Kenzaburō Ōe

For more information on Oe Kenzaburo, visit Britannica.com.

Japanese novelist Kenzaburo Oe (born 1935) is considered the leading contemporary writer in his language. A 1994 Nobel Prize winner in literature for a body of work that often makes reference to his developmentally disabled son Hikari, Oe has also been a vociferous critic of modern Japanese society and politics. Considered one of Japan's more liberal intellectuals, Oe was described by "Modern Japanese Writers" contributor Dennis Washburn as "a writer driven by an urgent sense of moral and spiritual crisis."

Born on January 31, 1935, Oe grew up in the village of Ose, located on Shikoku, one of Japan's four main islands. His entry into school coincided with Japan's involvement in the global conflict that became World War II. On August 6, 1945, when Oe was ten years old, U.S. planes dropped the world's first atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima; three days later, Nagasaki was also leveled. Japan's Emperor Hirohito surrendered on August 15 in a radio announcement that stunned the country. Oe suddenly quit school a few weeks later. As he explained in a lecture reprinted in World Literature Today, "until the middle of that summer, our teachers - who earlier had taught us that the emperor was a god, had made us bow in reverence to his portrait, and had preached that Americans were not human but rather demons or beasts - now started saying things that were quite the opposite, and all too matter-offactly at that."

After hiding in the forest during the hours he was supposed to be in school for a few weeks, Oe became ill when the rainy autumn weather arrived, and he was nursed back to health by his widowed mother. Resuming his education, he attended high school in Matsuyama, also on Shikoku, and entered the University of Tokyo in 1954. Initially, he studied science and math, but eventually switched to French literature. He became politically active as well, co-founding the Young Japan Group with a number of other students when the terms of a controversial 1951 U.S.-Japan security treaty were renewed in 1960. The agreement compelled the United States to defend a demilitarized Japan in the event of attack, and in exchange Japan allowed the presence of U.S. military bases, including a large one in the port city of Okinawa. Oe and other Japanese who had come of age during World War II objected to the controversial agreement, for they believed it would draw Japan into a war of aggression against U.S. enemies in Asia.

Literary Acclaim Came Swiftly

In 1957 Oe's first published short story won a school prize. A 1958 novella, Shiiku ("The Catch"), also won honors from the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Literature. His first novel, Memushiri kouchi, made Oe an overnight literary sensation in Japan. The story - translated as Nip the Bud, Shoot the Kids - is set on Shikoku during the war years, and follows the fate of a group of juvenile delinquents sent there. The local residents are hostile to the boys, and when an outbreak of disease comes, the Shikoku villagers flee the island and leave the teens to die. The boys survive, however, and even take into their fold an ostracized Korean boy and an abandoned girl. When the islanders return, they hide their actions from the authorities, and all but one of the boys - the narrator - agree to go along with the lie. Oe's first novel "set the tone for much of his later writing," noted Financial Times contributor David Pilling. "While mainstream writers were basking in Japan's miraculous transition to peace and prosperity, Oe was dredging up its filthy past and asking uncomfortable questions about its present."

Oe was still at the University of Tokyo when Shiiku was published, and he graduated in 1959 after completing a thesis on the work of French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre. A year later he married Yukari Itami, the daughter of a well-known Japanese screenwriter, and found himself the youngest delegate in a group invited to Communist China to meet with leader Mao Tse-tung. His next work was the novella Seventeen and its sequel, Death of the Political Youth. Both novels are based on an actual event that occurred in Japan in 1960 when a 17 year old assassinated the leader of Japan's socialist party, then committed suicide. In Oe's story, the youth is a sexual deviant whose personality disorder makes him an easy target for a right-wing political group. Both Oe and the publisher of the literary journal in which the novellas first appeared consequently received death threats.

Distraught by Birth of Son

During the early 1960s Oe traveled extensively, visiting the Soviet Union and even lunching with Sartre in Paris, after which the two men attended a political demonstration. Oe later said that, despite his early acclaim, he suffered from depression during this period of his life, a condition exacerbated by the birth of his son Hikari in 1963. The boy was born with a large growth on his head and a lesion that exposed his brain tissue. The doctors believed surgery was necessary to save Hikari's life, but told Oe and his wife that it would likely result in severe brain damage. Unable to decide whether to let the infant die or approve the operation, Oe fled to Hiroshima, where he worked on an assignment about the atomic-bomb survivors and the city's anti-nuclear movement. Oe later said that it was his meeting with the head of Hiroshima's Red Cross hospital, Dr. Fumio Shigeto, that changed his life. Shigeto told Oe about a dentist who was filled with despair in the weeks following the atomic catastrophe, when the hospitals were filled with the thousands who had been badly burned or sickened from radiation. "If there are wounded people, if they are in pain, we must do something for them, try to cure them, even if we seem to have no method," Oe recalled Shigeto as saying. Afterward, he said the city "assumed a central place in my work and became a way for me to think about our society, our world - about what it means to be human."

Oe and his wife decided to allow doctors to operate on Hikari, who did suffer brain damage as a result. The experience became the basis for Oe's next novel, Kojinteki na taiken, published in 1964 and translated into English as A Personal Matter four years later. It is the first of several fictional works from Oe's pen to feature a protagonist whose child is born severely disabled. In the story, a young husband cannot deal with the trauma, and descends into a spiral of alcoholism and infidelity as he waits for his newborn son to die in the hospital. He even spirits the infant away one day and takes him to an abortionist, but undergoes a change of heart. Oe requested that his Hiroshima Notes be published simultaneously with the novel, since he felt the two experiences were so intertwined. Pilling, writing in the Financial Times, called A Personal Matter "arguably the most painful and powerful post-war Japanese novel."

Oe went on to write a number of other prize-winning short stories and novels, some of them touching on the threat of nuclear power while others revisit the author's soul-searching over his severely disabled son. His works were not always well received in Japan, for his literary style eschews the Japanese tendency toward ambiguous language in favor of a far more frank approach. He includes episodes of sexual depravity and violence, and almost always casts a critical eye on Japanese society, politics, and long-held attitudes.

"Those Disgraceful Five Weeks"

Oe's 1983 novel Rouse Up, O Young Men of the New Age! once again features a narrator, called "K," who has a disabled son. The boy is entering adulthood, and the father, a scholar and writer, struggles to write a reference book of sorts for his son's upcoming 20th birthday, with definitions of everything in the boy's world. He refers to the boy as Eeyore, after the Winnie the Pooh character, and recalls the time just after Eeyore's birth when he wished the boy would die. "No powerful detergent has allowed me to wash out of my life those disgraceful five weeks," the narrator thinks. A group of young social activists criticize the father and the way in which he has centered his life and work around the boy. A student who objects to the narrator/author's politics kidnaps the son, but abandons him in the Tokyo subway. "The novel's artistry lies partly in its structure, each chapter ending with the father taking heart from his son," noted Guardian critic Maya Jaggi. "Far from fettering his family, Eeyore brings levity: 'Every day, joy rang out in me at the sight of him,'" Jaggi quoted from Oe's book. "Rescued after the ordeal of his kidnapping, Eeyore 'looked back at me blankly as always, as though unmoved, but tension melted from his face and body and the soft creature that always appeared in this way rose to view with a radiance that was blinding.'"

In Rouse Up, O Young Men of the New Age! the father notes that his son is a musical prodigy, and this is indeed what became of Hikari, whose name means "light." Like some autistic children, he was overly sensitive to noise from an early age, but Oe and his wife discovered he had an uncanny ability to recognize bird calls. He spent much of his time listening to music when not in school, and learned to play the piano. By age 13, he began composing music for it, and the first of several CD's containing his work was released in 1992.

Refused to Meet Emperor

After winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1994, Oe announced that, since he no longer felt the need to speak for his talented son through his literature, he planned to take a break from fiction. That same year he was also honored with the Bunka Kunsho, or Order of Culture award, bestowed by the Emperor of Japan, but he refused it, thus inciting a minor scandal. To decline it, his detractors said, was an insult to the emperor. Oe explained his reasons in a Publishers Weekly interview with Sam Staggs: "I rejected the award because it comes from the Emperor," he said. "One goes to the palace and receives it, but my creed is I don't want to go in front of His Majesty. I want to live like the ordinary people and not make any personal relationship with the Emperor."

A spate of English translations of Oe's early works followed his 1994 Nobel honors, including his debut novel, Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids. Other titles, among them An Echo of Heaven, A Healing Family, and A Quiet Life, also reached a wider audience. True to his word, Oe wrote no more fiction in 1990s, but then came forward with the first in a trilogy of novels that he claimed would serve as his epitaph. In Somersault, published in 2003, an older artist returns to Japan after years away, and becomes fascinated by a local extremist cult not dissimilar to the Aum Shinrikyo group that carried out a deadly sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995. As Oe explained in his Publishers Weekly interview, critical and commercial acclaim has never been his goal. "I don't write to create beauty," he told Staggs. "I write for the contemporary Japanese. I want to show them how we look. I hope they will say, after reading my books, 'This is us, this is what we look like and how we experience our society.'"

Books

Modern Japanese Writers, Charles Scribner's Sons, 2001.

Newsmakers, Gale, 1997.

Reference Guide to Short Fiction, 2nd edition, St. James Press, 1997.

Periodicals

Antioch Review, Summer 2003.

Billboard, April 1, 1995.

Booklist, August 1996; December 1, 2002.

Christian Century, April 12, 1995.

Financial Times, June 28, 2003.

Guardian (London, England), August 24, 2002.

Lancet, August 22, 1998.

Nation, May 15, 1995.

New Leader, January-February 2003.

Publishers Weekly, August 7, 1995; April 8, 1996; October 7, 1996; October 14, 1996; January 28, 2002.

Review of Contemporary Fiction, Fall 2002; Summer 2003.

Time, October 24, 1994.

World Literature Today, Spring 1996; Winter 1997; Summer 1997; Spring 2002.

Online

Business Week Online,http://www.businessweek.com/ (March 21, 2002).

Kenzaburō Ōe
Ōe, in 2005
Born	January 31, 1935 (1935-01-31) (age 74) Uchiko, Ehime Prefecture, Japan
Occupation	Novelist, Short story writer, Essayist
Nationality	Japanese
Writing period	1950–present
Notable work(s)	A Personal Matter, The Silent Cry
Notable award(s)	Nobel Prize in Literature 1994
Influences Jean-Paul Sartre, Hikari Ōe

Kenzaburo Oe at Japanisches Kulturinstitut Köln/Cologne (Germany), 2008.11.04

Kenzaburō Ōe (大江 健三郎, Ōe Kenzaburō^?, born January 31, 1935) is a major figure in contemporary Japanese literature. His works, strongly influenced by French and American literature and literary theory, engage with political, social and philosophical issues including nuclear weapons, social non-conformism and existentialism.

Ōe was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1994 for creating "an imagined world, where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament today."^[1]

Contents 1 Life 2 Writing 2.1 Silence 2.2 Honors 3 Selected works 4 Notes 5 References 6 External links

Life

Ōe was born in Ōse (大瀬村, Ōse-mura^?), a village now in Uchiko, Ehime Prefecture on the island of Shikoku in Japan. He was one of seven children, whose father died when Ōe was nine. At the age of 18 he began to study French literature at the University of Tokyo, where he wrote his dissertation on the work of Jean-Paul Sartre. He began publishing stories in 1957 while still a student, strongly influenced by contemporary writing in France and the United States.

He married in February 1960. His wife, Yukari, was the sister of film director Juzo Itami. The same year he met Mao Zedong on a trip to China. He also went to Russia and Europe the following year, visiting Sartre in Paris.

Ōe now lives in Tokyo. He has three children; the eldest son, Hikari, has been brain-damaged since his birth in 1963, and his disability has been a recurring motif in Ōe's writings since then.

In 2004, Ōe lent his name and support to those opposing proposed changes in the post-war Japanese constitution of 1947. His views were seen as controversial by those who want Japan to abandon the constitutional impediment to "the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes," which is explicitly renounced in Article 9.^[2]

In 2005, two retired Japanese military officers sued Ōe for libel for his 1970 essay Okinawa Notes. In Okinawa Notes, Ōe wrote that members of the Japanese military had coerced masses of Okinawan civilians into committing suicide during the Allied invasion of the island in 1945. In March 2008, the Osaka District Court dismissed all charges against Ōe. In this ruling, Judge Toshimasa Fukami stated, "The military was deeply involved in the mass suicides". In a news conference following the trial, Ōe said, "“The judge accurately read my writing."^[3]

Writing

Ōe's output falls into a series of groups, successively dealing with different themes. He explained, shortly after learning that he'd been awarded the Nobel Prize, "I am writing about the dignity of human beings."^[4]

After his first student works set in his own university milieu, in the late 1950s he produced several works (such as Prize Catch and Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids) focusing on young children living in Arcadian transformations of Ōe's own rural Shikoku childhood.^[5] He later identified these child figures as belonging to the 'child god' archetype of Jung and Kerényi: one which is characterised by abandonment, hermaphrodism, invincibility, and association with beginning and end.^[6] The first two characteristics are present in these early stories, while the latter two features come to the fore in the 'idiot boy' stories which appeared after the birth of Hikari.^[7]

Between 1958 and 1961 Ōe published a series of works incorporating sexual metaphors for the occupation of Japan. He summarised the common theme of these stories as, "the relationship of a foreigner as the big power [Z], a Japanese who is more or less placed in a humiliating position [X], and, sandwiched between the two, the third party [Y] (sometimes a prostitute who caters only to foreigners or an interpreter)".^[8] In each of these works, the Japanese X is inactive, failing to take the initiative to resolve the situation and showing no psychological or spiritual development.^[9] The graphically sexual nature of this group of stories prompted a critical outcry; Ōe said of the culmination of the series, Our Times, "I personally like this novel [because] I do not think I will ever write another novel which is filled only with sexual words."^[10]

Ōe's next phase moved away from the earlier sexual content, shifting this time towards the violent fringes of society. The works which he published between 1961 and 1964 are influenced by existentialism and picaresque literature, populated with more or less criminal rogues and anti-heroes whose position on the fringes of society allows them to make pointed criticisms of it.^[11] Ōe's admission that Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn is his favorite book can be said to find a context in this period.^[12]

Hikari was a strong influence on Father, Where are you Going?, Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness, and The Day He Himself Shall Wipe My Tears Away, three novels which rework the same premise—the father of a disabled son attempts to recreate the life of his own father, who shut himself away and died. The protagonist's ignorance of his father is compared to his son's inability to understand him; the lack of information about his father's story makes the task impossible to complete, but capable of endless repetition, and, "repetition becomes the fabric of the stories".^[13] More generally, Ōe believes that novelists have always worked to spur the imagination of their readers.^[1]

Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness introduces 'Mori' as a name for the 'idiot-son' (Ōe's own term); 'Mori' means both 'to die' and 'idiocy' in Latin, and 'forest' in Japanese. This association between the disabled boy and the forest recurs in later works such as The Waters Are Come in unto My Soul and M/T and the narrative about the marvels of the forest.

The Nobel laureate believes that he is a very Japanese writer. He said, "I have always wanted to write about our country, our society and feelings about the contemporary scene. But there is a big difference between us and classic Japanese literature." In 1994, he explained that he was proud the Swedish Academy recognized the strength of modern Japanese literature and hoped the prize would encourage others.^[4]

Ōe's novella The Catch, about the treatment of an African-American soldier shot down during World War II by Japanese villagers, was made into a film by Nagisa Oshima and released in 1961.

Silence

Ōe did not write much during the nearly two years he was involved in a trial from 2006 to 2008. He is beginning a new novel, which The New York Times reported would feature a character "based on his father", a staunch supporter of the imperial system who drowned in a flood during World War II. Another projected character is a contemporary young Japanese woman who “rejects everything about Japan” and in one act tries to destroy the imperial order."^[14] In this, as in so much else, Kenzaburo Ōe remains the master of an ambiguous Japanese expression, exploring that which is neither white nor black, but somewhere in between.^[15]

Honors

• Akutagawa Prize, 1958.^[5]
• Shinchosha Literary Prize, 1964.
• Jun'ichirō Tanizaki Prize, 1967.
• Jiro Osaragi Prize (Asahi Shimbun), 1983.
• Noma Prize, 1973.
• Nobel Prize in Literature, 1994.^[4]
• Order of Culture, 1994 - refused.^[14]

Selected works

Although the number of works translated into English and other languages remains limited, Ōe's literary output includes many publications which are still only available in Japanese.^[16]

List of books available in English

• Memeushiri Kouchi, 1958 - Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids (trans. by Paul Mackintosh & Maki Sugiyama)
• Sebuntiin, 1961- Seventeen (Trans. by Luk Van Haute)
• Seiteki Ningen 1963 Sexual Humans, published as J (Trans. by Luk Van Haute)
• Kojinteki na taiken, 1964 - A Personal Matter (trans. by John Nathan)
• Hiroshima noto, 1965 - Hiroshima Notes (trans. by David L. Swain, Toshi Yonezawa)
• Man'en gannen no futtoboru, 1967 - The Silent Cry (trans. by John Bester)
• Warera no kyōki wo ikinobiru michi wo oshieyo, 1969 - Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness (1977)
• Mizukara waga namida wo nuguitamau hi, 1972 - The Day He Himself Shall Wipe My Tears Away in Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness (1977)
• Pinchiranna chosho,' 1976 - The Pinch Runner Memorandum (trans. by Michiko N. Wilson)
• Atarashii hito yo mezame yo, 1983 - Rouse Up O Young Men of the New Age! (trans. by John Nathan)
• Jinsei no shinseki, 1989 - An Echo of Heaven (trans. by Margaret Mitsutani)
• Shizuka-na seikatsu, 1990 - A Quiet Life (trans. by Kunioki Yanagishita & William Wetherall)
• Kaifuku suru kakozu, 1995 - A Healing Family (trans. by Stephen Snyder, ill. by Yukari Oe)
• Chugaeri, 1999 - Somersault (trans. by Philip Gabriel)

Year	Japanese Title	English Title	Comments
1957	奇妙な仕事 Kimyou na shigoto	The Strange Work	His first short story
	死者の奢り Shisha no ogori	Lavish Are The Dead	Short story
	他人の足 Tanin no ashi	Someone Else's Feet	Short story
	飼育 Shiiku	Prize Stock	Short story awarded the Akutagawa prize
1958	見るまえに跳べ Miru mae ni tobe	Leap before you look	Short story
	芽むしり仔撃ち Memushiri kouchi	Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids	His first novel
1961	セヴンティーン Sevuntīn	Seventeen	Short story
1963	叫び声 Sakebigoe	Cry
	性的人間 Seiteki ningen	The sexual man (Also known as "J")	Short story
1964	空の怪物アグイー Sora no kaibutsu Aguī	Aghwee the Sky Monster	Short story
	個人的な体験 Kojinteki na taiken	A Personal Matter	Awarded the Shinchosha Literary Prize
1965	厳粛な綱渡り Genshuku na tsunawatari	The solemn rope-walking	Essay
	ヒロシマ・ノート Hiroshima nōto	Hiroshima Notes	Reportage
1967	万延元年のフットボール Man'en gan'nen no futtobōru	The Silent Cry	Awarded the Jun'ichirō Tanizaki prize
1968	持続する志 Jizoku suru kokorozashi	Continuous will	Essay
1969	われらの狂気を生き延びる道を教えよ Warera no kyōki wo ikinobiru michi wo oshieyo	Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness
1970	壊れものとしての人間 Kowaremono toshiteno ningen	Human being as a fragile article	Essay
	核時代の想像力 Kakujidai no sozouryoku	Imagination of the atomic age	Talk
	沖縄ノート Okinawa nōto	Okinawa Notes	Reportage
1972	鯨の死滅する日 Kujira no shimetsu suru hi	The day whales vanish	Essay
	みずから我が涙をぬぐいたまう日 Mizukara waga namida wo nuguitamau hi	The Day He Himself Shall Wipe My Tears Away
1973	同時代としての戦後 Doujidai toshiteno sengo	The post-war times as contemporaries	Essay
	洪水はわが魂に及び Kōzui wa waga tamashii ni oyobi	The Flood invades my spirit	Awarded the Noma Literary Prize
1976	ピンチランナー調書 Pinchi ran'nā chōsho	The Pinch Runner Memorandum
1979	同時代ゲーム Dojidai gemu	The Game of Contemporaneity
1980	(現代 ゲーム) Ume no chiri	Sometimes the Heart of the Turtle
1982	「雨の木」を聴く女たち Rein tsurī wo kiku on'natachi	Women listening to the "rain tree"	Awarded the Yomiuri Literary Prize
1983	新しい人よ眼ざめよ Atarashii hito yo, mezameyo	Rouse Up O Young Men of the New Age!	Awarded the Jiro Osaragi prize
1984	いかに木を殺すか Ikani ki wo korosu ka	How do we kill the tree ?
1985	河馬に嚙まれる Kaba ni kamareru	Bitten by the hippopotamus	Awarded the Yasunari Kawabata Literary Prize
1986	M/Tと森のフシギの物語 M/T to mori no fushigi no monogatari	M/T and the Narrative About the Marvels of the Forest
1987	懐かしい年への手紙 Natsukashī tosi eno tegami	Letters for nostalgic years
1988	「最後の小説」 'Saigo no syousetu'	'The last novel'	Essay
	新しい文学のために Atarashii bungaku no tame ni	For the new literature	Essay
	キルプの軍団 Kirupu no gundan	The army of Quilp
1989	人生の親戚 Jinsei no shinseki	An Echo of Heaven	Awarded the Sei Ito Literary Prize
1990	治療塔 Chiryou tou	The tower of treatment
	静かな生活 Shizuka na seikatsu	A Quiet Life
1991	治療塔惑星 Chiryou tou wakusei	The tower of treatment and the planet
1992	僕が本当に若かった頃 Boku ga hontou ni wakakatta koro	The time that I was really young
1993	「救い主」が殴られるまで 'Sukuinushi' ga nagurareru made	Until the Savior Gets Socked	燃えあがる緑の木　第一部 Moeagaru midori no ki dai ichi bu The Flaming Green Tree Trilogy I
1994	揺れ動く (ヴァシレーション) Yureugoku (Vashirēshon)	Vacillating	燃えあがる緑の木　第二部 Moeagaru midori no ki dai ni bu The Flaming Green Tree Trilogy II
1995	大いなる日に Ōinaru hi ni	On the Great Day	燃えあがる緑の木　第三部 Moeagaru midori no ki dai san bu The Flaming Green Tree Trilogy III
	曖昧な日本の私 Aimai na Nihon no watashi	Japan, the Ambiguous, and Myself: The Nobel Prize Speech and Other Lectures	Talk
	恢復する家族 Kaifukusuru kazoku	A Healing Family	Essay with Yukari Oe
1999	宙返り Chūgaeri	Somersault
2000	取り替え子 (チェンジリング) Torikae ko (Chenjiringu)	The Changeling
2001	「自分の木」の下で 'Jibun no ki' no shita de	Under the 'tree of mine'	Essay with Yukari Oe
2002	憂い顔の童子 Ureigao no dōji	The Infant with a Melancholic Face
2003	「新しい人」の方へ 'Atarashii hito' no hou he	Toward the 'new man'	Essay with Yukari Oe
	二百年の子供 Nihyaku nen no kodomo	The children of 200 years
2005	さようなら、私の本よ! Sayōnara, watashi no hon yo!	Farewell, My Books!
2007	臈たしアナベル・リイ　総毛立ちつ身まかりつ Routashi Anaberu rī souke dachitu mimakaritu	The beautiful Annabel Lee was chilled and killed
2009	水死 sui si	The death by drowning	to appear

Notes

1. ^ ^{a b} "Oe, Pamuk: World needs imagination," Yomiuri Shimbun. May 18, 2008.
2. ^ Junkerman, John. "The Global Article 9 Conference: Toward the Abolition of War," Japan Focus. May 25, 2008.
3. ^ Onishi, Norimitsu. "Japanese Court Rejects Defamation Lawsuit Against Nobel Laureate," New York Times. March 29, 2008.
4. ^ ^{a b c} Sterngold, James. "Nobel in Literature Goes to Kenzaburo Oe of Japan," New York Times. October 14, 1994.
5. ^ ^{a b} Wilson, Michiko. (1986) The Marginal World of Ōe Kenzaburō: A Study in Themes and Techniques, p. 12.
6. ^ Ōe, The Method of a Novel, p. 197.
7. ^ Wilson, p. 135.
8. ^ Ōe, Ōe Kenzaburō Zensakuhin, Vol. 2 (Supplement No. 3). p. 16.
9. ^ Wilson p. 32.
10. ^ Wilson, p. 29.
11. ^ Wilson p. 47.
12. ^ Theroux, Paul. "Speaking of Books: Creative Dissertating; Creative Dissertating," New York Times. February 8, 1970.
13. ^ Wilson, p. 61.
14. ^ ^{a b} Onishi, Norimitsu. "Released From Rigors of a Trial, a Nobel Laureate’s Ink Flows Freely," New York Times. May 17, 2008.
15. ^ Altman, Daniel. "A Relaxing Tradition Dips a Toe in the 21st Century," New York Times. January 20, 2008.
16. ^ Books and Writers: Kenzaburo Ōe

References

• Ōe, Kanzaburō. (1968). Ōe Kenzaburō Zensakuhin (Complete Works of Oe Kenzaburo).Tokyo: Shinchosha.
• _____________. (1978). Shosetsu no hoho (The Method of a Novel). Tokyo: Iwanami.
• Wilson, Michiko N. (1986). The Marginal World of Ōe Kenzaburō: A Study in Themes and Techniques. Armonk, New York: M. E. Sharpe. 13-ISBN 978-0-87332-343-7 (cloth) -- 13-ISBN 978-1-56324-580-0 (paper)

External links

• Nobel Biography
• Nobel Laureate page
• Kenzaburō Ōe Prize

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