We study effective mass generation of off-diagonal gluons and infrared Abelian dominance in the maximally Abelian ͑MA͒ gauge. Using SU͑2͒ lattice QCD, we investigate the propagator and the effective mass of the gluon field in the MA gauge with U(1) 3 Landau gauge fixing. The Monte Carlo simulation is performed on the 12 3 ϫ24 lattice with 2.2рр2.4, and also on the 16 4 and 20 4 lattices with 2.3рр2.4. In the MA gauge, the diagonal gluon component A 3 shows long-range propagation, and infrared Abelian dominance is found for the gluon propagator. In the MA gauge, the off-diagonal gluon component A Ϯ behaves as a massive vector boson with the effective mass M off Ӎ1.2 GeV in the region of rտ0.2 fm, and its propagation is limited within a short range. We conjecture that infrared Abelian dominance can be interpreted as infrared inactivity of the offdiagonal gluon due to its large mass generation induced by the MA gauge fixing. ͓S0556-2821͑99͒05223-6͔