Hello Gentle Reader
One of the greatest Japanese writers of the Postwar years, Ōe Kenzaburō was a complex and intensely uncompromising writer. His novels were both deeply personal as they were difficult and dense. Working in the shadow of the great Kawabata Yasunari and the nationalist Mishima Yukio, Ōe Kenzaburō wrote about Japan’s failures and defeat after the Second World War, which allowed Ōe explore the main components of his literary themes, such as militarism, nuclear disarmament, shame, betrayal, trauma, and the loss of innocence. Ōe Kenzaburō recalled as a child in elementary school being taught that the Japanese emperor was a living god, an illusion that was quickly shattered when all of Japan heard the emperors voice over the radio and his concession of defeat and admittance in surrender. This lasting sense of betrayal and shame stuck with Ōe throughout his life and is a noticeable literary influence. Another major literary influence was the birth of his son Hikari, whose birth and cognitive challenges became some of Ōe’s most impactful novels: “A Personal Matter,” “A Quite Life,” “Rouse Up, O Young Men of the New Age!”. Yet his social-political works: “A Silent Cry,” (remarked as his masterpiece), “Prize Stock,” “Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids,” “Death by Water,” where particularly regarded as masterful critiques of postwar Japanese society, and its subsequent transformation through the coming decades. Ōe Kenzaburō’s prose was heavily influenced by global and western writers, which includes William Faulkner (who Ōe is frequently compared to), W.B. Yeats, William Blake, Jean-Paul Sartre and other existentialist philosophers and writers. Being unabashed or ashamed of taking influence from external geographical, linguistic, and cultural spheres certainly branded Ōe as an outsider within the Japanese literary community, but he carved out a space that was singularly his own, while crafting a complex and often difficult literary oeuvre, which are celebrated masterful works of post-war Japanese literature, both as reckonings and as criticism, having once called Japan, morally speaking, a third-world country, whereby Ōe Kenzaburō revolted against the niceties and celebrations of other writers: Mishima Yukio, Kawabata Yasunari, and Tanizaki Jun'ichirō. In addition to his literary works, Ōe Kenzaburō was an active activist and pacifist, protesting nuclear energy being used in Japan, nuclear weapons, as well as a revitalization of nationalistic tendencies and a strengthening military.
Throughout his life, Ōe Kenzaburō was an accomplished and extraordinary writer, but also an uncompromising and devoted writer to moral causes and concerns. Truly an amazing writer and public individual, but also one of the most important and accomplished Nobel Laureates in the later half of the 20th Century.
Rest in Peace Ōe Kenzaburō.
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
M. Mary
For Further Reading:
BBC: Nobel Prize Winning Author Kenzaburo Oe dies
The Guardian: Kenzaburo Oe, Nobel prize-winning Japanese writer, dies aged 88
The New York Times: Kenzaburo Oe, Nobel Laureate and Critic of Postwar Japan, Dies at 88
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