Kenzaburo Oe

Kenzaburo Oe was born in 1935 in the small mountain village of Ose-Mura on Shikoku, the smallest of the four main Japanese islands.  He came from an old, established family whose female members were known as storytellers who related historical events of the region and verbalized traditional legends.  Though it was common for young people from the island to seek their futures in larger cities of Japan, the Oe family usually remained in their home village.

        When Oe was six, World War 2 broke out, so his early education was militaristic and emphasized the divinity of the emperor.  This conflicted with his family's traditional myths, especially those related by his grandmother.  Additionally, Oe became disillusioned with the deification of the monarch when he heard the emperor on the radio and realized he was only human.

        In 1944, Oe's father was killed in the war, and his grandmother also died.  His mother assumed the responsibility for educating Kenzaburo, and she introduced him to western literature such as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.  By the time he went to high school in neighboring Matsuyama, Japanese education had become influenced by the democratic principles promoted by the American occupational forces.

        At the age of eighteen, Oe moved to Tokyo to attend the university there.  He believed that the city offered a democratic future.  At Tokyo University, he majored in French literature and was mentored by Kazuo Watanabe, whose specialty was Francois Rabelais.  During this period, Oe reassessed the myths and history of his native village and was influenced by French existentialists; his senior thesis, prior to receiving a B.A. in 1959, was on Jean Paul Sartre.

        While at the university, Oe began writing.  In 1958, his Pluck the Bud and Destroy the Offspring* won the prestigious Akutagawa Award, but the series of stories about college life that he wrote between 1958 and 1964 had little critical success.  He joined the "New Left" movement and became an important voice of the postwar generation, frequently writing about the consequences of war and nuclear proliferation.

        Oe married Yukari Itami, the sister of an old friend.  Their first son, Hikari, was born with a cranial deformity in 1963.  Though he and Yukari later had two other children, Oe was profoundly affected by Hikari's problems; he had to overcome the agony of having a brain-damaged child, and wrote several stories dealing with a handicapped child.  With characteristic bluntness, Oe referred to these as his "idiot son" stories; they are the ones for which he is best known, and which probably contributed to his winning of the Nobel Prize in 1994.  In these stories, the author found a connection between personal tragedy and contemporary society, particularly victims of the atomic bomb.

        Immediately after winning the Nobel, he declined Japan's highest honor, the Order of Cultural Merit, due to his stated distrust of the Japanese government.  He also said he was finished writing novels because he had been using them as a voice for his son, and his son now had his own voice.  (Though mentally challenged, Hikari Oe is a gifted musician who had become well-known for his performances and compositions.)  He continued to write only what he called "literary jottings" for several years, but in 2001, he published a new novel, Changling, and he continues to publish today.  His work is known for portrayals of the conflict between traditions and modern Western culture and for the themes of abnormality and sexuality.  A decent bibliography of his works may be found at http://alumni.imsa.edu/~ender/books.html.

        *Note:  Different sources will have different English translations for Oe's titles.

Revised 5/22/09

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