider—the "box man": a person who wears a corrugated cardboard box over the head, peers at the world only through a viewing window cut into the box, severs himself completely from society, and wanders and lives in the corners of the city. How does a box man come into being? What do they seek by giving up everything? And what do they see through the viewing window? The book's narrative spine is the notebook written by the box man, Mr. A, interwoven with anonymously signed articles, abruptly inserted fables, newspaper reports, poems, and photographs—fragmentary texts from different times and spaces that form a polyphonic, collage-like experimental structure. The novel describes how the protagonist makes his own cardboard-box equipment and how he gradually becomes a box man, and also follows the entanglement between the fake doctor C and a morphine-addicted military surgeon, and the story of the boy D, who is caught peeping with a homemade viewing device. Loose in form but unified in spirit, the book is steeped in surrealism while presenting the absurdity and truth of modern urban life. The novel revolves around the invisibility impulse of city dwellers, the relationship between "seeing" and "being seen," the lack of individual belonging, and a questioning of "writing" itself, and has been called Japan's Metamorphosis. The 2025 Shanghai Translation Publishing House edition is translated by Zhu Jiarong and belongs to the "Kobo Abe Collected Works" series.

Editor's review

安部公房在日本战后文学中与三岛由纪夫、大江健三郎鼎足而立，是公认的先锋文学旗手，也是诺贝尔文学奖的有力候选人。大江健三郎曾说：“如果安部公房先生还在世，获得诺贝尔文学奖的将会是他。”村上春树也把他列为上一代最重要的三位日本作家之一。《箱男》是安部公房增删五年写就的长篇，被他称为一次“反小说”的尝试。它没有按部就班的线性情节，而以手记为主线，让文章、寓言、新闻、诗歌穿插其间，读者需要像拼图一样把碎片重新组合。这种形式并不炫技，反而让“一个人躲进纸箱”的荒诞设定显得格外可信：我们是否也在给自己套上一只箱子，只通过一个小孔看世界？阎连科称它比卡夫卡的《变形记》更凶猛。它的锋利之处在于，把都市人的疏离、窥视欲与逃避欲写到近乎生理性的痛感。竺家荣的译文干净克制，保留了原文冷峻、带点嘲讽的语调。对于想认识日本现代主义文学、又愿意接受叙事挑战的读者，这是一部绕不开的作品。

Who it's for

A good fit for

喜欢卡夫卡、加缪等存在主义与荒诞文学的读者
对日本战后先锋文学、现代主义小说感兴趣的读者
关注都市异化、身份认同与“看与被看”主题的读者
愿意接受非线性和拼贴式叙事挑战的深度阅读者

Not a good fit for

偏好清晰线性情节、追求轻松阅读体验的读者
对超现实设定和碎片化文本耐受度较低的读者
希望从书中获得明确道德结论或励志启示的读者

Reading tips

先通读全书，再回看开头的手记部分，碎片之间的呼应会清晰许多
留意穿插其间的寓言与新闻短章，它们与主线互为注解，不必急于跳过
可对照卡夫卡《变形记》、安部公房《砂女》共读，体会“变形”母题的不同走向
读完后不妨写下自己“那只箱子”是什么，把文本与当下都市经验对接

About the publisher

Shanghai Translation Publishing House China · Founded in 1978

Shanghai Translation Publishing House is a Chinese publisher oriented mainly toward translation and publishing. Its publications cover foreign literature, world classics and classic works, as well as social culture, folk literature and classical poetry. The database contains 2,618 titles, including Never Let Me Go, Les Misérables (2 volumes), Don Quixote (illustrated collector's edition), The Complete Comedies of Molière (4 volumes), The Complete Novels of Kafka (3 volumes), The Collected Works of Dostoevsky (9-volume set), Reason and Persons, and Oedipus Rex (Translation Classics). Its author resources include foreign writers such as Kazuo Ishiguro, Victor Hugo, Cervantes and Molière, as well as translators such as Zheng Kelu, Sun Jiameng, Li Jianwu and Zhang Kun. The publisher has brands such as "Translation Classics Selections" and "Translation Documentary," and emphasizes translated works in foreign literature and the humanities and social sciences, while also publishing bilingual dictionaries and foreign-language educational books. Public information is limited; the above is based on the book information in the database.

My Experience
The Story of the Box Man, Mr. A
The Story of C
Testimony: A Sequel
The Executioner Is Innocent
The Story of D

FAQ

《箱男》和卡夫卡《变形记》有什么关系？

两者都写人被异化的处境，但并无直接改编关系。评论界常把《箱男》称为日本的《变形记》，因为安部公房同样用超现实设定切入现代人的疏离与幻灭，不过他的叙事更碎片化、更具实验性。

这本2025年版是谁翻译的？

上海译文出版社2025年版由竺家荣翻译，ISBN为9787532797868，定价40元，收入“安部公房作品系列”。此前上海译文2017年版也由竺家荣翻译。

没有读过安部公房，可以从这本开始吗？

可以，但它并非最易入门的作品。若想先熟悉他的风格，通常建议从《砂女》读起；《箱男》叙事结构更跳跃，适合已经对先锋文学有一定耐心的读者。

书名“箱男”是什么意思？

指小说中一类都市边缘人：他们把瓦楞纸箱套在身上，只靠箱壁的窥视窗看世界，借此与社会隔绝。“箱”既是栖身之所，也是自我封闭与逃避的象征。

Comments

Find this book

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

安部公房 Author

Kobo Abe is a highly representative writer in modern Japanese literature, and his works have a steady readership in the Chinese-speaking world as well. The library holds nine of his works, including The Woman in the Dunes, The Box Man, The Secret Rendezvous, The Wall, and the four-volume Kobo Abe Works Series, which together sketch the core profile of his writing. Because personal details such as his dates of birth and death and nationality are not specified in the library records, public information is limited, so no biographical narrative is given here. Judging from the common categories "social novel, foreign literature, and social science," his writing often takes ordinary people's situations as its entry point and, through parable-like scenarios, examines individual identity anxiety, alienation, and existential predicaments in modern society. Works such as The Woman in the Dunes and The Box Man especially embody this narrative style poised between reality and abstraction, with concise plots and striking imagery that draw readers in with suspense while leaving thought-provoking space. His works have attracted attention in Japan and abroad and continue to influence later literary and intellectual discussion, making them suitable for readers willing to explore the relationship between society and the self through story.