Kenzaburō Ōe (大江 健三郎 Ōe Kenzaburō?, born January 31, 1935) is a Japanese writer and a

major figure in contemporary Japanese literature. His novels, short stories and essays were

strongly influenced by French and American literature and literary theory. They deal with political,

social and philosophical issues including nuclear weapons, nuclear power, social

non­conformism, and existentialism.

Ōe was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1994 for creating "an imagined world, where life

and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament today".

LifeŌe was born in Ōse (大瀬村 Ōse­mura?), a village now in Uchiko, Ehime Prefecture on

Shikoku. He was the third son of seven children. Ōe's grandmother taught him art and oral performance. His grandmother died in 1944, and later that year, Ōe's father died in the Pacific War. Ōe's mother became his primary educator, buying him books such as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Wonderful Adventures of Nils, whose impact Ōe says "he will carry to the grave".

Ōe remembers his elementary school teacher claiming that Emperor Hirohito was a living god,

and asking him every morning, “What would you do if the emperor commanded you to die?” Ōe

always replied, “I would die, sir. I would cut open my belly and die.” At home in bed at night he

would acknowledge his reluctance to die and feel ashamed. After the war, he realized he had

been taught lies and felt betrayed. This sense of betrayal would later appear in his writing.

Ōe attended high school in Matsuyama. At the age of 18, he made his first trip to Tokyo and in

the following year began studying French Literature at Tokyo University under the direction of

Professor Kazuo Watanabe, a specialist on François Rabelais. Oe began publishing stories in

1957, while still a student, strongly influenced by contemporary writing in France and the United

States. He married in February 1960. His wife, Yukari, was the daughter of film director Mansaku

Itami and sister of film director Juzo Itami. The same year he met Mao Zedong on a trip to China.

He also went to Russia and Europe the following year, visiting Sartre in Paris.[4]

In 1961, Ōe’s novellas Seventeen and The Death of a Political Youth were published by a

Japanese literary magazine. Both were inspired by seventeen­year­old Yamaguchi Otoya, who

assassinated the chairman of Japan’s Socialist Party in 1960, and then killed himself in prison

three weeks later.

Yamaguchi had admirers among the extreme right wing who were angered by The Death of a

Political Youth and both Ōe and the magazine received death threats day and night for weeks.

The magazine soon apologized to offended readers, but Ōe did not. The story has never been

reprinted or translated.

Ōe lives in Tokyo. He has three children; the eldest son, Hikari, has been brain­damaged since

his birth in 1963, and his disability has been a recurring motif in Ōe's writings since.

In 1994 Ōe won the Nobel Prize in Literature and was named to receive Japan’s Order of

Culture. He refused the latter because it is bestowed by the Emperor. Ōe said, “I do not

recognize any authority, any value, higher than democracy.” Again he received threats.[3]

Oe at a 2013 antinuclear demonstration in Tokyo.

In 2005, two retired Japanese military officers sued Ōe for libel for his 1970 essay, Okinawa

Notes, in which he had written that members of the Japanese military had coerced masses of

Okinawan civilians into committing suicide during the Allied invasion of the island in 1945. In

March 2008, the Osaka District Court dismissed all charges against Ōe. In this ruling, Judge

Toshimasa Fukami stated, "The military was deeply involved in the mass suicides". In a news

conference following the trial, Ōe said, "The judge accurately read my writing."

Ōe has been involved with pacifist and anti­nuclear campaigns and written books about the

atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasakiand the Hibakusha. Following the 2011 Fukushima

nuclear disaster, he urged Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda to “halt plans to restart nuclear power

plants and instead abandon nuclear energy”. Ōe has said Japan has an "ethical responsibility" to

abandon nuclear power in the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, just as it renounced

war under its postwar Constitution. He has called for "an immediate end to nuclear power

generation and warned that Japan would suffer another nuclear catastrophe if it tries to resume

nuclear power plant operations." In 2013, he organized a mass demonstration in Tokyo against

nuclear power. Ōe has also criticized moves to amend Article 9 of the Constitution, which forever

renounces war.

Writing

Ōe explained, shortly after learning that he'd been awarded the Nobel Prize, "I am writing about

the dignity of human beings".

After his first student works set in his own university milieu, in the late 1950s he produced works

such as 飼育 (Shiiku), about a black GI set upon by Japanese youth (made into a film, "The

Catch" by Nagisa Oshima in 1961) and Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids, focusing on young children

living in Arcadian transformations of Ōe's own rural Shikokuchildhood. He later identified these

child figures as belonging to the 'child god' archetype of Jung and Kerényi, which is characterised

by abandonment, hermaphrodism, invincibility, and association with beginning and end. The first

two characteristics are present in these early stories, while the latter two features come to the

fore in the 'idiot boy' stories which appeared after the birth of Hikari.

Between 1958 and 1961 Ōe published a series of works incorporating sexual metaphors for the

occupation of Japan. He summarised the common theme of these stories as "the relationship of

a foreigner as the big power [Z], a Japanese who is more or less placed in a humiliating position

[X], and, sandwiched between the two, the third party [Y] (sometimes a prostitute who caters only

to foreigners or an interpreter)". In each of these works, the Japanese X is inactive, failing to take

the initiative to resolve the situation and showing no psychological or spiritual development. The

graphically sexual nature of this group of stories prompted a critical outcry; Ōe said of the

culmination of the seriesOur Times, "I personally like this novel [because] I do not think I will ever

write another novel which is filled only with sexual words."

Ōe's next phase moved away from sexual content, shifting this time toward the violent fringes of

society. The works which he published between 1961 and 1964 are influenced byexistentialism

and picaresque literature, populated with more or less criminal rogues and anti­heroes whose

position on the fringes of society allows them to make pointed criticisms of it.[16] Ōe's admission

that Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn is his favorite book can be said to find a context in this

period.

He explains, "I have always wanted to write about our country, our society and feelings about the

contemporary scene. But there is a big difference between us and classic Japanese literature." In

1994, he explained that he was proud the Swedish Academy recognized the strength of modern

Japanese literature and hoped the prize would encourage others.

According to Leo Ou­fan Lee writing in Muse, Ōe's latest works tend "toward bolder experiments

with the technique of 'defamiliarization' by negotiating his narratives across several imaginary

landscapes pertaining to painting, film, drama, music and architecture".Ōe believes that novelists

have always worked to spur the imagination of their readers.

Writing about his son Hikari

Book cover of the 1996 English version of Kenzaburō Ōe's book about his handicapped son and their life as a family.

Ōe credits his son Hikari for influencing his literary career. Ōe tried to give his son a "voice"

through his writing. Several of Ōe's books feature a character based on his son.[19]

In Ōe's 1964 book, A Personal Matter, the writer describes the pain involved in accepting his

brain­damaged son into his life.[20] Hikari figures prominently in many of the books singled out for

praise by the Nobel committee:

Hikari's life is the core of the first book published after Ōe was awarded the Nobel Prize. The

1996 book, A Healing Family, celebrates the small victories in Hikari's life.

Hikari was a strong influence on Father, Where are you Going?, Teach Us to Outgrow Our

Madness, and The Day He Himself Shall Wipe My Tears Away, three novels which rework the

same premise—the father of a disabled son attempts to recreate the life of his own father, who

shut himself away and died. The protagonist's ignorance of his father is compared to his son's

inability to understand him; the lack of information about his father's story makes the task

impossible to complete, but capable of endless repetition, and, "repetition becomes the fabric of

the stories".

2006­2008

Ōe did not write much during the nearly two years (2006­2008) of his libel case. He is beginning

a new novel, which The New York Timesreported would feature a character "based on his

father", a staunch supporter of the imperial system who drowned in a flood during World War II.

Another projected character is a contemporary young Japanese woman who “rejects everything

about Japan” and in one act tries to destroy the imperial order."

2013

Ōe published a new book at the end of 2013. Named Bannen Yoshikishu and published by

Kodansha (English title is In Late Style).

The novel is the sixth in a series with the main character of Kogito Choko, who can be

considered Ōe's literary alter ego. The novel is also in a sense a culmination of the I­novels that

Ōe has continued to write since his son was born mentally­retarded in 1963.

In the novel, Choko loses interest in the novel he had been writing when the Great East Japan

earthquake and tsunami struck the Tohoku region on March 11, 2011. Instead, he begins writing

about an age of catastrophe, as well as about the fact that he himself is approaching his late 70s.

Honors

Akutagawa Prize, 1958.

Shinchosha Literary Prize, 1964.

Tanizaki Prize, 1967.

Noma Prize, 1973.

Yomiuri Prize, 1982.

Jiro Osaragi Prize (Asahi Shimbun), 1983.

Nobel Prize in Literature, 1994.

Order of Culture, 1994 – refused.