Ōe Kenzaburō

Ōe Kenzaburō (born January 31, 1935, Ehime prefecture, Shikoku, Japan—died March 3, 2023) was a Japanese novelist whose works express the disillusionment and rebellion of his post-World War II generation. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1994.

Ōe came from a family of wealthy landowners who lost most of their property with the occupation-imposed land reform following the war. He entered the University of Tokyo in 1954 and graduated in 1959. The brilliance of his writing while he was still a student caused him to be hailed the most promising young writer since Mishima Yukio.

Ōe first attracted attention on the literary scene with Shisha no ogori (1957; Lavish Are the Dead), published in the magazine Bungakukai. His literary output was, however, uneven. His first novel, Memushiri kouchi (1958; Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids), was highly praised, and he won a major literary award, the Akutagawa Prize, for Shiiku (1958; The Catch). But his second novel, Warera no jidai (1959; “Our Age”), was poorly received, as his contemporaries felt that Ōe was becoming increasingly preoccupied with social and political criticism.

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Ōe became deeply involved in the politics of the New Left. The murder in 1960 of Chairman Asanuma Inejirō of the Japanese Socialist Party by a right-wing youth inspired Ōe to write two short stories in 1961, “Sebuntin” (“Seventeen”) and “Seiji shōnen shisu,” the latter of which drew heavy criticism from right-wing organizations.

Married in 1960, Ōe entered a further stage of development in his writing when his son was born with a brain hernia in 1963 and the ensuing surgery left him intellectually disabled. This event inspired his finest novel, Kojinteki-na taiken (1964; A Personal Matter), a darkly humorous account of a new father’s struggle to accept the birth of his brain-damaged child. A visit to Hiroshima resulted in the work Hiroshima nōto (1965; Hiroshima Notes), which deals with the survivors of the atomic bombing of that city. In the early 1970s Ōe’s writing, particularly his essays, reflected a growing concern for power politics in the nuclear age and with questions involving the developing world.

Ōe continued to investigate the problems of characters who feel alienated from establishment conformity and the materialism of postwar Japan’s consumer-oriented society. Among his later works were the novel Man’en gannen no futtōbōru (1967; The Silent Cry), a collection of short fiction entitled Warera no kyōki o ikinobiru michi o oshieyo (1969; Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness), and the novels Pinchi rannā chōsho (1976; The Pinch Runner Memorandum) and Dōjidai gēmu (1979; “Coeval Games”).

The novel Atarashii hito yo meza meyo (1983; Rise Up O Young Men of the New Age!) is distinguished by a highly sophisticated literary technique and by the author’s frankness in personal confession; it concerns the growing up of a mentally retarded boy and the tension and anxiety he arouses in his family. Ōe’s Jinsei no shinseki (1989; An Echo of Heaven) uses the life and work of the American writer Flannery O’Connor as a reference point for exploring the suffering and possible salvation of a woman beset by a number of personal tragedies. Chenjiringu (2000; The Changeling) tells the story of a writer who relives his personal history, often in a dreamlike and surreal manner, after he receives a collection of audiotapes from an estranged friend who appears to have recorded his own suicide. In Suishi (2009; Death by Water) the writer Kogito Choko—Ōe’s alter ego, who appears in previous works—attempts to pen a novel about his father’s death. Ōe later published In reito sutairu (2013; “In Late Style”).

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