Oe, Kenzaburo (31 January 1935 - )
Kenzaburō Ōe (31 January 1935 - )
Hidehisa Hirano
University of Himeji–Dokkyo
1994 Nobel Prize in Literature Presentation Speech
Press Release: The Nobel Prize in Literature 1994
Ōe: Nobel Lecture, 7 December 1994
This entry was expanded by Hirano from his Ōe entry in DLB 182: Japanese Fiction Writers Since World War II.
BOOKS: Shisha no ogori (Tokyo: Bungei Shunjūsha, 1958)–includes “Shiiku,” translated by John Nathan as “Prize Stock” in Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness: Four Short Novels (New York: Grove, 1977);
Memushiri kouchi (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1958); translated by Paul St. John Mackintosh and Maki Sugiyama as Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids (London: Marion Boyars, 1995);
Miru mae ni tobe (Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 1958);
Warera no jidai (Tokyo: Chūō Kōronsha, 1959);
Yoru yo yuruyakani ayume (Tokyo: Chūō Kōronsha, 1959);
Kodoku na seinen no kyūka (Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 1960);
Seinen no omei (Tokyo: Bungei Shunjūsha, 1960);
Ōe Kenzaburō shū (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 1960);
Okurete kita seinen (Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 1962);
Sekai no zoakamonotachi (Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 1962);
Yōroppa no koe, boku jihin no koe (Tokyo: Mainichi Shinbunsha, 1962);
Sakebigoe (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1963);
Seiteki ningen (Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 1963);
Nichijō seikatsu no bōken (Tokyo: Bungei Shunjūsha, 1964);
Kojinteki na taiken (Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 1964); translated by Nathan as A Personal Matter (New York: Grove, 1968);
Genshuku na tsunawatari (Tokyo: Bungei Shunjūsha, 1965);
Hiroshima nōto (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, Iwanami Shinsho, 1965); translated by David L. Swain and Toshi Yonezawa as Hiroshima Notes (Tokyo: YMCA Press, 1982);
Ōe Kenzaburō zensakuhin,first series, 6 volumes (Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 1966-1967);
Man en gannen no futtobōru (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1967); translated by John Bester as The Silent Cry (Tokyo: Kōdansha International / New York: Harper & Row, 1974) ;
Fizoku suru kokorozashi (Tokyo: Bungei Shunjūsha, 1968);
Warera no kyōki o ikinobiru michi o oshieyo (Tokyo:Shinchōsha, 1969); translated by Nathan as Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness in Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness: Four Short Noυels;
Kowaremono toshite no ningen (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1970);
Kakujidai no sōzōryoku (Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 1970);
Okinawa nōto (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten/Iwanami Shin sho, 1970);
Shigetō Fumio to no taidan: Genbakugo no ningen (Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 1970);
Mizukara waga namida o nuguitamau hi (Tokyo: Kōdansha,1972); translated by Nathan as The Day He Himself Shall Wipe My Tears Away in Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness: Four Short Novels;
Kujira no shimetsu suru hi (Tokyo: Bungei Shunjūsha, 1972) ;
Kozui wa waga tamashii ni oyobi,2 volumes (Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 1973);
Dōjidai toshite no sengo (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1973);
Jōkyō e (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1974);
Bungaku nōto: fu 15-hen (Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 1974);
Pinchirannā chōsho (Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 1976); translated by Michiko N. Wilson and Michael K. Wilson as The Pinch Runner Memorandum (Armonk, N.Y.: Sharpe, 1993);
Kotoba ni yotte Jōkyō, Bungaku (Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 1976);
Ōe Wenzaburō ensakuhin,second series, 6 volumes (Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 1977-1978);
Shōsetsu nohōhō (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1978);
Hyōgen suru mono Fōkyō, Bungaku (Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 1978);
Dōjidai gēmu (Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 1979);
Gendai denki shū (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1980);
Hōhō o yomu (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1980);
Ōe Kenzaburō Dōjidai ronshu, 10 volumes (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1980-1981);
Rein tsurii o kiku onnatachi (Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 1982);
Kaku no taika to ningen no koe (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1982);
Hiroshima kara oiroshima e (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1982);
Atarashii hito yo mezameyo (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1983); translated by Nathan as Rouse Up O Young Men of the. New Age! (New York: Grove, 2002; London: Atlantic, 2002);
Ikani ki o korosu ka (Tokyo: Bungei Shunjūsha, 1984); Nihon gendai no yumanisuto: Watanabe Kazuo o yomu (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1984);
Kaba ni kamareru (Tokyo: Bungei Shunjōsha, 1985);
Shōsetsu no takurami, chi no tanoshimi (Tokyo: Shinchūsha, 1985);
Ikikata no teigi–futatabi Jōkyō e (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1985);
M/T to mori no fushigi no monogatari (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1986);
Natsukashii toshi e no tegami (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1987);
Kirupu no gundan (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1988);
Atarashii bungaku no tame ni (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, Iwanami Shinsho, 1988);
Saigo no shōsetsu (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1988);
Jinsei no shinseki (Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 1989); translated by Margaret Mitsutani as An Echo of Heaven (Tokyo & New York: Kōdansha International, 1996);
Chiryōtō (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1990);
Shizukana seikatsu (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1990); translated by Kunioki Yanagishita and William Wetherall as A Quiet Life (New York: Grove, 1996);
Takemitsu Tōru to no taidan: Opera o tsukuru (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, Iwanami Shinsho, 1990);
Chiryōtō wakusei (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1991);
Hiroshima no seimei no ki (Tokyo: Nippon Hōsō Shuppan Kyōkai, 1991);
Boku ga hontō ni wakakatta koro (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1992);
Finsei no shūkan (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1992);
Bungaku sainyūmon (Tokyo: Nippon Hōsō Shuppan Kyōkai, 1992);
Moeagaru midori no ki: Sukuinushi ga nagurareru made (Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 1993);
Shinnen no aisatsu (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1993);
Moeagaru midori no ki: Yureugoku (Vashirēshon) (Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 1994);
Shōsetsu no keiken (Tokyo: Asahi Shinbunsha, 1994); Moeagaru midori no ki:Ōi naru hi ni (Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 1995);
Aimai na Nihon no watashi (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten/Iwanami Shinsho, 1995); translated by Kunioki Yanagishita and Hisaaki Yamanouchi in Japan, the Ambiguous, and Myself: The Nobel Prize Speech and Other Lectures (Tokyo: Kōdansha International, 1995);
Gestern, υor 50 Jahren: Ein deutsche japanischer Brifechsel, byŌe and Günter Grass (Göttingen: Steidl, 1995); translated by John Barrett as lust rsterday, Fifty years Ago: A Critical Dialogue on the Anniversary of the End of the Second World War (Paris: Alyscamps, 1999);
Kaifuku suru kazoku (Tokyo: Kōdansha,1995); translated by Stephen Snyder as A Healing Family (Tokyo & New York: Kōdansha International, 1996);
Nihon no watashi kara no tegami (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, Iwanami Shinsho, 1996);
Nihongo to nihonjin no kokoro,by Ōe, Hayao Kawai, and Shuntarö Tanikawa (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1996);
Yuruyaka na kizuna,by Ōe and Yukari ōe (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1996);
Watashi to iu shō setuka no tukuri kata (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1998);
Chū gaeri,2 volumes (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1999); translated by Philip Gabriel as Somersault (New York: Grove, 2003; London: Atlantic, 2003);
Torikaego: Chenjiringu/Changeling (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 2000);
Onaji tosi ni umarete ongaku, bungaku ga bokura wo tukutta,
by Ōe and Seiji Ozawa (Tokyo: Chūō kōKronsha, 2001);
Sakoku site ha naranai (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 2001);
“Fibun no ki” no sitade (Tokyo: Asahi Shinbunsha, 2001);
Urei gao no dō ji (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 2002);
“Atarashō hito” no hō e,byŌe and Yukari Ōe (Tokyo: Asahi Shinbunsha, 2003);
Nihyakunen no kodomo (Tokyo: Chūō Kōronsha, 2003);
“Hanashite kangaeru” to “kaite kangaeru” (Tokyo: Shueisha, 2004);
Sayonara watashi no hon yo! (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 2005).
Editions in English: Two Novels: Seventeen, J,translated by Luk Van Haute (New York: Blue Moon Books, 1996);
On Politics and Literature: Two Lectures (Berkeley, Cal.: Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities, 1999);
Who’s Afraid of the Tasmanian Wolf ?: A Lecture,translated
by Kunioki Yanagishita (Las Vegas: Rainmaker Editions, 2003).
OTHER: The Crazy Iris and Other Stories of the Atomic Aftermath,edited by Ōe (New York: Grove, 1985); published as Fire from the Ashes: Short Stories about Hiroshima and Nagasaki (London: Readers International,1985).
KenzaburōŌe is one of the outstanding representatives of contemporary Japanese literature. In a literary career extending over several decades he has produced a large number of works, and in Japan he has received several prestigious literary awards, including the Akutagawa Prize (1958), the Tanizaki Jun’ichirō Prize (1967), and the Noma Literary Prize (1973). He has also been highly praised overseas, receiving the Europelia Award from the EC (1989), the Italian Mondelosso Prize (1993), and the Nobel Prize in Literature (1994). The citation for the Nobel Prize noted that through his “poetic force” Ōe “creates an imagined world where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament today.” He was likewise hailed for his relentless search for ways in which mankind can survive together beneath the threat of nuclear annihilation, and for his writing about his symbiotic relationship with his handicapped son. Ōe is only the second Japanese writer to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, following Yasunari Kawabata in 1968. He has paid many visits overseas, giving lectures and participating in literary symposia and seminars, and in addition to his studies of literature he has been one of the most internationally minded writers in modern Japan. His works have been translated into many languages, including English, German, and French. In this manner, Ōe, though his origins are in the margins of Japanese society, has become an international writer by virtue of a literary imagination born of ceaseless effort.
Ōe was born the fifth of seven children of a merchant in Ōse-mura, Ehime Prefecture, on 31 January 1935. Ōse-mura is a small village in a ravine deep in the mountains of Shikoku, the smallest of the four main islands of Japan, and can certainly be characterized as lying in the “margins” of the country. At the time Ō was born, premodern myths and legends still played a vibrant role in the daily lives of the villagers. He was raised hearing these tales from his grandmother and other elderly members of the village. The density of the natural setting on the fringes and these myths and legends shaped Ōe’s fundamental sensibilities. Many of his most important literary works are set against these two features. His earliest fiction, including “Shiiku” (1958; translated as “Prize Stock” in Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness: Four Short Novels,1977), Memushiri kouchi (1958; translated as Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids,1995), and the first part of Okurete kita semen (1962, The Youth Who Arrived Too Late), is set in these marginal regions. Works from his middle period, including Man en gannen no futtobõru (1967, Football in 1860; translated as The Silent Cry,1974), Dõjidai gõmu (1979, The Game of Contemporaneity), M/T’ to mori no fushigi no monogatari (1986, M/T and the Story of the Wonders of the Forest), Natsukashii toshi e no tegami (1987, Letter to a Fondly Remembered Year), and Moeagaru midori no ki (1993-1995, Flaming Green Tree), are based on the myths and legends of his homeland.
Ōe himself has said that he was fated to become the teller of the tales of his home. It is also of significance that the Ōe family worked neither as farmers nor as loggers but as mercantile agents, involved in the exchange of goods on a daily basis. This commodity exchange naturally includes the exchange of information, creating an openness to the outside world. There is a strong tendency in Japan to consider Ōe’s work almost autistically self-contained, but in reality an awareness of the outside world is vital in the formation of a writer who thrives on self-expression.
When Ōe was nine, first his grandmother, then his father passed away. The loss of his father proved to be the source of such literary works as “Chichi yo, anata wa doko e iku no ka?” (1968, Father, Where Are You Going?) and Warera no kyōki o ikinobiru michi o oshieyo (1969; translated as Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness,1977), which ponder the three-way relationship shared by ōe, his father, and his son.
Ōe was ten when Japan surrendered on 15 August 1945. The surrender was a pivotal experience for the young boy. The overnight shift from an uncompromisingly fanatic belief in the imperial institution and militarism to democracy provided material for such works as “Fui no oshi” (1958, The Sudden Mute), the first part of Okurete kita semen,and Mizukara waga namidaŌ nuguitamau hi (1972; translated as The Day He Himself Shall Wipe My Tars Away,1977). More important,Ōe took the progressive reformations spearheaded by the American Occupation as the definition of postwar democracy, and it became the philosophical backbone of his existence. He has called himself a “product of postwar democracy.” His faith in postwar democracy is linked to his reputation as a writer. With the collapse of Cold War institutions, designations such as “left wing” and “right wing” are essentially meaningless, but Ōe is widely (particularly overseas) perceived as a radical progressive. But in Japan, he has at various times been subject to harsh criticism from both the new left-wing and conservative factions. His stance is better seen as one inherited from Western European humanists in the classical sense of that term, although he clearly aims to overcome some of the limitations of that classification. The stamp of postwar democracy is more pronounced in his criticism and essays than in his works of fiction.
Ōe left the margins behind and entered the French literature department at Tokyo University. There he was enthralled by his reading of Jean-Paul Sartre in the original French. In 1957, at the age of twenty-two while still in his third year at college, Ōe published a story titled “Kimyō na shigoto” (A Strange Job) that brought him into the limelight. The first-person narrator is a college student who gets a part-time job beating to death and skinning dogs that have been used in animal experimentation. He quickly discovers, however, that the whole enterprise is a fraud being perpetrated by a butcher’s shop; besides being bitten by a dog, he finds that his two days of labor may all have been for naught. A story with a similar theme, “Shisha no ogori” (Lavish Are the Dead), was published the same year, this time about another college student whose job is to transport human corpses for autopsies; here, too, something is amiss and his work is all in vain. The following year, 1958, Ōe published “Shiiku,” which received the Akutagawa Prize, an award that could well be called the passport to a career as a professional writer in Japan. In this story, just before the end of the war, an African American pilot parachutes into a mountain village in Japan, where he becomes the prisoner of the villagers. But the youth of the village treat him like a pet animal. In an instant, however, this story of pastoral fraternization is transformed into a tragedy. The war strikes a direct blow against this remote village, and the young protagonist realizes that his age of innocence has come to an end.
The pinnacle of Ōe’s earliest works is perhaps his novel Memushiri kouchi,also published in 1958. Here a group of young men from a reformatory have been evacuated to a mountain village during the war, but with the outbreak of an epidemic among them, the villagers all flee, and the delinquents are left on their own. They are joined by a fugitive soldier–a young Korean living in Japan–and a girl abandoned because she has contracted the plague. When the epidemic subsides and the villagers return, the story examines the subsequent fate of this commune-like group. The novel was lavishly praised for its command of fresh imagery and its original style. In the afterword to his first published book, Ōe wrote, “Thinking about situations in which one is confined, situations in which one has to live behind an unscalable wall—these have been my pervasive themes.” One can see within this “confined situation” the influence of Sartre’s philosophy of existentialism and the sense of rejection Ōe felt from the world around him when he moved to the center of intellectual activity in Tokyo, where he found himself behind a “wall” of differences in language, tradition, and values. These attitudes struck a responsive chord among young people in Japan who had been left without a sense of purpose, having lost a target for rebellion as Japan began racing along the road of high economic growth, leaving them with only a sense of empty futility. Ōe in his writing had anticipated the tenor of the times.
As a result of these early writings, Ōe moved directly from student to professional writer. He never experienced life in society. He had no military experience and did not participate in any revolutionary movements. This situation did not present any problems to him so long as his focus was upon the childhood years but has been his largest obstacle to overcome in dealing with the practical aspects of life in society. In this regard he stands separate from writers such as Günter Grass or Gabriel García Márquez, both of whom also came from the periphery of their countries.Ōe runs the danger of entrapping himself within the realm of ideas.
Ōe, though he comes from the margins, has had to transform himself into an intellectual in the centrality of Tokyo. The contradictions and tensions inherent in this situation have become a conscious problem that never leaves his mind and have at the same time become the wellspring for his literary imagination. Okurete kita semenconfronts this dilemma head-on. The second part of the novel depicts the contradiction-laden battle by a man from the margins who must try to determine how to attain social ascendancy in Tokyo.Ōe has described this work as “something that could well be called a spiritual autobiography in which I examine my own identity.”
In 1960 Ōe married Yukari Ikeuchi, daughter of movie director and essayist Mansaku Itami (pseudonym of Yoshitoyo Ikeuchi). That same year, he became an active participant in the movement protesting revision and renewal of the U.S.–Japan Security Treaty. He also traveled to China, on his first foreign excursion, as part of a group of Japanese writers, and there had an audience with Mao Zedong. In October the chairman of the Japan Socialist Party, which was opposed to the Security Treaty, was in the middle of a public speech when he was stabbed to death by a young right-wing radical. Ōe was shocked to discover that a member of the postwar generation, born even later than he, could be transformed into an ardent right-wing imperialist, and in the following year he published the story “Sebuntīn” (translated as “Seventeen” in Two Novels: Seventeen,J,1996) in which the protagonist is modeled after this young man. A sequel to this story, “Seiji shonen shisu” (A Political Youth Dies), was violently attacked by right-wing groups and was never published. Some ten years after the assassination of the socialist leader, one of Ōe’s chief literary rivals, Yukio Mishima, called for direct imperial rule and then disemboweled himself. Spurred by this event, Ōe wrote such works as Mizukara waga namida o nuguitamau hi. He has continued to regard the problems of the imperial institution as one of the themes of his writing.
From around 1960 Ōe was also heavily influenced by the work of Norman Mailer. Drawn to Mailer’s belief that “sex is the last unexplored territory left in the twentieth century,” Ōe threw himself into an examination of “sexual matters” as the truest danger for modern man. Novels such as Seiteki ningen (1963, Sexual Beings) are part of this examination. He boldly treats such subjects as orgies, rape, homosexuality, and various molesters. As one of Ōe’s contemporaries, writer ShintarŌ Ishihara, pointed out at the time they were written, however, these works suffered from being too ideological.
Ōe in his childhood had already read Mark Twain’s The dventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), which he described as one of the works that determined the course of his life, but his admiration for Mailer led him even more deeply into American literature. He read widely and deeply from such authors as William Faulkner, Herman Melville, Flannery O’Connor, Malcolm Lowry, James Baldwin, and Kurt Vonnegut. Ōe’s first trip to the United States was in 1965, but he became a frequent visitor thereafter. American literature became one of the important pillars of his own literary life. But without something further to deepen his writing he most likely would have remained simply a “talented” author.
In 1963 Ōe’s eldest son, Hikari, was born handicapped with a brain hernia as a result of an abnormality in his skull. This incident came as a shock to Ōe both in his personal life and in his literary life. His first piece of writing to deal with a handicapped infant was the story “Sora no kaibutsu Aguii” (1964; translated as “Aghwee the Sky Monster” in Taech Us to Outgrow Our Madness: Four Short Novels,1977). A handicapped baby is born to the wealthy D and his wife. D, who is a composer, agrees to let the child waste away by giving him water instead of milk. After the child dies and his wife divorces him, D is haunted by an apparition of a kangaroo wearing a white diaper. Then one day when the monster Aghwee appears in the sky, D steps in front of an automobile, leaving onlookers to wonder whether his death was an accident or suicide.
Six months later Kojinteki na taiken (1964; translated as A Personal Matter,1968), one of the most important monuments of Ōe’s literary career, was published. A young schoolteacher called Bird dreams of escaping to Africa, but a handicapped child is born to his wife. In despair, he is painfully tempted by the desire to escape responsibility by having the hospital give the infant only water and letting it die. He crawls into the cave like home of a female friend. Rendered impotent by the shock of the child’s birth, he regains his sexual powers through the self-sacrifice of this woman. Once he decides to have surgery performed on the infant, however, he declines this woman’s proposal that he accompany her to Africa. The operation is a success, and tranquility returns to his home. Mishima was harshly critical of this ending to the novel. But Ōe had decided to live with his handicapped son. At around the same time, Ōe was buoyed by the dignitéhe had observed among survivors of the atomic bombing and their supporters, which he describes in Hiroshima nōto (1965; translated as Hiroshima Notes,1982), and the determination to live alongside his ailing son was expanded to embrace the problem of human beings coexisting with one another in the nuclear age.
Ōe commented, “With the birth of my handicapped son, I concluded that the kind of writing I had been doing, even though it was my own work, had no value for the sake of the tomorrow when I would be living along with my child.” He added, “I could not write any kind of story that was separate from the monstrous birth that had taken place in my own family.” His later fictions all deal in one form or another with the problem of a handicapped child. The first to treat the subject directly is Kōzui wa waga tamashii ni oyobi (1973, The Flood Waters Have Come in unto My Soul), which centers around a father and his handicapped child who live in an atomic-bomb shelter. They eventually come in contact with a group of young men and women who have settled in the neighborhood, but they are caught up in a murder that occurs within the group, are sought after by the police, and become embroiled in a war of annihilation against a riot squad. Although it was published after the incident occurred, the novel in manuscript form anticipated the internal purges and all-out war fought against armed police by the Japanese Red Army forces.
In Pinchirannā Chōsho (1976; translated as The Pinch Runner Memorandum,1993) the main characters are a former technician who is injured in an accident at a nuclear generator plant and the son who is born to him after the accident. They are drawn into several incidents as a result of attending a meeting of people opposed to nuclear generation, and ultimately they come into conflict with a “boss” who is aiming to control Japan through personal possession of nuclear weapons. Through the writing of such works Ōe discovered the innocence inherent in handicapped children and affirmed the value of their lives. However, perhaps because these two works came during a transition period in Ōe’s writings, they are rather difficult to apprehend and read somewhat like comic books aimed at an adult audience. The use of metaphors and similes is extreme, even for Ōe’s works.
In 1976, when Ōe was forty-one, he spent a brief period lecturing in English at the Collegio de México on postwar Japanese intellectual history. His decision to reside for a time in Mexico, which might well be considered on the periphery of the American continent, rather than in Paris or on the eastern seaboard of the United States, took on tremendous meaning for his writing. For one thing, it served as an opportunity for him to reconsider in clear terms the issue of marginality that had been at the forefront of his consciousness since he first left his village home and to consider it a topic in world history. In the theoretical work he published after his return to Japan, Shōsetsu no hōhō (1978, Methodology of the Novel), he conclusively declares, “One must stand on the side of marginality in order to be able to grasp the essence of the dangers attending our contemporary age.” Second, in a development profoundly related to his consciousness of marginality, he became acquainted with Latin American literature through the works of such writers as García Márquez. Another important product of this visit was Ōe’s reading of a book published the previous year by the cultural anthropologist Masao Yamaguchi, which enabled him to deepen his consciousness and solidify the methodology behind his structuralist theories while in Mexico.
Some deride Ōe as a “structuralist-come-lately,” but it is safe to say that Ōe had been an unconscious structuralist for many years, as evidenced by Man’en gannen no futtobōru,published almost a decade earlier in 1967. In that novel Ōe overlaps the images of two brothers in the modern age, MitsusaburŌ and Takashi, with their great–grandfather, who had suppressed an agrarian uprising a century before, and the great–grandfather’s brother, who had been the prime mover behind the rebellion. As various truths about the legends surrounding these ancestors are revealed one after another, the relationship between the modern–day siblings also changes, concluding with the tragic death of the younger brother, who plans and tries to carry out his own uprising as a form of festival. The century separating the lives of these two generations corresponds to the age of modernization for Japan, and Ōe also was fully aware of the battles over the U.S.-Japan Security
Treaty a few years earlier. This novel becomes, in that sense, a precursor to his structuralist philosophies. It is also noteworthy as a prototype for the massive works of later years that would combine a consideration of the periphery with myths and legends.
Ōe’s conscious use of structuralist methodology begins with Dōjidai gēmu,a work that takes the form of a letter written from a teacher living in Mexico to his twin sister. A group of young men, led by a man known as the “Destroyer,” journeys upstream during a mythological age of Genesis to create a new heaven and earth in a mountain gorge. In the age of legend, the Destroyer becomes a dictator and is assassinated by the villagers, and during World War II a violent war is fought between the armies of the Great Japanese Empire and a semi-independent village. Dōjidai gēmuis a pivotal work in Japanese literary history and shares common features with Garcia Márquez’s Cien años de soledad (1967; translated as One Hundred Years of Solitude,1970) and El otoño del patriarca (1975; translated as The Autumn of the Patriarch,1976). Ōe claimed that he had used structuralism as a “prescription” for transforming his uncompleted manuscript into a finished work. Perhaps as a result, the novel is somewhat difficult to understand. Later, Ōe himself said that he continues to feel that “the gulf between the novel and its readers has not been closed.” It is a boldly experimental novel.
Ōe’s adoption of structuralism in the late 1970s began with the concept of “defamiliarization” in the Russian formalist linguistic theories of Viktor Shklovsky and with the “grotesque realism” of Mikhail Bakhtin. From there he proceeded to the structuralist-oriented cultural anthropology of Claude Lévi-Strauss and the comparative religion theories of Mircea Eliade. His approach to structuralism became yet another redirecting of Ōe’s attentions to Europe, which had produced these theories. At the same time, as a citizen of Asia he has retained deep concern and support for such protests as the antidictatorial poetry of South Korea’s Kim Chi-ha.
Ōe became a frequent visitor to Europe after 1980. In 1982 he traveled to Europe to gather materials for a television documentary on the antinuclear movement there in 1987 he attended a roundtable conference on peace in Moscow; he lectured at the university in Louvain, Belgium; he presented another lecture in Brussels when he was given the Europelia Prize in 1989; he served as moderator for a Franco Japanese symposium; he engaged in a public dialogue with Grass at the International Book Fair held in Frankfurt in 1990; and in 1991 he conducted another public dialogue in Paris with Michel Tournier. Partly as a result of these activities, Ōe became a well-known figure in European literary circles, which development had an impact on his receipt of the Nobel Prize.
While it cannot be denied that the adoption of structuralist theories deepened the layers of Ōe’s writing, at the same time it made the reception of his works, such as Dōjidai gēmu,more difficult for the Japanese audience. This difficulty is one of the reasons for divisions that have arisen in the evaluations of Ōe’s fiction. Some critics, such as Jun Etō, give no credence to works after Ōe’s early period; others pay no attention to writings after Man’en gannen no futtobōru;and younger critics direct their studies toward the novels after 1980. Ōe no doubt takes fundamental pride in this division, since it is evidence that his writing has not become stagnant but is always changing, growing, and diversifying.
Ō, however, has not ignored criticisms. M/T to mori no fushigi no monogatari,published seven years after Dōjidai gēmu,is one product of the self-reflection that has resulted from his reevaluations of his work. There are some similarities to Dōjidai gēmuin the use of myth and legend, but the impression left by this work is completely different. The earlier work is in epistolary form, but M/T to mori no fushigi no monogatari is told in the traditional narrative style common since ancient times in Japan. This novel presents the fruits of Ōe’s groping and struggling for a style of narration. It is also closely tied to a change in his methodology, representing not merely an extension of his work in Dōjidai gēmubut also an act of creativity undertaken from a position 180 degrees removed from that earlier work. DŌjidai gēmumay be called a “patriarchal” novel, describing a group of people led by the Destroyer. The Min M/Tis an abbreviation of “matriarch,” while the T stands for “Trickster.” The novel weaves together this M and T and shifts from the sexual matters that represent the greatest threat to human existence in Ōe’s work around 1960 to the feminine matters that represent the healing from that danger. This sense of the feminine as the source of salvation can be found in embryonic form in the self-sacrifice of Bird’s mistress in Kojinteki na taiken,but it becomes a clearly vital theme of Ōe’s fiction beginning with M/T to mori no fushigi no monogatari.
Finsei no shinseki (1989, Relatives of Life; translated as An Echo of Heaven,1996) depicts the agony and the ultimate salvation of a young mother whose two handiced children commit suicide. Ōe asks whether salvation is truly available to this woman, who lies on her deathbed in Mexico. Chiryōtō (1990, Tower of Healing) and its sequel, Chiryōtō wakusei (1991, Tower of the Healing Planet), adopt an unusual form for Ōe, that of the science-fiction novel dealing with the near future. One million people are chosen from a world desolated by nuclear warfare and environmental pollution to make their escape to another world. The narrator is a young woman who is among the ochikobore (leftovers) who remain behind; amidst the chaos and desperation of these abandoned ones, she becomes an object used for male sexual satisfaction and has to endure all manner of hardship. The escapees, meanwhile, find that things do not turn out well on their new planet, and they return to Earth. The protagonist falls in love with one of that elite group, and while battling all kinds of difficulties, she becomes pregnant.
Shizukana seikatsu (1990; translated as A Quiet Life,1996) takes the form of a diary written by a young woman busily engaged in writing her graduation thesis. She has to look after her handicapped elder brother and a younger brother who is studying for college entrance exams while her parents are on an extended stay abroad. The narrator of the trilogy that could be called Ōe’s lifework, Moeagaru midori no ki,is a young person who has willingly undergone a sex change to become female.
Another striking feature of Ōe’s writing since the 1980s has been his bold adoption of a literary technique that seems at first glance a return to the traditions of Japanese autobiographical fiction in the shi-shōsetsu (I-novel) form. “Atama no ii òrein tsurii” (The Clever Rain Tree), the opening story in a collection of linked stories titled Rein tsurii o kiku onnatachi (1982, Women Who Listen to the Rain Tree), is based on Ōe’s experiences while participating in a seminar at the University of Hawaii three years previously. This seemingly autobiographical technique assumes dramatic shape at the conclusion to Ōe’s next series of related stories, published as Atarashii hito yo mezameyo (1983; translated as Rouse Up O rung Men ofthe. New Age!2002). The handiced child, who has appeared under a variety of names in previous works, has become a young man who agonizes over sex and death, and he rejects the affectionate name of Eeyore by which his family has always called him. Not until they call him by his real name, Hikari, will he join them at the dinner table.
Ōe has said of this work, “I made no attempt to add in anything that we did not actually experience.” Does this work, then, represent Ōe’s surrender to the traditions of the I-novel in Japan? If that is the case, then what is the significance of the quotations from the poetry of William Blake? Ōe here is attempting a fusion of Japanese traditions and Western culture. Similarly, Boku ga hontō ni wakakatta koro (1992, When I Was Truly Young) draws its material from Ōe’s college days, when he first encountered the writings of Blake.
Deeply interlaced with this tradition of autobiographical fiction is another significant thread in Ōe’s writing, which involves the simultaneous attempts both to confront and fuse with Western culture. These attempts can be discerned in works from Natsukashii toshi e no tegamithrough Moeagaru midori no ki.
There are two protagonists in Natsukashii toshi e no tegami,the first-person narrator and Elder Brother Gii.
Many autobiographical elements from Ōe’s childhood through his youth can be found in the narrator’s life. Frequently these elements overlap with the facts, as with the troubled manner in which Ōe made his entrance into the literary world, his participation in the protests against the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty, and the threats he received from right-wing groups after the publication of “Sebuntīn.”Ōe himself has said, “This is the first literary work where my autobiographical impressions have played such a large role, and it may very well be the last.” He has described Elder Brother Gii as an amalgamation of the many “patrons” who have assisted him throughout his life, but there are strong indications that this character is a fictional alter ego for what Ōe might have become had he remained in his village. The narrator and Gii are linked by a profound interest in Italian poet Dante, who lived through the many transformations of the Renaissance. While Gii remains in the village with his heart absorbed in Dante, he devises various strategies and finally succeeds at setting up a production base that will enable the village to stand independent. But the villagers misinterpret his intentions and obstruct his plans. Several other unfortunate accidents result in a tragic death for Gii. This novel delineates the sharp tensions existing between the narrator, who lives in the central region of Tokyo, and Gii, who tries to live his life in the marginalized village. These two separate viewpoints are brought together inwardly by their mutual interest in Dante, but the distance between them can never be completely obliterated. It is this tension that provides the energy for the novel.
In Moeagaru midori no ki these dual foci correspond to the “female” protagonist from the village who serves as recorder of the story after her decision to undergo a sex change, and a young man, the son of a diplomat, who separates himself from the ferocity of factional feuding and comes to the village. Initially this young man is drawn to the myths and legends of the village, but eventually he develops an intense interest in setting up a means of production that will allow the village to experience true autonomy. The specialized knowledge he has acquired through his studies of agriculture at college will be of benefit to this village. The size of the group that considers him their leader grows. One day he is unexpectedly called “Elder Brother Gii” by an elderly woman who is loved and respected by the villagers as their grandmother, and he becomes recognized as the second Gii.
In this sense, this novel functions as a sequel to Natsukashii toshi e no tegami,set as it is in the same village some ten or more years later. Some new characters have been added, including a former diplomat, a mixed-blood composer, and the young men and women who assemble from other villages out of love for Gii—but there are many of the same characters from Natsukashii toshi e no tegami. Agricultural production and cattle breeding proceed apace, but once the people discern in Gii the supernatural power to heal disease as a result of his ability to focus his spiritual energy, believers who consider him a savior begin to gather. This commune, centered around Gii, fashions itself the “Church of the Green Tree” and takes on the dual nature of a production base and a center for religious worship. They reflect a profound faith in St. Augustine, but a Buddhist priest also actively participates in their religious practices. Here, too, Ōe seems to be attempting a blending and a unification of Eastern and Western religious traditions. Persecution against the Church of the Green Tree mounts as they are accused of being a cult that spreads superstition. A group also emerges from among the youth insisting that they take up arms to defend themselves. Gii rejects this proposal, demanding that they “return to a way of life devoted to the spirit.” When he leaves the village, setting out to promulgate his beliefs, he is attacked by a former rival faction, and there he meets with a death that should have been avoidable. Those who revered him mourn his death, but at the same time they recall the earnest life he led and cry out “Rejoice!” as they press forward.
This trilogy is mammoth in conception. It is no mere extension of Natsukashii toshi e no tegami; it encompasses all of the materials, experiences, and techniques of Ōe’s previous writings and deserves the label “lifework.” Though directly opposite in its results, in its depiction of modern man searching for some form of faith, this trilogy anticipates the tragic activities of the Aum Shinri Kyō of the mid 1990s. Here, too, imagination has surpassed reality.
Ōe has produced many works of fiction but has also written essays and critical pieces. In essence, in these works Ōe appears as a “product of postwar democracy,” as a parent with a handicapped child, and as a supporter of the weaklings who have been oppressed and shunned by harsh reality. He adopts such a posture in Hiroshima nōto, which examines the victims of the atomic bombing, and Okinawa nōto (1970, Okinawa Notes), wherein he introduces the struggles of the people of Okinawa, who have continued under American Occupation even though the war has ended and who have suffered from having the largest concentration of U.S. military bases in Japan. These problems do not represent passing interests for Ōe but are, in fact, as the title of one of his essay collections suggests, Jizoku suru kokorozashi (1968, Continuing Hopes).
However, these social and political declarations have not produced the kind of realistic results or impact that has been realized in the West. This failure is perhaps because of the fact that, unlike Grass’s passionate support for the policies that West German prime minister Willi Brandt adopted toward the Eastern Bloc or García Márquez’s role in the Cuban Revolution, in Ōe’s case his ideas are not accompanied by real action. More important in literary terms is the fact that Ōe not only stands with the oppressed but also learns much from them and gives life to what he has learned in his writings. What stands out as vital in Ōe’s critical essays is his depiction of the gropings and agonies that attend the methodologies of creative activity. From the outset of his literary career Ōe, while living in the shi-shōsetsuclimate of Japan, has struggled in the attempt to overcome this circumstance. That struggle has been chronicled in such essay collections as Bungaku nōto: fu 15-hen (1974, Notes on Literature and Fifteen Other Pieces), Atarashü Bungaku no tame ni (1988, For a New Literature), and Bungaku sainyúmon (1992, A Reintroduction to Literature). In this process of examination, Ōe has considered a variety of writers from the East and the West: Sartre, Mailer, Faulkner, Melville, Blake, William Butler Yeats, Charles Dickens, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Miguel de Cervantes, Dante, and Chi-ha. Ōe does not imitate these writers; rather he employs what he has learned from them in his own acts of literary creation.
In 1994, after Hikari Ōe had made a name for himself as a composer, Ōe stirred up controversy by announcing that, since his son had come to express himself better through his music than Ōe could through writing about him, once Ōe finished the novel he was currently writing (Moeagaru midori no ki,)he would abandon the writing of novels. In October of that same year he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. In 1995 the Moeagaru midori no kitrilogy was completed. Since that time, as Ōe has documented in Nihon no watashi kara no tegami (1996, Letter from the Japanese “Me”), he has continued to be a part of many activities. He canceled his planned participation in a cultural exchange event in Aix-en-Provence to protest French nuclear testing, took part in the Cultural Olympics held in Atlanta, and has given lectures in many parts of the world.
When Ōe declared that he was finished with the novel form, he had just passed the age of sixty, which in Japan is customarily viewed as the time for a new departure in one’s life. He turned primarily to writing essays, which can be grouped into three categories. One group deals with his family; the second group consists of his reflections and examinations of his experiences throughout his life; and the third group argues against the conservative trend in contemporary Japanese society.
When Ōe’s close friend TŌru Takemitu, a famous composer, died of cancer in 1996, Ōe mourned and decided to resume his creation in the novel form in memory of Takemitu. He began writing the two-volume novel Chū gaeri (1999; translated as Somersault,2003). This work is about a religious cult started by two leaders, Sisyō(Patron) and Annainin (Guide), who begin a reorganization after having publicly dissolved the cult because they discovered that a section of its members was turning violent. The novel is dedicated to Takemitu.
In 1997 Juzō Itami (pseudonym of Yoshiharu Ikeuchi)—a distinguished movie director, Ōe’s close friend since boyhood, and the brother of Ōe’s wife—committed suicide by jumping off a building. This incident caused Ōe great personal sorrow, and he sought to illuminate the truth of what happened. He did so through exploring facts and visionary fictions to produce the novel Torikaego: Chenjiringu/Changeling (2000).
Ōe’s next novel was Urei gao no dō ji (2002). In this work, a writer who returns to his birthplace becomes disturbed by the conflicts between him and the villagers, especially the younger generation. Ōe continues to practice his craft in both fiction and nonfiction, and in 2005 his publisher, kõdansha, established a literary prize named in his honor.
Born in the margins of Japan, Ōe kenzaburō has for many years made use of unremitting self-examination as a means of pursuing questions of the periphery and the center and the ways in which mankind can live together beneath the nuclear menace. By groping for a pathway to hope in the future, he has never averted his eyes from the despair of the present as he has persistently asked how man should live in the present age. His work has thus contributed significantly not merely to Japanese literature but to the literature of the entire world.
Letters
Boryoku ni sakaratte kaku: Ōe Kenzaburō fitku shokan (Tokyo: Asahi Shinbunsha, 2003).
Biography
Lindsley Cameron, The Music of Light: The Extraordinary Story of Hikari and Kenzaburō Ō (New York: Free Press, 1998).
References
Kenkyū Puroje Bungei, ed., rku wakaru Ōe Kenzaburō (Tokyo: Japan Mikkususha, 1995);
Masaki Enomoto, Ōe Kenzaburō: 80 nendai no tema to mochfu (Tokyo: Shinbisha, 1989);
Enomoto, Ōe Kenzaburō no 80 nendai (Tokyo: Sairyusha, 1995);
Shigehiko Hasumi, “Bunmi to gekirei,” in Shōsetsu kara tōku hanarete (Tokyo: Nihon Bungeisha, 1989);
Hasumi, Ōe Kenzaburō ron (Tokyo: Seidosha, 1980);
Hidehisa Hirano,ōe Kenzaburō: Watashi no Dōjidai gemu (Tokyo: Orijin Shuppan Senta, 1995);
Shōichi Honda, Ō Kenzaburō no jinsei (Tokyo: Mainichi Shinbunsha, 1995);
Shintarō Ishihara, “Kannōteki naru mono,” Shinchō (August 1963);
Kōjin Karatani, “Ōe Kenzaburō no aregorī: Man’ en gan nen no futtobōru,”and “Dōitsu sei no enkan: Ōe Kenzaburō to Mishima Yukio,” in Shōen o megutte (Tokyo: Fukutake Shoten, 1990);
Kiyoshi Kasai, “Kyōtai to kiretsu: Ōe Kenzaburō ron,” Kikan Shichõ (January 1989);
Keiji Kataoka, ōe Kenzaburō: Seishin no jigoku o yuku mono (Tokyo: Rippū Shobō, 1973);
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Shin’ichi Matsubara, Ōe Kenzaburō no sekai (Tokyo: kōdansha, 1967);
Nobuhiko Matsugi, “Shohyō: Dojidai toshite no sengo,” Bungei (June 1973);
Ken’ichi Matsumoto, “ōe Kenzaburō: Sengo no kyokõka to sono kaitai,” in Sengo no seishin: Sono sei to shi (Tokyo: Sakuhinsha, 1985);
Yukio Mishima, “Subarashii giryō, shikashi..,”Kojinteki na taiken Shühan Dokushojin (14 September 1964);
Masashi Miura, “Muryokukan ni tsuite: Ōe Kenzaburō to gendai,” in Merankor+no suimyaku (Tokyo: Fuku-take Shoten, 1984);
Yutaka Miyauchi, “Bōkan-teki ningen’ no hassō to jojutsu,” Kikan Ge~utsu, (October 1967);
Susan J. Napier, Escape from the Wasteland: Romanticism and Realism in the Fiction of Mishima Yukio and Ōe Kenzaburō (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univer- sity Press, 1991);
Takehiko Noguchi, Hoegoe, sakebigoe, chinmoku: Ōe Kenzaburō no sekai (Tokyo: Shinchõsha, 1971);
“Ōe Kenzaburō: 80 nendai kara 90 nendai e,” Kokubun gaku,special Ōe issue (July 1990);
“Ōe Kenzaburō: Ima Ōe Kenzaburōō no shousetu wo yomu,” Kokubungaku,special Oe issue (February 1997);
“Ōe Kenzaburō: Shinwateki uchū wo yomu,” Kokubungaku,special Ōe issue (June 1983);
“Ōe Kenzaburō: Sono shinwateki sekai,” Yuriika,special Ōe issue (March 1974);
Steve Rabson, “Imagery and Characterization in A Personal Matter,”in Approaches to the Modern Japanese Novel,edited by Kin’ya Tsuruta and Thomas E. Swann (Tokyo: Sophia University Press, 1976), pp. 180–198;
Robert Rolf, “Lavish Are the Dead“and “Prize Stock,” in Approaches to the Modern Japanese Short Story (Tokyo: Waseda University Press, 1982), pp. 269–285;
Shōji Shibata, Ōe Kenzaburō ron: Chijō to higan (Tokyo: Yūseidō, 1992);
Shigeru Shinohara, Ōe Kenzaburō jiten (Tokyo: Sutajio VIC, 1984);
Shinohara, Ōe Kenzaburõ ron (Tokyo: Tōhō Shuppansha, 1973);
Eiichi Tanizawa, Konna Nihon ni dare ga shita: Sengo minshu shugi no daihyō, Ōe Kenzaburō e no kokuhatsujō (Tokyo: Kuresutosha, 1995);
Yasutaka Tsutsui, “Atarashii jiko shōsha no kokoromi: Ōe Kenzaburō,” Kaba ni kamareru Bungakkai (March 1986);
Hiroshi Watanabe, Kenzaburō (Tokyo: Shinbisha, 1973; expanded, 1994);
Michiko N. Wilson, “Kenzaburō Ōe: An Imaginative Anarchist with a Heart,” Georgia Review,49 (Spring 1995): 344–350;
Wilson, The Marginal World of Ōe Kenzaburō: A Study in Themes and T chniques (Armonk, N.Y.: Sharpe, 1986);
Wilson, “ōe’s Obsessive Metaphor, Mori, the Idiot Son: Toward the Imagination of Satire, Regeneration, and Grotesque Realism,” Journal of Japanese Studies,7, no. 1 (1981): 23–52;
Sanroku Yoshida, “ōe Kenzaburō: A New World of Imagination,” Comparative Literature Studies,22, no. 1 (1985): 81–96;
Takaaki Yoshimoto, “Motto fukaku zetsubō sego,” Tosho Shinbun (19 September 1959).