Kenzaburō Ōe

Kenzaburo Oe
Ōe, in 2005
Occupation	Novelist, Short story writer, Essayist
Nationality	Japanese
Period	1950–present
Notable works	A Personal Matter, The Silent Cry
Notable awards	Nobel Prize in Literature 1994

Kenzaburo Ōe (大江 健三郎, Ōe Kenzaburō, born January 31, 1935) is a major figure in contemporary Japanese literature. His works, strongly influenced by French and American literature and literary theory, engage with political, social and philosophical issues including nuclear weapons, social non-conformism and existentialism. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1994.

Life

Ōe was born in Ōse (大瀬村, Ōse-mura), a village now in Uchiko, Ehime Prefecture, Japan. He was one of seven children, whose father died when Ōe was nine. At the age of 18 he began to study French literature at the University of Tokyo, where he wrote his dissertation on the work of Jean-Paul Sartre. He began publishing stories in 1957 while still a student, strongly influenced by contemporary writing in France and the United States.

He married in February of 1960. His wife, Yukari, was the 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.

Ōe now lives in Tokyo. He has three children; the eldest son, Hikari, has been brain-damaged since his birth in 1963, and his disability has been a recurring motif in Ōe's writings since then.

In 2007, two retired Japanese military officers sued Ōe for libel for his 1970 essay Okinawa Notes. In Okinawa Notes, Ōe wrote that members of the Japanese military had coerced masses of Okinawan civilians into committing suicide during the Allied invasion of the island in 1945. On March 28, 2008, judges of the Osaka District Court dismissed all charges against Ōe. In his ruling, presiding judge stated that "it can be said the military was deeply involved in the mass suicides". The plaintiffs appealed the decision of the district court.

Works

Ōe's output falls into a series of groups, successively dealing with different themes. After his first student works set in his own university milieu, in the late 1950s he produced several works (such as Prize Catch and Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids) focusing on young children living in Arcadian transformations of Ōe's own rural Shikoku childhood. He later identified these child figures as belonging to the 'child god' archetype of Jung and Kerényi: one 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 series, Our 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 the earlier sexual content, shifting this time towards the violent fringes of society. The works which he published between 1961 and 1964 are influenced by existentialism and picaresque literature, populated with more or less criminal rogues and anti-heroes whose position on the fringes of society allows them to make pointed criticisms of it.

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".

Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness introduces 'Mori' as a name for the 'idiot-son' (Ōe's own term); 'Mori' means both 'to die' and 'idiocy' in Latin, and 'forest' in Japanese. This association between the disabled boy and the forest recurs in later works such as The Waters Are Come in unto My Soul and M/T and the narrative about the marvels of the forest.

Oe did not write much during the nearly two years he was involved in a trial from 2006 to 2008. He's beginning on a new novel, which The New York Times reported would feature a character "based on his father, a staunch supporter of the imperial system who drowned in a flood during World War II. The other is a contemporary young Japanese woman who “rejects everything about Japan” and in one act tries to destroy the imperial order."

Bibliography

Year	Japanese Title	English Title	Comments
1957	死者の奢り Shisha no ogori	Lavish Are The Dead
	他人の足 Tanin no ashi	Someone Else's Feet
	飼育 Shiiku	Prize Stock	aka The Catch
1958	芽むしり仔撃ち Memushiri kouchi	Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids
1961	セヴンティーン Sevuntīn	Seventeen
1964	個人的な体験 Kojinteki na taiken	A Personal Matter
	空の怪物アグイー Sora no kaibutsu Aguī	Aghwee the Sky Monster
1965	ヒロシマ・ノート Hiroshima nōto	Hiroshima Notes
1967	万延元年のフットボール Man'en gan'nen no futtobōru	The Silent Cry
1969	われらの狂気を生き延びる道を教えよ Warera no kyōki wo ikinobiru michi wo oshieyo	Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness
1970	沖縄ノート Okinawa nōto	Okinawa Notes
1972	みずから我が涙をぬぐいたまう日 Mizukara waga namida o nuguitamau hi	The Day He Himself Shall Wipe My Tears Away
1973	洪水はわが魂に及び Kōzui wa waga tamashii ni oyobi	The Flood invades my spirit
1976	ピンチランナー調書 Pinchi ran'nā chōsho	The Pinch Runner Memorandum
1979	同時代ゲーム Dojidai gemu	The Game of Contemporaneity, or Coeval Games / Contemporary Games
1980	Ume no chiri	Sometimes the Heart of a Turtle, or Karate Kid Novelization
1982	「雨の木」を聴く女たち Rein tsurī wo kiku on'natachi	Women listening to the "rain tree"
1983	新しい人よ眼ざめよ Atarashii hito yo, mezameyo	Rouse Up O Young Men of the New Age!
1984		The Crazy Iris and Other Stories of the Atomic Aftermath	editor
1986	M/Tと森のフシギの物語 M/T to mori no fushigi no monogatari	M/T and the Narrative About the Marvels of the Forest
1987	懐かしい年への手紙 Natsukashī tosi eno tegami	Letters for nostalgic years
1988		Japan's Dual Identity: A Writer's Dilemma
1989	人生の親戚 Jinsei no shinseki	An Echo of Heaven
1990	静かな生活 Shizuka na seikatsu	A Quiet Life
1993	「救い主」が殴られるまで 'Sukuinushi' ga nagurareru made	Until the Savior Gets Socked	The Flaming Green Tree Trilogy I　(燃えあがる緑の木　第一部)
1994	揺れ動く (ヴァシレーション) Yureugoku (Vashirēshon)	Vacillating	The Flaming Green Tree Trilogy II　(燃えあがる緑の木　第二部)
1995	大いなる日に Ōinaru hi ni	On the Great Day	The Flaming Green Tree Trilogy III　(燃えあがる緑の木　第三部)
	曖昧な日本の私 Aimai na Nihon no watashi	Japan, the Ambiguous, and Myself: The Nobel Prize Speech and Other Lectures
	恢復する家族 Kaifukusuru kazoku	A Healing Family
1999	宙返り Chūgaeri	Somersault
2001	取り替え子 (チェンジリング) Torikae ko (Chenjiringu)	The Changeling
2002	憂い顔の童子 Ureigao no dōji	The Infant with a Melancholic Face
2003	二百年の子供 Ni hyaku nen no kodomo	The 200 Year Old Child
2005	さようなら、私の本よ! Sayōnara, watashi no hon yo!	Farewell, My Books!
2007	臈たしアナベル・リイ　総毛立ちつ身まかりつ Routashi Anaberu rī souke dachitu mimakaritu	The beautiful Annabel Lee was chilled and killed

External links

• Nobel e-Museum Biography
• Nobel Laureate page
• Biography and booklist
• Kenzaburo Oe Prize