FIVE MODERN JAPANESE NOVELISTS, by Donald Keene. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003, 144 pp., $24.50 (cloth)

In this new book, the doyen of Western scholars of Japanese literature introduces the writing of five novelists with whom he has worked and reminisces about his relationships with them. In so doing, he necessarily repeats some of the material from his magisterial "Dawn to the West," the concluding volume of his definitive study of Japanese literature.

This was unavoidable, but as Donald Keene says, "I hope that this book will be read by persons who might be daunted by the bulk of my history." And, in any event, the viewpoint of this later book is far different. As the author continues: "Perhaps because of the different context, the repetitions will seem not only forgivable but welcome."

And so they are. The section on Yukio Mishima, for example, augments not only the material that appeared in the history but also that in Keene's "Landscapes and Portraits" and "The Blue-Eyed Tarokaja." The chapter on Yasunari Kawabata enhances the newspaper essay Keene wrote to mark the author's death. That on Junichiro Tanizaki enlarges the chapter found in "Landscapes."

Of particular interest is the final section, about an author who was not even mentioned in "Dawn to the West" -- the popular novelist Ryotaro Shiba. Usually Keene, with exceptions, enjoyed a privileged but formal relationship with the older authors (Tanizaki, Kawabata) he was translating. In any event, their reason for meeting was the books rather than the man himself.

With Shiba, however, it was quite the opposite. Keene never translated any of his works, but saw him because of a personal relationship that had grown out of their commitment to literature. They had appeared in media-related colloquia, and it was Shiba who arranged for Keene to contribute on a regular basis to the Asahi Shimbun.

Keene writes that "it was typical of Shiba to have hoped that even one person could affect a large organization" and that the popular novelist had confidence that the American would prove to be an agent of internationalism. Keene does not believe that he was any such thing, but he does note a paradox: the fact that Shiba should have been so eager to make Japan more international, when his own enormous popularity stemmed from "his ability to reassure Japanese, stunned by both defeat in war and the rejection of traditional values, that they could be proud of their history and the great men of Japan."

Of especial interest in this book is the section on Kobo Abe, a writer only mentioned a few times in the history though more fully encountered in the 1978 interview for the Japan Society of New York (and reprinted in "The Blue-eyed Tarokaja").

Here the formality melts, because Keene and Abe shared much more than the literature at hand. In the interview, he wrote that he admired Abe "both as a writer of novels and plays and as a warm, decent, funny, highly intellectual man." This initial affinity deepened during the years preceding Abe's death in 1993.

This chapter in Keene's new book is filled with the affection he felt for Abe. He recounts his initial frosty encounter. He was miffed that Abe had brought along an interpreter, and so she sat unused. She was Yoko Ono. Keene was at a further disadvantage in that he was suffering from jet lag. Abe, who was a certified doctor as well as a writer, observed the somnolent translator and concluded that he was a drug addict.

After that, Abe steered clear and it was not until three years later that, through the efforts of Kenzaburo Oe, they became friends. When they did, however, it was fast friends that they became. In his account of Abe in this book, Keene takes many friendly liberties that he might not have permitted himself with, say, Kawabata.

"Abe, a writer of fiction, may have had trouble at times distinguishing between what actually had happened and what might have happened if other people were more like himself . . . Abe's views of the truth were always entertaining."

Keene points out that in the play "Friends," the insufferable do-gooders who take over the hero's life and eventually kill him constitute an acknowledged allegory. They are the Soviets, the solvent in the family of nations. At the same time, in the earlier story which formed the basis of the play, the awful intruders who stomped right into a man's house were the Americans. What had happened in between was that Abe had joined and then been expelled from the Communist Party of Japan.

Keene remembers "his sense of humor, especially his wonderful irony." At the same time "he never agreed with anything I said, however innocuous. If I commented that it was hot, he was likely to prove statistically that it was unusually cool for that time of year." Despite or because of such conversational habits, their mutual affection grew.

And it shows in this affectionate account of Abe and his work. Of all five authors it is he, consequently, who more fully leaves the page and stands before us. Thus he also stands, perhaps, in the author's memory. They did a series of dialogues that were gathered into a book, and of it Keene writes: "When I look at these documents of our friendship, I feel proud my name is joined to his."