Kenzaburō Ōe

From New World Encyclopedia

Kenzaburō Ōe
Paris - Salon du livre 2012 - Kenzaburō Ōe - 003.jpg
Ōe in 2012
Born January 31 1935(1935-01-31)
Ōse, Ehime, Japan
Died March 3 2023 (aged 88)
Occupation Novelist, short-story writer, essayist
Writing period 1957–2013
Spouse(s) Yukari Ikeuchi (m. 1960)
Children 3, including Hikari
Relative(s) Mansaku Itami (father-in-law), Juzo Itami (brother-in-law)

Kenzaburō Ōe (大江 健三郎 Ōe Kenzaburō, January 31, 1935 – March 3, 2023) was a Japanese writer and a major figure in contemporary Japanese literature. His novels, short stories, and essays, strongly influenced by French and American literature and literary theory, deal with political, social, and philosophical issues, including nuclear weapons, nuclear power, social non-conformism, and existentialism. After the 2011 tsunami caused a nuclear accident at the Fukushima plant, he organized mass protests against the use of nuclear power.

Ōe at the Japanisches Kulturinstitut in Cologne on April 11, 2008

Early life and education

Ōe was born in Ōse (大瀬村 Ōse-mura), a village now in Uchiko, Ehime Prefecture, on Shikoku.[1] The third of seven children, he grew up listening to his grandmother, a storyteller of myths and folklore, who also recounted the oral history of the two uprisings in the region before and after the Meiji Restoration.[2] [1] His father, Kōtare Ōe, had a bark-stripping business; the bark was used to make paper currency.[1] After his father died in the Pacific War in 1944, his mother, Koseki, became the driving force behind his education, buying him books including The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Wonderful Adventures of Nils, which had a formative influence on him.[2]

Ōe received the first ten years of his education in local public schools.[3] He started school during the peak of militarism in Japan. In class he was forced to pronounce his loyalty to Emperor Hirohito, who his teacher claimed was a god.[1] After the war, he felt betrayed. This sense of betrayal later appeared in his writing.[1]

Ōe attended high school in Matsuyama from 1951 to 1953, where he excelled as a student.[3][1] At the age of 18, he made his first trip to Tokyo, where he studied at a prep school (yobikō) for one year.[3][2] The following year, he began studying French Literature at Tokyo University with Professor Kazuo Watanabe, a specialist on François Rabelais.[2]

Ōe 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] [5]

Ōe lived in Tokyo and had three children.[6] In 1963, his eldest son, Hikari, was born with a brain hernia.[7] Ōe initially struggled to accept his son's condition, which required surgery which would leave him with learning disabilities for life.[6] Hikari lived with Kenzaburō and Yukari until he was middle-aged, and often composed music in the same room where his father was writing.

Career

Ōe began publishing stories in 1957, while still a student, strongly influenced by contemporary writing in France and the United States.[2] His first work to be published was "Lavish are the Dead," a short story set in Tokyo during the American occupation after World War II, which appeared in Bungakukai literary magazine.[8] His early works were set in his own university milieu.[9]

In 1958, his short story "Shiiku" (飼育) was awarded the prestigious Akutagawa Prize.[8] The work was about a black GI set upon by Japanese youth, and was later made into a film, The Catch by Nagisa Oshima in 1961.[9] Another early novella, later translated as Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids, focused on adolescent boys during WWII sent to live in an Arcadian setting reminiscent of Ōe's own rural Shikoku childhood.[9] Ōe identified these child figures as belonging to the 'child god' archetype of Jung and Kerényi, which is characterized by abandonment, hermaphrodism, invincibility, and association with beginning and end.[10] 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 his son Hikari.[11]

Between 1958 and 1961 Ōe published a series of works incorporating sexual metaphors for the occupation of Japan. He summarized 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.)"[12] 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.[11] 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."[11]

In 1961, Ōe's novellas Seventeen and The Death of a Political Youth were published in the Japanese literary magazine Bungakukai. Both were inspired by seventeen-year-old Yamaguchi Otoya, who had assassinated Japan Socialist Party chairman Inejirō Asanuma in October 1960, and then killed himself in prison three weeks later.[13] 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,[1] and he was later physically assaulted by an angry right-winger while giving a speech at Tokyo University.[5]

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 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.[11] Ōe's admission that Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn is his favorite book can be said to find a context in this period.[14]

Influence of Hikari

Ōe credited 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.

In Ōe's 1964 book, A Personal Matter, the writer describes the psychological trauma involved in accepting his brain-damaged son into his life.[2] Hikari figures prominently in many of the books singled out for praise by the Nobel committee, and his life is the core of the first book published after Ōe was awarded the Nobel Prize. The 1996 book, A Healing Family, is a memoir written as a collection of essays.[15]

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, as "repetition becomes the fabric of the stories."[11]

2006 to 2008

In 2005, two retired Japanese military officers sued Ōe for libel for his 1970 book of essays, 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."[16]

Ōe did not write much during the nearly two years (2006–2008) of his libel case. He began writing 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.[17]

2013

Bannen Yoshikishu, his final 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 I-novels that Ōe continued to write since his son was born mentally disabled 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 was approaching his late 70s.[18]

Activism

In 1959 and 1960, Ōe participated in the Anpo protests against the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty as a member of a group of young writers, artists, and composers called the "Young Japan Society" (Wakai Nihon no Kai).[13] The treaty allowed the United States to maintain military bases in Japan. Ōe's disappointment at the failure of the protests to stop the treaty shaped his future writing.[5]

Ōe at a 2013 antinuclear demonstration in Tokyo

Ōe was involved with pacifist and anti-nuclear campaigns and wrote books regarding the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Hibakusha. After meeting prominent anti-nuclear activist Noam Chomsky at a Harvard degree ceremony, Ōe began his correspondence with Chomsky by sending him a copy of his Okinawa Notes. While also discussing Ōe's Okinawa Notes, Chomsky's reply included a story from his childhood. Chomsky wrote that when he first heard about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, he could not bear it being celebrated, and he went in the woods and sat alone until the evening.[19] Ōe later said in an interview, "I've always respected Chomsky, but I respected him even more after he told me that."[4]

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."[20] Ōe 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 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.[21] Ōe also criticized moves to amend Article 9 of the Constitution, which forever renounces war.[22]

Death

Ōe died on March 3, 2023, at the age of 88.[6][7][8]

Legacy

Nobel Prize in Literature

Ōe was awarded the 1994 Nobel Prize in Literature for creating "an imagined world, where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament today."[23]

Japan's Order of Culture

In 1994 Ōe 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." Once again, he received threats.[1]

Shortly after learning that he had been awarded the Nobel Prize, Ōe said that he was encouraged by the Swedish Academy's recognition of modern Japanese literature, and hoped that it would inspire other writers. He told The New York Times that his writing was ultimately focused on "the dignity of human beings."[24]

Major awards

Eponymous literary prize

In 2005, the Kenzaburō Ōe Prize was established by publisher Kodansha to promote Japanese literary novels internationally,[29] with the first prize awarded in 2007.[30] The winning work was selected solely by Ōe, to be translated into English, French, or German, and published worldwide.

Selected works

The number of Kenzaburō Ōe's works translated into English and other languages remains limited, so that much of his literary output is still only available in Japanese. The few translations have often appeared after a marked lag in time.[31]Some of his texts have also been translated into Chinese, French, and German.[32]

Year Japanese Title English Title Comments Ref.
1957 死者の奢り
Shisha no ogori
Lavish Are The Dead Short story published in Bungakukai literary magazine [8]
奇妙な仕事
Kimyō na shigoto
The Strange Work Short novel awarded May Festival Prize by University of Tokyo newspaper [33]
飼育
Shiiku
"The Catch" / "Prize Stock" Short story awarded the Akutagawa prize. Published in English as "Prize Stock" in Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness (1977) and as "The Catch" in "The Catch and Other War Stories" (Kodansha International 1981).

Made into a film in 1961 by Nagisa Oshima and in 2011 by the Cambodian director Rithy Panh.

[33]
1958 見るまえに跳べ
Miru mae ni tobe
Leap Before You Look Short story; title is a reference to W. H. Auden [34]
芽むしり仔撃ち
Memushiri kōchi
Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids One of his earliest novellas, translated in 1995 [35]
1961 セヴンティーン
Sevuntiin
Seventeen Short novel translated by Luk Van Haute in 1996. The sequel was so controversial that Ōe never allowed it to be republished. [36]
1963 叫び声
Sakebigoe
Outcries Untranslated [37]
性的人間
Seiteki ningen
J (published title)

Sexual Humans (literal translation)

Short story translated by Luk Van Haute in 1996 [36]
1964 空の怪物アグイー
Sora no kaibutsu Aguī
Aghwee the Sky Monster Short story translated by John Nathan. [38]
個人的な体験
Kojinteki na taiken
A Personal Matter Awarded the Shinchosha Literary Prize. Translated by John Nathan. [39]
1965 ヒロシマ・ノート
Hiroshima nōto
Hiroshima Notes Collection of essays translated by Toshi Yonezawa and edited by David L. Swain [40]
1967 万延元年のフットボール
Man'en gan'nen no futtobōru
The Silent Cry (published title)

Football in the Year 1860 (literal translation)

Translated by John Bester [34]
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 Translated by John Nathan in 1977; title is a reference to W. H. Auden [34]
1970 沖縄ノート
Okinawa nōto
Okinawa Notes Collection of essays that became the target of a defamation lawsuit filed in 2005 which was dismissed in 2008 [16]
1972 鯨の死滅する日
Kujira no shimetsu suru hi
The Day the Whales Shall be Annihilated Collection of essays including "The Continuity of Norman Mailer" [38]
みずから我が涙をぬぐいたまう日
Mizukara waga namida wo nuguitamau hi
The Day He Himself Shall Wipe My Tears Away Short novel parodying Yukio Mishima; translated by John Nathan and published in the volume Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness [34]
1973 洪水はわが魂に及び
Kōzui wa waga tamashii ni oyobi
My Deluged Soul Awarded the 26th Noma Literary Prize. Work has also been referred to as The Waters Are Come in unto My Soul. [2][38]
1976 ピンチランナー調書
Pinchi ran'nā chōsho
The Pinch Runner Memorandum Translated by Michiko N. Wilson and Michael K. Wilson [3]
1979 同時代ゲーム
Dōjidai gēmu
The Game of Contemporaneity Untranslated [41]
1982 「雨の木」を聴く女たち
Rein tsurī wo kiku on'natachi
Women Listening to the "Rain Tree" Collection of two short stories and three novellas. Awarded the 34th Yomiuri Literary Prize for novels. [42]
1983 新しい人よ眼ざめよ
Atarashii hito yo, mezameyo
Rouse Up O Young Men of the New Age! Collection of seven short stories originally published in Gunzo and Shincho magazines between 1982 and 1983. The title is taken from the preface to the poem Milton by William Blake. Awarded the 10th Jiro Osaragi Prize. Translated by John Nathan. [43]
1985 河馬に嚙まれる
Kaba ni kamareru
Bitten by a Hippopotamus Eight short stories, loosely linked [44]
1986 M/Tと森のフシギの物語
M/T to mori no fushigi no monogatari
M/T and the Wonder of the Forest Title has also been translated as Strange Stories of M/T and the Forest [42][41]
1987 懐かしい年への手紙
Natsukashī toshi e no tegami
Letters to the Time/Space of Fond Memories Autobiographical novel
1988 「最後の小説」
Saigo no shōsetsu
The Last Novel Collection of essays [3]
1989 人生の親戚
Jinsei no shinseki
An Echo of Heaven (published title)

Relatives of Life (literal translation)

Translated by Margaret Mitsutani [37]
1990 治療塔
Chiryō tō
Towers of Healing Novel first serialized in Hermes magazine; first work of science fiction
静かな生活
Shizuka na seikatsu
A Quiet Life Translated by Kunioki Yanagishita & William Wetherall [45]
1991 治療塔惑星
Chiryō tō wakusei
Planet of the Healing Tower Science fiction novel paired with Chiryō tō [46]
1992 僕が本当に若かった頃
Boku ga hontō ni wakakatta koro
When I Was Really Young Volume of nine vignettes, many of which refer to his previous works
1993 「救い主」が殴られるまで
'Sukuinushi' ga nagurareru made
Until the Savior Gets Beaten Part I of The Burning Green Tree Trilogy (燃えあがる緑の木 第一部, Moeagaru midori no ki – dai ichibu)
[42]
1994 揺れ動く (ヴァシレーション)
Yureugoku (Vashirēshon)
Vacillation Part II of The Burning Green Tree Trilogy (燃えあがる緑の木 第二部, Moeagaru midori no ki – dai nibu) [42]
1995 大いなる日に
Ōinaru hi ni
For the Day of Grandeur Part III of The Burning Green Tree Trilogy (燃えあがる緑の木 第三部, Moeagaru midori no ki – dai sanbu) [42]
曖昧な日本の私
Aimai na Nihon no watashi
Japan, the Ambiguous, and Myself Nobel Prize acceptance speech; the title is a reference to Yasunari Kawabata's Nobel acceptance speech, "Japan, the Beautiful, and Myself". In 1995, nine lectures given by Ōe in the 1990s were published in the same volume with this title. [47]
恢復する家族
Kaifukusuru kazoku
A Healing Family Collection of essays serialized from 1990 to 1995 in Sawarabi, a journal on rehabilitative medicine, with an afterword and drawings by Yukari Oe. Adapted and translated in 1996 by Stephen Snyder. [48]
1999 宙返り
Chūgaeri
Somersault Translated by Philip Gabriel [49]
2000 取り替え子 (チェンジリング)
Torikae ko (Chenjiringu)
The Changeling Translated by Deborah Boliver Boehm [31]
2001 「自分の木」の下で
'Jibun no ki' no shita de
Under One's Own Tree 16 essays reflecting on Ōe's childhood and experience as a novelist and father [50]
2002 憂い顔の童子
Urei gao no dōji
Gloomy Faced Child Novel [51]
2007 臈たしアナベル・リイ 総毛立ちつ身まかりつ
Rōtashi Anaberu Rī sōkedachitsu mimakaritsu
The Beautiful Annabel Lee was Chilled and Killed Winner of the 2008 Weishanhu Award for Best Foreign Novel in the 21st Century. [32]
2009 水死
Sui shi
Death by Water Translated by Deborah Boliver Boehm [52]
2013 晩年様式集(イン・レイト・スタイル)
Bannen Yōshiki shū (In Reito Sutairu)
In Late Style Final work. Title is a reference to Edward Said's On Late Style. [53]

Notes

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 Mark Weston, Giants of Japan: The Lives of Japan's Most Influential Men and Women (New York, NY: Kodansha International, 1999, ISBN 1568362862), 294-295, 299. Retrieved September 14, 2023.
  2. 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 "Kenzburo Oe – Biographical," The Nobel Prize. Retrieved September 14, 2023.
  3. 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 "Introduction: Kenzaburo Ōe," The Georgia Review 49(1) (Spring 1995): 331–334. Retrieved September 14, 2023.
  4. 4.0 4.1 Sarah Fay, "The Art of Fiction No. 195," The Paris Review (183) (Winter 2007). Retrieved September 14, 2023.
  5. 5.0 5.1 5.2 Mya Jaggi, "In the forest of the soul" The Guardian, February 5, 2005. Retrieved September 14, 2023.
  6. 6.0 6.1 6.2 Daniel Lewis, "Kenzaburo Oe, Nobel Laureate and Critic of Postwar Japan, Dies at 88," The New York Times, March 13, 2023. Retrieved September 14, 2023.
  7. 7.0 7.1 "Nobel prize-winning author Kenzaburo Oe dies," BBC News, March 13, 2023. Retrieved September 14, 2023.
  8. 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 Kathleen Benoza, "Nobel-winning Japanese novelist Kenzaburo Oe dies at 88," The Japan Times, March 13, 2023. Retrieved September 14, 2023.
  9. 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 Michiko N. Wilson, The Marginal World of Oe Kenzaburo (M. E. Sharpe Incorporated, 1986, ISBN 978-0765635648), 12. Retrieved September 14, 2023.
  10. Kenzaburō Ōe, Shōsetsu no hōhō (The Method of a Novel) (Tokyo, JN: Iwanami, 1978), 197.
  11. 11.0 11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4 Michiko N. Wilson, The Marginal World of Ōe Kenzaburō: A Study in Themes and Techniques (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1986, ISBN 978-0873323437), 29, 32, 47, 61, 135.
  12. Kenzaburō Ōe, Ōe Kenzaburō Zensakuhin (Complete Works of Oe Kenzaburo): Vol. 2. Supplement No. 3 (Tokyo, JN: Shinchosha, 1968), 16.
  13. 13.0 13.1 Nick Kapur, Japan at the Crossroads: Conflict and Compromise after Anpo (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018, ISBN 978-0674984424), 177, 216, 254, 257. Retrieved September 23, 2023.
  14. Paul Theroux, "Speaking of Books: Creative Dissertating; Creative Dissertating", New York Times, February 8, 1970. Retrieved September 14, 2023.
  15. "A Healing Family," Kirkus, 1996. Retrieved September 23, 2023.
  16. 16.0 16.1 Norimitsu Onishi, "Japanese Court Rejects Defamation Lawsuit Against Nobel Laureate," The New York Times, March 29, 2008. Retrieved September 15, 2023.
  17. Norimitsu Onishi "The Saturday Profile: Released From Rigors of a Trial, a Nobel Laureate's Ink Flows Freely," New York Times, May 17, 2008. Retrieved September 15, 2023.
  18. Chiaki Yoshimura, "Oe's latest novel offers glimmer of hope in a world beset by catastrophe," The Asahi Shimbun, December 16, 2013. Retrieved September 15, 2023.
  19. Kenzaburō Ōe and Noam Chomsky, "An Exchange on Current Affairs," World Literature Today, 76(2) (2002): 29.
  20. "Nobel laureate Oe urges nation to end reliance on nuclear power," The Japan Times, September 8, 2011.
  21. "Some 8,000 March in Tokyo Against Restart of Any Nuclear Power Plants," Mainichi Daily News, September 15, 2013. Retrieved September 15, 2023.
  22. Ideaki Ishibashi, "Writer Oe calls for stopping moves to revise Constitution,"Asahi Shimbun, May 18, 2013. Retrieved September 15, 2023.
  23. Pamuk Ōe, "World needs imagination," Yomiuri Shimbun, May 18, 2008. Retrieved September 15, 2023.
  24. 24.0 24.1 James Sterngold, "Nobel in Literature Goes to Kenzaburo Oe of Japan," The New York Times, October 14, 1994. Retrieved September 15, 2023.
  25. Michiko Niikuni Wilson, "Kenzaburo Oe: Laughing Prophet and Soulful Healer," The Nobel Prize. Retrieved September 15, 2023.
  26. 26.0 26.1 26.2 26.3 26.4 "Kenzaburō Ōe," Grove Atlantic. Retrieved September 15, 2023.
  27. Edward Fowler, The Rhetoric of Confession: Shishosetsu in Early Twentieth-Century Japanese Fiction (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1988, ISBN 978-0520060647), 295.
  28. "Novelist Ōe inducted into France's Legion of Honor," Free Online Library. Retrieved September 15, 2023.
  29. "Kodansha creates Kenzaburo Oe literary award," The Japan Times October 6, 2005. Retrieved September 15, 2023.
  30. "大江健三郎賞," Kodansha. Retrieved September 15, 2023.
  31. 31.0 31.1 Christopher Tayler, "The Changeling by Kenzaburo Oe," The Guardian, June 11, 2010. Retrieved September 15, 2023.
  32. 32.0 32.1 Xiaolei Jing, "Embracing Foreign Literature," Beijing Review. Retrieved September 15, 2023.
  33. 33.0 33.1 "Nobel-winning anti-war author Kenzaburo Oe dies at 88," Asahi Shimbun, March 13, 2023. Retrieved September 15, 2023.
  34. 34.0 34.1 34.2 34.3 Emiko Sakurai, "Kenzaburō Ōe: The Early Years," World Literature Today 58(3) (Summer 1984): 370–373. Retrieved September 15, 2023.
  35. Marleigh Grayer Ryan, "'And a Little Child Shall Lead Them': The Agency of the Innocent in an Early Story by Ōe Kenzaburō," World Literature Today 76(2) (Spring 2002): 49–57. Retrieved September 15, 2023.
  36. 36.0 36.1 Janet Goff, "Two Novels: Seventeen & J," Japan Quarterly 44(1) (January–March 1997): 102–103. Retrieved September 15, 2023.
  37. 37.0 37.1 Luke M. Reinsma, "The Flight of Kenzaburo Oe," Christianity and Literature 48(1) (Autumn 1998): 61–77. Retrieved September 15, 2023.
  38. 38.0 38.1 38.2 Michiko N. Wilson, "Oe's Obsessive Metaphor, Mori, the Idiot Son: Toward the Imagination of Satire, Regeneration, and Grotesque Realism," The Journal of Japanese Studies 7(1) (Winter 1981): 23–52. Retrieved September 15, 2023.
  39. John Rodden, "Team play: Translator John Nathan on Oe Kenzaburo, the 1994 Nobel Prize winner," The Midwest Quarterly 43(4) (Summer 2002): 281–297. Retrieved September 15, 2023.
  40. John Whittier Treat, "Hiroshima Nōto and Ōe Kenzaburō's Existentialist Other," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 47(1) (June 1987): 97–136. Retrieved September 15, 2023.
  41. 41.0 41.1 Susan J. Napier, "Marginal Arcadias: Ōe Kenzaburō's Pastoral and Antipastoral," Review of Japanese Culture and Society (5) (December 1993): 48–58. Retrieved September 15, 2023.
  42. 42.0 42.1 42.2 42.3 42.4 Sanroku Yoshida, "The Burning Tree: The Spatialized World of Kenzaburō Ōe," World Literature Today 69(1) (Winter 1995): 10–16. Retrieved September 15, 2023.
  43. John Nathan and Kenzaburō Ōe, "A Mythical Topos: A Dialogue," Grand Street (55) (Winter 1996): 39–46. Retrieved September 15, 2023.
  44. Kinya Nishi, "The Dialectics of Realist Imagination: Adorno's Aesthetics and Contemporary Japanese Fiction," Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics 45(2) (Summer 2022): 85–96. Retrieved September 15, 2023.
  45. John David Morley, "Her Brother's Keeper," The New York Times, November 17, 1996. Retrieved September 23, 2023.
  46. Christopher Bolton, et. al., "An Interview with Komatsu Sakyō," Science Fiction Studies 29(3) (November 2002): 323–339. Retrieved September 23, 2023.
  47. Kenzaburō Ōe, "Japan, the Ambiguous, and Myself,' The Australian Quarterly 67(2) (Winter 1995): 1–10. Retrieved September 23, 2023.
  48. Matthew Mizenko, "Review: A Healing Family by Ο̄e Kenzaburο̄ and Stephen Snyder," Monumenta Nipponica 52(2) (Summer 1997): 266–268. Retrieved September 23, 2023.
  49. Kyle Minor, "Review: Somersault by Kenzaburo Oe," The Antioch Review 61(3) (Summer 2003): 582–583. Retrieved September 23, 2023.
  50. Janet Ashby, "Kenzaburo Oe: Bridging the generation gap," The Japan Times, October 14, 2001. Retrieved September 23, 2023.
  51. Seiro Bantarō, "Modern Japanese Literature and 'Don Quixote'," trans. Franz Prichard Review of Japanese Culture and Society (18) (December 2006): 132–146. Retrieved September 23, 2023.
  52. Terry Hong, "'Death by Water' takes readers on a wild ride of epic proportions," The Christian Science Monitor, October 6, 2015. Retrieved September 23, 2023.
  53. Philippe Pons, "Kenzaburô Oe : « L'âge n'apporte pas la sérénité »," Le Monde, May 21, 2015. Retrieved September 23, 2023.

References
ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

Further reading

  • Kimura, Akio. Faulkner and Oe: The Self-Critical Imagination. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2007. ISBN 978-0761836636
  • Rapp, Rayne, and Faye Ginsburg. "Enabling Disability: Rewriting Kinship, Reimagining Citizenship," Public Culture 13(3): 533–556.

External links

Link retrieved September 26, 2023.


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