"Friends" is a very creepy play in which a sort of "holy family", almost like a weird sect, takes over the life of a lonely salaryman. The play depicts an aggressively benevolent family hell-bent on befriending a lonely bachelor. With a smile they chant love for one's neighbors and solidarity with the lonely as the ideal and in the process they completely disrupt the man's life, seduce his fiancee, and finally kill him. The so-called good intentions of the family invading the man's apartment turn out to be false and hypocritical and they themselves are transformed into monsters. That doesn't mean this is a dark play: thanks to the black humor there is a lot to laugh as well.
[Abe Kobo]
In fact, the play is based on a short story, "Intruders" (Kaijin) Abe wrote in 1951, in which 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. In this 1951 satire Abe was writing a political story, for it is clear he is referring to the American occupation of Japan (which ended one year later, in 1952). The greatest difference with the play "Friends" is that Abe removed the political satire and instead broadened the focus of the play to encompass the general human condition.
Here is the plot:
The city at night. A strange family of eight sings the popular song "Poor broken necklace... Little lost beads, little lost beads." They then enter the apartment of a young man (who is 31 and works as section head in a commercial firm), without invitation or introduction, and announce that they will save him from his loneliness by moving in and befriending him. Restringing "the little lost beads" is their mission!
They consist of a father, who at first glance might be taken for a clergyman, a mother in old-fashioned dress, an eighty-year old grandmother, an elder son who is clever but frail-looking and rather gloomy (he is a former private detective), a younger son who is an amateur boxer, an eldest daughter of about 30, a prospective old maid who still dreams about marriage, a middle daughter of 24, sweet looking and giving the impression of being the crystallization of good will, and a youngest daughter who is a little devil, although she doesn't look it.
Shocked by the strange invasion, the young man first of all tries to persuade them to leave. But his reasoning proves useless against their cheerful madness. The man then calls the police to complain about their trespassing, but both the
caretaker of his apartment and the two police officers who arrive on the scene don't believe him, and go away without doing anything.
The family answers with various far-fetched and hair-splitting arguments to the man asking them
to leave, and they impose a majority-decision "democratic" rule. They also argue skillfully with the man's fiancée and her brother, and the man has to allow the family to stay with him. In this way, slowly but effectively, the family strips the young man of his reasons
for living: his fiancee, his self-esteem, and his interest in his work.
They do everything possible to convince him, in the name of brotherhood
and love, that his desire for privacy and his choice of companions is an
aberration.
One night, half a month later, the middle
daughter discovers that the eldest daughter and the man are sleeping
together. She reports to the others that the eldest daughter has promised the man to help him escape. The man is than as punishment incarcerated in the coat rack in the hall of the apartment, which is converted into a cage. The middle daughter is in charge of bringing the prisoner his food. One morning, when everyone is out, she gives him a glass of poisoned milk (with the key to his prison, falsely claiming she loves him and wants to help him). The man suffers terrible convulsions and dies. The middle daughter then mutters: "If only you hadn't turned against us, we would have been no more than company to you..." Quietly sobbing, she tenderly drapes a blanket over the cage. The second son comes home and says: "What, you, did you do it again!" To which she answers: "What else could I do..." The family now has to leave and dresses for travel. The father mourns the man with the words: "The deceased was always a good friend to us..." Then waving their handkerchiefs, the family marches off. The audience can still hear their eerie laughter when the lights go out.
What does this play mean? Some critics have written that it is about socialization (in other words, Abe has a positive stand towards the actions of the family) but nothing could be farther from the truth. This unusual variation on the Theater of the Absurd is about the destruction of the individual. Whether it be a destructive political ideology as communism with its blind solidarity, a personality obliterating religious cult or a weird sect, or "majority principle" democracy going too far by neglecting the rights of minorities, there are many dangers threatening individuality in modern times. Abe gives a sound warning against those trends. And he tells us to be alert, for we can be perpetrators as well as victims.
The play, which has been called highly inventive and well-crafted, is Abe's masterwork for the theater. Abe Kobo (1924-1993) is in the West in the first place known for his novels as The Woman in the Dunes, but he is an all-round author also known for his plays, his essays and his short stories.
Kobe Abe, Friends, A play, translated by Donald Keene (Tuttle Publishing 1971).
The short story "The Intruders" has been included in Beyond the Curve (1991) translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter. See my post about Abe's short stories at this blog.
Greatest Plays of All Time