Kenzaburo Oe was a Japanese writer who lived from 1935 to 2023 and became a major figure in contemporary Japanese literature, his novels, short stories and essays, shaped heavily by French and American literature and literary theory, addressing political, social and philosophical subjects including nuclear weapons, nuclear power, social nonconformity and existentialism. He was awarded the 1994 Nobel Prize in Literature for creating what the Swedish Academy described as an imagined world where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament today.
Facts
AwardNobel Prize in Literature (1994) 1 Classification
Original Language FAQs
How did the birth of his son Hikari change Kenzaburō Ōe's writing?
According to the Nobel Foundation's biographical note, written at the time of his 1994 prize, the birth of Ōe's first son Hikari, who was born with a cranial deformity that left him mentally handicapped, brought a crisis to his life and his literature. Determined to live with his son, Ōe wrote A Personal Matter (1964), an account of the pain of accepting the child and of his resolve to coexist with him. He also wrote Hiroshima Notes (1965), a long essay on the realities and thoughts of the atomic bomb victims, which the note links to the same turn toward humanism. After The Silent Cry (1967) his work ran along two streams: books about life with Hikari, ending with Rouse Up, O Young Men of the New Age (1983), and stories set in the myths and history of his native forest village in Shikoku. The note adds that Ōe regards Hikari's later career as a composer as weightier than his own writing about him.
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Source Wikipedia: Kenzaburō Ōe
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Kenzaburō Ōe
Lead section, first sentence, birth year
31 January 1935
Lead section, first sentence, birth date
31 January 1935
Lead section, first sentence, death date
3 March 2023
Personal life and death
Ōe died on 3 March 2023 at the age of 88, reportedly due to old age.
Lead section, final sentence
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'.
Original language statement
Kenzaburo Oe was a Japanese writer who lived from 1935 to 2023 and became a major figure in contemporary Japanese literature, his novels, short stories and essays, shaped heavily by French and American literature and literary theory, addressing political, social and philosophical subjects including nuclear weapons, nuclear power, social nonconformity and existentialism.
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