Posted on 03/14/2023 1:03:15 PM PDT by nickcarraway
The Nobel prize-winning Japanese author Kenzaburō Ōe has passed away at age 88. The writer was a highly influential figure in contemporary Japanese literature whose work was deeply concerned with politics and issues such as nuclear disarmament and anti-authoritarianism.
Born in Shikoku in 1935, the author’s early life was significantly impacted by war, which influenced his work as an adult. His landowning family lost much of their property during the war, demonstrating to a young Ōe the powerful effects of conflict.
As he grew older, he became more and more critical of the Japanese military and authority figures, such as the Emperor. Ōe remembered feeling guilty as a child for not wanting to die for Emperor Hirohito, who his teacher compared to a godlike figure. Subsequently, the betrayal he felt from being conditioned by authority figures to submit to higher powers bled into his writing.
Ōe began his studies in French literature in 1954 at the University of Tokyo, publishing his first short story, Lavish are the Dead. By 1958, another of his short stories, The Catch, was awarded the Akutagawa Prize.
The release of several works in the 1960s led Ōe to receive death threats from members of the extreme right, who were disgusted by the writer’s sharp critiques of their policies and actions. His essay collection, Hiroshima Notes, about atomic-bomb victims, which coincided with the release of his novel Kojinteki-na taiken, about his experience as a father of a disabled child, was critically acclaimed. He decided to release the two simultaneously as they both dealt with personal and political events that he felt were linked.
He explained: “I wanted to re-construct myself, my family, so I wanted to consider the Hiroshima people who wanted to re-construct their lives after the disaster. I was always encouraged by the doctors at Hiroshima fighting against their death.”
The writer won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1994 for his ability to use “poetic force” to “create an imagined world, where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament today.” He was also offered Japan’s Order of Culture but turned it down because the Emperor would award it. Ōe asserted that he does “not recognise any authority, any value, higher than democracy.”
The writer remained true to his beliefs for decades, leading a massive rally against nuclear power in 2013. However, his publisher recently confirmed that he died of old age on March 3rd, 2023. He leaves behind an inspiring and defiant legacy, charted through a large collection of astounding literary works.
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