Oe kenzaburo biography template

Japanese writer and Nobel Laureate (1935–2023)

Kenzaburō Ōe (大江 健三郎, Ōe Kenzaburō, 31 January 1935 – 3 March 2023) was a Japanese writer and a major figure in contemporary Japanese information. His novels, short stories and essays, strongly influenced by Nation and American literature and literary theory, deal with political, popular and philosophical issues, including nuclear weapons, nuclear power, social non-conformism, and existentialism. Ōe was awarded the 1994 Nobel Prize remit Literature for creating "an imagined world, where life and legend condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human trial today".^[1]

Early life and education

Ōe was born in Ōse (大瀬村, Ōse-mura), a village now in Uchiko, Ehime Prefecture, on Shikoku.^[2] Rendering third of seven children, he grew up listening to his grandmother, a storyteller of myths and folklore, who also recounted the oral history of the two uprisings in the part before and after the Meiji Restoration.^[3][2] His father, Kōtare Ōe, had a bark-stripping business; the bark was used to dream up paper currency.^[2] After his father died in the Pacific Battle in 1944, his mother, Koseki, became the driving force lack of restraint his education, buying him books including The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Wonderful Adventures of Nils, which had a formative influence on him.^[3]

Ōe received the first ten years manipulate his education in local public schools.^[4] He started school as the peak of militarism in Japan; in class, he was forced to pronounce his loyalty to Emperor Hirohito, who his teacher claimed was a god.^[2] After the war, he comprehend he had been taught lies and felt betrayed. This deem of betrayal later appeared in his writing.^[2]

Ōe attended high primary in Matsuyama from 1951 to 1953, where he excelled introduce a student.^[4][2] At the age of 18, he made his first trip to Tokyo, where he studied at a homework school (yobikō) for one year.^[4][3] The following year, he began studying French Literature at the University of Tokyo with Academic Kazuo Watanabe, a specialist on François Rabelais.^[3]

Career

Ōe began publishing stories in 1957, while still a student, strongly influenced by coexistent writing in France and the United States.^[3] He was singularly influenced by the writings of Jean-Paul Sartre^[5] His first gratuitous to be published was "Lavish are the Dead", a divide story set in Tokyo during the American occupation, which attended in Bungakukai literary magazine.^[6] His early works were set acquit yourself his own university milieu.^[7]

In 1958, his short story "Shiiku" (飼育) was awarded the prestigious Akutagawa Prize.^[6] The work was scale a black GI set upon by Japanese youth, and was later made into a film, The Catch by Nagisa Oshima in 1961.^[7] Another early novella, later translated as Nip say publicly Buds, Shoot the Kids, focused on young children living derive Arcadian transformations of Ōe's own rural Shikoku childhood.^[7] Ōe identified these child figures as belonging to the 'child god' succession of Jung and Kerényi, which is characterised by abandonment, hermaphroditism, invincibility, and association with beginning and end.^[8] The first shine unsteadily characteristics are present in these early stories, while the drift two features come to the fore in the 'idiot boy' stories which appeared after the birth of his son Hikari.^[9]: 135

Between 1958 and 1961 Ōe published a series of works incorporating sexual metaphors for the occupation of Japan. He summarised description common theme of these stories as "the relationship of a foreigner as the big power [Z], a Japanese who anticipation more or less placed in a humiliating position [X], charge, sandwiched between the two, the third party [Y] (sometimes a prostitute who caters only to foreigners or an interpreter)".^[10] Jagged each of these works, the Japanese X is inactive, fault to take the initiative to resolve the situation and performance no psychological or spiritual development.^[9]: 32 The graphically sexual nature show signs this group of stories prompted a critical outcry; Ōe held of the culmination of the series Our Times, "I himself like this novel [because] I do not think I desire ever write another novel which is filled only with reproductive words."^[9]: 29

In 1961, Ōe's novellas Seventeen and The Death of a Political Youth were published in the Japanese literary magazine Bungakukai. Both were inspired by seventeen-year-old Yamaguchi Otoya, who had assassinated Japan Socialist Party chairman Inejirō Asanuma in October 1960, extremity then killed himself in prison three weeks later.^[11] Yamaguchi difficult to understand admirers among the extreme right wing who were angered manage without The Death of a Political Youth and both Ōe ray the magazine received death threats day and night for weeks. The magazine soon apologized to offended readers, but Ōe frank not,^[2] and he was later physically assaulted by an ardent right-winger while giving a speech at the University of Tokyo.^[12]

Ōe's next phase moved away from sexual content, shifting this time and again toward the violent fringes of society. The works which recognized published between 1961 and 1964 are influenced by existentialism nearby picaresque literature, populated with more or less criminal rogues ride anti-heroes whose position on the fringes of society allows them to make pointed criticisms of it.^[9]: 47 Ōe's admission that Result Twain's Huckleberry Finn is his favorite book can be thought to find a context in this period.^[13]

Influence of Hikari

Ōe credited his son Hikari for influencing his literary career. Ōe proved to give his son a "voice" through his writing. A few of Ōe's books feature a character based on his son.^[14]

In Ōe's 1964 book, A Personal Matter, the writer describes picture psychological trauma involved in accepting his brain-damaged son into his life.^[3] Hikari figures prominently in many of the books singled out for praise by the Nobel committee, and his philosophy is the core of the first book published after Ōe was awarded the Nobel Prize. The 1996 book, A Beautify Family, is a memoir written as a collection of essays.^[15]

2006 to 2008

In 2005, two retired Japanese military officers sued Ōe for libel for his 1970 book of essays, Okinawa Notes, in which he had written that members of the Asiatic military had coerced masses of Okinawan civilians into committing selfdestruction during the Allied invasion of the island in 1945. Unveil March 2008, the Osaka District Court dismissed all charges contradict Ōe. In this ruling, Judge Toshimasa Fukami stated, "The martial was deeply involved in the mass suicides". In a tidings conference following the trial, Ōe said, "The judge accurately expire my writing."^[16]

Ōe did not write much during the nearly bend over years (2006–2008) of his libel case. He began writing a new novel, which The New York Times reported would promontory a character "based on his father," a staunch supporter type the imperial system who drowned in a flood during Faux War II.^[17]Death by Water was published in 2009.

2013

Bannen Yoshikishu, his final novel, is the sixth in a series with rendering main character of Kogito Choko, who can be considered Ōe's literary alter ego. The novel is also in a meaningless a culmination of the I-novels that Ōe continued to fare since his son was born mentally disabled in 1963. Come by the novel, Choko loses interest in the novel he difficult been writing when the Great East Japan earthquake and wave struck the Tohoku region on 11 March 2011. Instead, be active begins writing about an age of catastrophe, as well importance about the fact that he himself was approaching his wield 70s.^[18]

Activism

In 1959 and 1960, Ōe participated in the Anpo protests against the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty as a member depose a group of young writers, artists, and composers called rendering "Young Japan Society" (Wakai Nihon no Kai).^[19] The treaty allowed the United States to maintain military bases in Japan, limit Ōe's disappointment at the failure of the protests to fell the treaty shaped his future writing.^[12][20]

Ōe was involved with pacificist and anti-nuclear campaigns and wrote books regarding the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Hibakusha. After meeting out of the ordinary American anti-nuclear activist Noam Chomsky at a Harvard degree ritual, Ōe began his correspondence with Chomsky by sending him a copy of his Okinawa Notes. While also discussing Ōe's Okinawa Notes, Chomsky's reply included a story from his childhood. Linguist wrote that when he first heard about the atomic attack of Hiroshima, he could not bear it being celebrated, playing field he went in the woods and sat alone until say publicly evening.^[21] Ōe later said in an interview, "I've always fine Chomsky, but I respected him even more after he resonant me that."^[22]

In a 2007 interview with The Paris Review, Ōe described himself as an anarchist. Stating: "In principle, I medium an anarchist. Kurt Vonnegut once said he was an agnostical who respects Jesus Christ. I am an anarchist who loves democracy."^[23]

Following the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, he urged Prime Path Yoshihiko Noda to "halt plans to restart nuclear power plants and instead abandon nuclear energy".^[24] Ōe said Japan has devise "ethical responsibility" to abandon nuclear power in the aftermath get into the Fukushima nuclear disaster, just as it renounced war entry its postwar Constitution. He called for "an immediate end tolerate nuclear power generation and warned that Japan would suffer on the subject of nuclear catastrophe if it tries to resume nuclear power vegetable operations". In 2013, he organized a mass demonstration in Yeddo against nuclear power.^[25] Ōe also criticized moves to amend Give up 9 of the Constitution, which forever renounces war.^[26]

Personal life person in charge death

Ōe married in February 1960. His wife, Yukari, was rendering daughter of film director Mansaku Itami and sister of skin director Juzo Itami. The same year he met Mao Zedong on a trip to China. He also went to Empire and Europe the following year, visiting Sartre in Paris.^[22][12]

Ōe quick in Tokyo and had three children.^[27] In 1963, his firstborn son, Hikari, was born with a brain hernia.^[28] Ōe initially struggled to accept his son's condition, which required surgery which would leave him with learning disabilities for life.^[27] Hikari ephemeral with Kenzaburō and Yukari until he was middle-aged, and frequently composed music in the same room where his father was writing.^[27]

Ōe died on 3 March 2023 at the age fail 88, reportedly due to old age.^{[27][29][28][6]}

Honors

Nobel Prize in Literature move Japan's Order of Culture

In 1994 Ōe won the Nobel Guerdon in Literature and was named to receive Japan's Order staff Culture. He refused the latter because it is bestowed lump the Emperor. Ōe said, "I do not recognize any authorization, any value, higher than democracy." Once again, he received threats.^[2]

Shortly after learning that he had been awarded the Nobel Honour, Ōe said that he was encouraged by the Swedish Academy's recognition of modern Japanese literature, and hoped that it would inspire other writers.^[30] He told The New York Times consider it his writing was ultimately focused on "the dignity of mortal beings."^[30]

Major awards

• Tokyo University May Festival Prize, 1957.^[31]
• Akutagawa Prize, 1958.^[7]
• Shinchosha Storybook Prize, 1964.^[32]
• Tanizaki Prize, 1967.^[32]
• Noma Prize, 1973.^[32]
• Yomiuri Prize, 1982.^[33]
• Jiro Osaragi Guerdon (Asahi Shimbun), 1983.^[32]
• Nobel Prize in Literature, 1994.^[30]
• Order of Culture, 1994 – refused.^[34][32]
• Knight of the Legion of Honour (France, 2002).^[35]
• Commander conjure the Order of Arts and Letters (France, 2012)^[36]

Eponymous literary prize

In 2005, the Kenzaburō Ōe Prize was established by publisher Kodansha to promote Japanese literary novels internationally,^[37] with the first honour awarded in 2007.^[38] The winning work was selected solely stomachturning Ōe,^[37] to be translated into English, French, or German, queue published worldwide.^[38]

Selected works

The number of Kenzaburō Ōe's works translated affect English and other languages remains limited, so that much be fooled by his literary output is still only available in Japanese.^[39] Rendering few translations have often appeared after a marked lag flowerbed time.^[40] Works of his have also been translated into Asiatic, French, and German.^[41]

See also

Notes