Kenzaburo Oe, the Japanese Nobel-Prize-winning author, has passed away aged 88. His wealth of novels, short stories and critical essays tackle subjects ranging from militarism and nuclear disarmament to innocence and trauma.
He was born in 1935 in Ose, a remote village in Japan. He was known for his stance against Japanese militaristic tendencies. He opposed renewing the security treaty with the US, and his presence in the Paris march against the Algerian War made him a speaker for Japan’s post-war youth.
Oe was known for being a voice for those affected by the country’s failures. His art moves from the personal to the political, exploring how an individual can overcome humiliation by confronting life’s tragedies while also finding dignity and a renewed sense of responsibility in fighting for loved ones. His works were influenced by Sartre and American literature, featuring many disfranchised antiheroes. He became a target of Japanese conservatives for his criticism of the emperor and the sexual explicitness of some of his works.
The post-war period spurred his writing, and he published his first book in 1957. The Catch is about a friendship between a Japanese child and an American prisoner of war. Similarly, his novel Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids follows a group of youths who evacuated to a village in the war but are then abandoned by its villagers. At the end of the novel, a village leader reads a Bible extract, the letter of Ephesians, in which the two words ‘New Man’ represent the role Japanese youth should play in cultivating a better future for the country.
In 1964, Oe’s son Hikari was born with a herniated brain, and Oe was urged by doctors to let him die. This prompted him to write three major novels about families coming to terms with the disability of their child: A Personal Matter, The Flood onto my Soul and The Pinchrunner.
In 1995, he wrote a bestselling essay collection, A Healing Family, in which he credited Hikari for teaching him the healing power of art. “I was trained as a writer and as a human being by the birth of my son”, he told the Guardian in 2005. Hikari also went on to become a musical prodigy and award-winning composer. Upon the book’s release, he rejected accusations of exploiting his son by writing about him. He declared, “[o]ur relationship is a real one. It’s the most important thing: life comes first, and literature second… I’m always happy to be with him. I can be very lonely and fearful of people. But with my son, I’m very free”. A Healing Family demonstrates how a society should treat disabled people and how we can learn from them.
Oe continued to write into his late seventies, and his last book, In Late Style, was published in 2013. This final work marks the end of a legacy of speaking out against war, nuclear power, and the revival of Japanese nationalism, urging official compensation for Korean wartime “comfort women” and calling for Japan to focus on reconciliation with its neighbours.
Image “File:Oe kenzaburo japaninstitut koeln 041108.jpg” by Hpschaefer is licensed under CC BY 3.0.