Kōbō Abe

A vacationing entomologist suffers extreme physical and psychological trauma after being taken captive by the residents of a poor seaside village and made to live with a woman whose life task is shoveling sand for them.

A businessman with a disfigured face obtains a lifelike mask from his new doctor, but the mask starts altering his personality and causing him to question his identity.

A photographer becomes intrigued by a mysterious man who has chosen to filter his experience of the world through a cardboard box placed over his head.

A man wanders into a seemingly deserted town with his young son in search of work. But after a bit of bad luck, he joins the town's population of lost souls.

A group of rank-and-file soldiers are jailed for crimes against humanity, themselves victims of a nation refusing to bear its burdens as a whole.

A private detective is hired to find a missing man by his wife. While his search is unsuccessful, the detective's own life begins to resemble the man for whom he is searching.

An ethical, young tax collector new to his area encounters increasingly absurd individuals and groups coping with their post-war woes.

This is the second installment in a psychic omnibus horror series depicting fears associated with food. Mizuki goes on a first date with the boy of her dreams, and they eat pancakes together, but she collapses. The next thing she knows, she is abducted by Yamada, a clerk at the pancake shop. Mizuki desperately escapes, but her hands are covered with mushrooms, and it seems that the man she dated has another woman. ...... Includes "Black Pancake," "The Manner of the Sanma Murder," and three other

John is a legal assistant who is looking forward to marriage to his fiancee Sally, but his daydream is interrupted when a model plane crashes through his window. Following the plane is a family of six who invade his life and apartment.

A film adaptation of the second play from "The Man Who Turned Into A Stick" by Kōbō Abe himself.

The final collaboration between Hiroshi Teshigahara and Kobo Abe, 240 Hours in a Day is a four-panel projection produced for the 1970 Osaka Expo. Set in the near future, a scientist invents an accelerator that increases the speed of human activity tenfold.

A salaryman living alone in a small apartment is visited by complete strangers, a large family with grown-up sons and a daughter, who take over his apartment and his life. They use his money and he has to wait on them as their servant. They even steal his girlfriend. Although they behave very dictatorially, everything is decided "democratically" by the majority.

A cautionary tale about workers who are neglected, lose hope, and fade away while businessmen prosper by selling out to foreign countries. As the greed of the businessmen escalates, the economy collapses, and a young man becomes a poet and gives the people hope.

A day in the life of Ako, a 16-year-old Japanese girl, and her friends and co-workers. An alarm clock wakes her in a dorm; she gets ready for work and travels to a large bakery. We see her with friends, chatting and laughing, as well as working. They go out, seven of them jammed in an old Pontiac: bowling, then to an amusement park, then driving around. Car trouble may put her at risk. Is she going to be okay? One of four film sketches on the problems of adolescents facing the adult world in the 1960s included in the anthology film That Tender Age (La fleur de l'âge, ou Les adolescentes). The three other sketches were directed by Michel Brault, Jean Rouch, and Gian Vittorio Baldi.

Directed, original story, script and music by Kobo Abe. The last performance of the theatre group Koubou Ambe Studio's "An Elephant Calf Is Dead" is reconstructed as a video work. Performed by Yamaguchi Karin and others.

A man reacts with violence when a pair of eyes spy on him from inside a cardboard box.