Kenzaburo Oe (1935-)
Japanese novelist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in
1994. Oe has often dealt with marginal people and outcasts and isolation
from individual level to social and cultural levels. Another central theme
- as in the works of a number of other Japanese writers - is the conflict
between traditions and modern Western culture.
My observation is that after one hundred and twenty years of
modernisation since the opening of the country, present-day
Japan is split between two opposite poles of ambiguity. I too am
living as a writer with this polarisation imprinted on me like a
deep scar. (from Nobel Lecture, 1994)
Kenzaburo Oe was born in a mountain village on the island
of Shikoku,
the
smallest of the four main Japanese islands, where his family had lived for
centuries. The village and the forests surrounding it later inspired several
of Oe's pastoral works. In 1944 Oe's father died in the Pacific war, and
in
the same year he lost his grandmother, who had taught him art and oral
performance. After attending a local school, Oe transferred to a high
school in Matsuyama City. He won an admission to the University of Tokyo,
where he studied French literature and received his B.A. in 1959. His
final-year thesis was on the French writer Jean-Paul Sartre. Another
important French writer for Oe was Albert Camus.
During these years he started to write and explore his childhood, when the
World War II had filled his mind with horror and excitement. His early
works expressed his sense of the degradation and disorientation caused by
Japan's surrender at the end of World War II. Sex and violence labelled
his
depiction of rootless young people. Oe wanted to experiment with language
and create a new way of literary expression, which would capture the
social and psychological changes that took place in his home country. He
also had to cope with a personal handicap, the inferiority complex of a
shy
young man from the country, who stuttered and spoke with heavy Shikoku
accent.
Oe's first novel MEMUSHIRI KOUCHI (Pluck the Bud and Destroy the
Offspring) appeared in 1958 and won the Akutagawa Prize given to young
writers of fiction. Between 1958 and 1964 Oe wrote several stories that
reflected the life of a college student, but they did not gain critical
success. In 1960 he travelled to China as a member of Japan-China
Literary delegation. Later Oe created contacts to Chinese dissident
writers living in the United States. In the 1960s Oe joined New Left
movement. He became one of most important the voices of the postwar
generation. Oe's strong sense of social involvement led him in the
anti-American Security Treaty protests in 1960, he was an antinuclear
spokesman and involved in radical causes. Although gaining the status of
highly influential political writer, Oe never joined any political party.
In his early novels Oe explored the nature of antisocial violence as well
as
perverse sexuality, as in his 1958 novella MEMUSHIRI KOUCI. In an early
story, Shiiku (1958, Prize Stock), the hero is propelled from the
innocent
world of childhood into adulthood by various acts of madness raging from
the madness of war to the temporary insanity of his father, who murders
a
prisoner of war with an ax.
Right-wing activism was Oe's subject in SEVUNTIIN
(1961), which was
based on an actual historical incident. The protagonist is a pathetic
adolescent, who becomes involved in terrorism, assassinates a socialist
politician and then kills himself in the emperor's name. Later Oe returned
to the theme in the novella The Day He Himself Shall Wipe My Tears Away.
It was a sustained attack on the famous writer Mishima Yukio, who
attempted a right-wing coup in 1970 and subsequently committed suicide
by seppuku. The novella also criticizes the emperor system, and warns of
the dangers of fanatical beliefs.
Oe married in 1960 Yukari Itami; they had three children. His wife is the
younger sister of Juzo Itami, an acclaimed director of such films as
Tampopo, The Funeral and A Taxing Woman. In 1963 he became
the
father of a baby boy, Hikari (which means 'light'), who was born with
congenital abnormality of the skull. When the doctors advised Oe and his
wife to let Hikari die, he rejected their advice. The birth of Hikari was
a
turning point in Oe's life and in his literary career.
As Oe explained in his Nobel Speech,
After I got married, the first the first child born to us was
mentally handicapped. We named him Hikari, meaning 'Light'
in Japanese. As a baby he responded only to the chirps of wild
birds and never to human voices. One summer when he was
six years old we were staying at our country cottage. He
heard a pair of water rails (Rallus aquaticus) warbling from
the lake beyond a grove, and he said with the voice of a
commentator on a recording of wild birds: "They are water
rails". This was the first moment my son ever uttered human
words. It was from then on that my wife and I began having
verbal communication with our son.
Themes of madness appear in his works as metaphors for the human condition,
among them
HIROSHIMA NOOTO (1964), an essay about the public madness of nuclear
warfare.
He was that kind of man: no one would find it odd that he should
let his wife go alone to a party while he remained in his study
working on a translation (something, in fact, that we were
collaborating on). (from The Silent Cry)
MAN'EN GANNEN NO FUTOBORU (1967, The Silent Cry) won the Tanizaki
Junichiro Prize. It depicted two urban brothers who return to their village
in the mountains. From The Silent Cry Oe became increasingly interested
in rural folk legends. KOJINTEKI NA TAIKEN (A Personal Matter, translated
into English in 1968), was received enthusiastically in America. Bird, the
novel's protagonist, is a young man who who dreams of exploring Africa
and attempts to escape the responsibility of having fathered a
brain-damaged child.Bird plots with an old girlfriend to murder the child.
In the course of the story he grows up but befoe it he has a marathon sex
session and vomits in front of his students. Much of Oe's later fiction
examined relationship between disabled and nondisabled people. Hikari
turned out to be exceptionally gifted in music, and he has become one of
the most famous composers in Japan.
WARERA NO KYOKI O IKURU MICHI O OSHIEYO (1969) won the Noma Literary
Prize, and was translated into English entitled Teach Us to Outgrow Our
Madness in 1978. In PINCHIRANNA CHOSHO (1976) a father and idiot son
lead an army of marginals against the Japanese establishment. KOZUI WA
WAGA TAMASHII (1973) won the Naoma Literary Prize. In ATARASHII HITO
YO MEZAME YO (1983) Oe returned to the life of musically talented Hikari,
who was turning twenty. The Japanese critics named it the book of the
year and it received the Osaragi Jiro Prize for non-fiction. A Quiet
Life
(1996) had again autobiographical elements. A famous Japanese writer,
whose first name begins with K, leaves his mentally retarded son in the
care of his daughter Ma-chan, to spend a year in the University of
California as a writer in residence. Ma-Chan writes her thoughts in a
diary. "Regardless of which elements are fact and which are fiction,
''A Quiet
Life'' belongs to the literary genre of the confession; by rediscovering
the
family life he has neglected, a writer comes to terms with the human losses
he
has suffered in the course of gaining literary eminence." (John David
Morley in
The New York Times, November 17, 1996)
Oe has also published essays and short stories. His first book after the
Nobel Prize, The Healing Family, tells about his son Hikari. His major
works from the 1990s include trilogy MOEGARU MIDORI NO KI, an
exploration of themes of faith and salvation, with complex allusions to
William Blake, Dante, and William Butler Yeats. Oe has once said "Yeats
is
the writer in whose wake I would like to follow." CHIRYO NO TO (1990)
was a
dystopian novel. TSUGAERI (1999) was based on the nerve gas attack on
the metro in 1995 in Tokyo. A religious doomsday cult was responsible for
the act of terrorism, in which twelve people were killed. Although Oe is
considered by many the finest writer in Japan today, his social criticism
has been rejected.
Oe has travelled abroad widely. In 1961 he travelled to Western and
Eastern Europe, in 1965 and 1968 to the United States, in 1968 to
Australia, and in 1970 Southeast Asia. He has been visiting professor at
the Colegio de MÈxico, Mexico City in 1976, and the University of
California at Berkely. In 1989 the Europelia Arts Festival named Oe the
recipient of the Europelia Award.
See: William Blake, whose mystical poems and prophesies (Book of Thiel etc.)
inspired Kenzaburo Oe when he was writing ATARASHII HITO YO MEZAME YO
(Awake, New Man). SORA NO KAIBUTSU AGUII (1964, Agwhee the Sky
Monster) is a sly variation of Henry James' The Turn of the Screw (1898),
where a young father, a composer, has allowed his child to die at the hands
of
unscrupulous doctors and is visited by a ghost baby called Aghwee. The tale
is
narrated by a young student who has been hired to watch the composer. -
For
further reading: Approaches to the Modern Japanese Novel, ed. by
K.
Tsuruta and T. Swann (1976); Oe Kenzaburo and Contemporary Japanese
Literature by Hisaaki Yamanouchi (1986); The Marginal World of Oe
Kenzaburo by M.N. Wilson (1986); Escape from the Wasteland by
Susan
Jolliffe Napier (1991); Contemporary World Writers, ed. by Tracy
Chevalier
(1993); The Music of Light: The Extraordinary Story of Hikari and Kenzaburo
Oe by Lindsley Cameron (1998); Encyclopedia of World Literature in the
20th Century, ed. by Steven R. Serafin (1999, vol. 3)
- Other Japanese writer awarded with the Nobel Prize: Yasunari
Kawabata --
Selected works by Oe:
SHISHA NO OGORI, 1957 - Lavish Are the Dead
MIRU MAE NI TOBE, 1958
MEMUSHIRI KOUCHI, 1958 - Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids
WARERA NO JIDAI, 1959
SEINEN NO OMEI, 1959
KODOKU NA SEINEN NO KYUKA, 1960
SEVUNTIIN, 1961 - Seventeen
SEIJI SHONEN SHISU, 1961 (published in Bungakukai)
OKURETE KITA SEINEN, 1962
SAKEBIGOE, 1962
SEKAI NO WAKAMONOTACHI, 1962
SEITEKI NINGEN, 1963 -
NICHIJO SEIKATSU NO BOKEN, 1964
SORA NO KAIBUTSU AQUWEE, 1964 - Aghwee the Sky Monster, in
Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness (1977)
KOJINTEKI NA TAIKEN, 1964 - A Personal Matter
SORA NO KAIBUTSU AGUII, 1964 - Aghwee the Sky Monster
HIROSHIMA NOTO, 1965 - Hiroshima Notes
GENSHUKU NA TSUNAWATARI, 1965
MAN'EN GANNEN NO FUTOBORU, 1967 - The Silent Cry
OE KENZABURO ZENSAKUHIN, 1966-67 (6 vols.)
WARERA NO KYOKI O IKINOBIRU MICHI O OSHIEYO, 1969 - Teach Us to
Outgrow Our Madness (1977)
CHICHI YO ANATA WA DOKO E IKUNO KA?, 1968
JIZOKUSURU KOKOROZASHI, 1968
KOWAREMONO TO SHITE NO NINGEN, 1970
OKINAWA NOTO, 1970
KAKUJIDAI NO SOZORYOKU, 1970
MIZU KARA WAGA NAMIDA O NUQUITAMOO HI, 1971
GENBAKUGO NO NINGEN, 1971
DOJIDAI TO SHITE NO SENGO, 1972
WAGA NAMIDA O NUGUITAMU HI, 1972 - The Day He Himself Shall
Wipe My Tears Away in Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness (1977)
KUJIRA NO SHIMETSUSURU HI, 1972
KOZUI WA WAGA TAMASHII NI OYOBI, 1973 (2 vols.)
DOJIDAI TO SHITE NO SENGO, 1973
JOKYO E, 1974
BUNGAKU NOTO, 1974
KOTOBA NI YOTTE, 1976
PINCHIRANNA CHOSHO, 1976 - The Pinch Runner Memorandum
SHOSETSU NO HOHO, 1978
DOJIDAI GEMU, 1979
GENDAI DENKISHU, 1980
OE KENZABURO DOJIDAI RONSHU, 1981
SHOMOTSU - SEKAI NO IN'YU, 1981 (with Yujiro Nakamura and Masao Yamaguchi)
CHUSIN TO SHUEN, 1981 (with Yujiro Nakamura and Masao Yamaguchi)
BUNKA NO KASSEIKA, 1982 (with Yujiro Nakamura and MasaoYamaguchi)
HIROSHIMA KARA OIROSHIMA E: '82 YOROPPA NO HANKAKU HEIWA
UNDO O MIRU, 1982
KAKU NO TAIKA TO "NINGEN" NO KOE, 1982
"AME NO KI" O KIKU ONNATACHI, 1982
ATARASHII HITO YO MEZAME YO, 1983
IKANI KI O KOROSU KA, 1984
NIHON GENDAI NO HYUMANISTO WATANABE KAZUO O YOMU, 1984
IKIKATA NO TEIGI: FUTABI JOKYO E, 1985
SHOSETSU NO TAKURAMI CHI NO TANOSHIMI, 1985
KABA NI KAMARERU, 1985
ed: The Crazy Iris and Other Stories of the Atomic Aftermath, 1995
M/T TO MORI NO FUSHIGI NO MONOGATARI, 1986 - suom.
NATSUKASHII TOSHI E NO TEGAMI, 1987
SAIGO NO SHOSETSU, 1988
ATARISHII BUNGAKU NO TAME NO, 1988
KIRUPU NO GUNDAN, 1988
JINSEI NO SHINSEKI, 1989 - An Echo of Heaven
CHIRYO NO TO, 1991
MOEGARU MODORI NO KI 1993
BOKU GA HONTO NI WAKAKATTA KORO, 1992
Japan, the Ambiguous, and Myself : The Nobel Prize Speech and Other Lectures,
1995
A Healing Family, 1996 (trans. by Stephen Snyder) - Hikarin perhe
A Quiet Life, 1996 (trans. by Kunioki Yanagishita and William Wetherall)
Nip the Buds Shoot the Kids, 1996
TSUGAERI, 1999
Somersault, 2003 (trans. by Philip Gabriel)
Kawabata Yasunari was the first Japanese writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize
for Literature. As the picture above indicates, he appeared before the world
audience dressed in an elegant but simple and dark Japanese kimono, contrasting
with his shock of white hair that seemd to be erupting from his head. He probably
fit the western stereotype of what a Japanese writer should look like.
In perhaps further confirmation of these stereotypes, his acceptance speech,
"Japan the Beautiful and Myself," was replete with references to the
mysticism of traditional (medieval) Zen poetry the aim of which was often to
demonstrate the inability of language to express the underlying philosophy.
Kawabata's title:
Utsukushii Nihon no Watashi
was both echoed by Oe in his acceptance speech, and remarked on as well. Oe's
title,
Aimai na Nihon no Watashi
They both use the particle no (of) between Japan and Myself, instead of
the more obvious particle to (and). So how we may read this Japanese is tricky. It is usually thought of, as we see above, as "Japan the Beautiful and Myself" but it really isn't. There is no AND in the Japanese so it is more like the "I" is being being
associated with Japan, being a part of it. So more literally, it says "The I Who is a Part of Beautiful Japan." By the same token, Oe's title, usually rendered as"Japan the Ambiguous and Myself," could also be read as the "I Who is a Part of a Vague, Ambiguous Japan."
But anyway, Oe clearly parts company with Kawabata
and, gently, takes to task the vague ambiguity that Kawabata's words embrace. He says in his acceptance speech:
Kawabata Yasunari, the first Japanese writer who stood on this
platform as a winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature,
delivered a lecture entitled Japan, the Beautiful, and Myself.
It was at once very beautiful and vague. I have used the
English word vague as an equivalent of that word in
Japanese aimai na. This Japanese adjective could have
several alternatives for its English translation. The kind of
vagueness that Kawabata adopted deliberately is implied in
the title itself of his lecture. It can be transliterated as 'myself
of beautiful Japan'. The vagueness of the whole title derives
from the Japanese particle 'no' (literally 'of') linking 'Myself'
and 'Beautiful Japan'.
The vagueness of the title leaves room for various
interpretations of its implications. It can imply 'myself as a
part of beautiful Japan', the particle 'no' indicating the
relationship of the noun following it to the noun preceding it as
one of possession, belonging or attachment. It can also imply
'beautiful Japan and myself', the particle in this case linking
the two nouns in apposition, as indeed they are in the English
title of Kawabata's lecture translated by one of the most
eminent American specialists of Japanese literature. He
translates 'Japan, the beautiful and myself'. In this expert
translation the traduttore (translator) is not in the least a
traditore (betrayer).
Under that title Kawabata talked about a unique kind of
mysticism which is found not only in Japanese thought but also
more widely Oriental thought. By 'unique' I mean here a
tendency towards Zen Buddhism. Even as a twentieth-century
writer Kawabata depicts his state of mind in terms of the
poems written by medieval Zen monks. Most of these poems
are concerned with the linguistic impossibility of telling the truth.
According to such poems words are confined within their
closed shells. The readers can not expect that words will ever
come out of these poems and the get through to us. One can
never understand or feel sympathetic towards these Zen
poems except by giving oneself up and willingly penetrating
into the closed shells of those words.
Why did Kawabata boldly decide to read those extremely
esoteric poems in Japanese before the audience in Stockholm?
I look back almost with nostalgia upon the straightforward
bravery which he attained towards the end of his distinguished
career and with which he made such a confession of his faith.
Kawabata had been an artistic pilgrim for decades during
which he produced a host of masterpieces. After those years
of his pilgrimage, only by making a confession as to how he
was fascinated by such inaccessible Japanese poems that
baffle any attempt fully to understand them, was he able to
talk about 'Japan, the Beautiful, and Myself', that is, about the
world in which he lived and the literature which he created.
It is noteworthy, furthermore, that Kawabata concluded his
lecture as follows:
My works have been described as works of
emptiness, but it is not to be taken for the
nihilism of the West. The spiritual foundation
would seem to be quite different. Dogen entitled
his poem about the seasons 'Innate Reality',
and even as he sang of the beauty of the
seasons he was deeply immersed in Zen.
(Translation by Edward Seidensticker)
Here also I detect a brave and straightforward self-assertion.
On the one hand Kawabata identifies himself as belonging
essentially to the tradition of Zen philosophy and aesthetic
sensibilities pervading the classical literature of the Orient. Yet
on the other he goes out of his way to differentiate emptiness
as an attribute of his works from the nihilism of the West. By
doing so he was whole-heartedly addressing the coming
generations of mankind with whom Alfred Nobel entrusted his
hope and faith.
To tell you the truth, rather than with Kawabata my compatriot
who stood here twenty-six years ago, I feel more spiritual
affinity with the Irish poet William Butler Yeats, who was
awarded a Nobel Prize for Literature seventy one years ago
when he was at about the same age as me. Of course I would
not presume to rank myself with the poetic genius Yeats. I am
merely a humble follower living in a country far removed from
his. As William Blake, whose work Yeats revalued and
restored to the high place it holds in this century, once wrote:
'Across Europe & Asia to China & Japan like lightnings'.
Cleverly, then, Oe separates himself from his esteemed predecessor though praising him profusely as he does so. Instead, he would identify more with the Irish Poet Yeats, another writer from a marginalized island culture. If Kawabata looked inward and reflected on Japanese traditions, Oe reached out to embrace literary traditions from other lands. It is Oe's way of situating himself in the world differently from the way Kawabata had in 1968. Oe knows that he lives in a different world, a world in which Japan occupies some ambiguous space between western-influenced modernity and Asian history and culture. It means Japan may experience a divided identity--"split between two opposite poles of ambiguity"--and has to live with "bitter memories of the past," a reference to Japan's violent conduct toward its Asian neighbors
When, a little bit later on in his address, Oe gets down to what he really wants to say, he continues to distance
himself from the position that Kawabata was able to take twenty-six years
previously:
As someone living in the present world such as this one and
sharing bitter memories of the past imprinted on my mind, I
cannot utter in unison with Kawabata the phrase 'Japan, the
Beautiful and Myself'. A moment ago I touched upon the
'vagueness' of the title and content of Kawabata's lecture. In
the rest of my lecture I would like to use the word 'ambiguous'
in accordance with the distinction made by the eminent British
poet Kathleen Raine; she once said of William Blake that he
was not so much vague as ambiguous. I cannot talk about
myself otherwise than by saying 'Japan, the Ambiguous, and
Myself'.
My observation is that after one hundred and twenty years of
modernisation since the opening of the country, present-day
Japan is split between two opposite poles of ambiguity. I too
am living as a writer with this polarisation imprinted on me like
a deep scar.
This ambiguity which is so powerful and penetrating that it
splits both the state and its people is evident in various ways.
The modernisation of Japan has been orientated toward
learning from and imitating the West. Yet Japan is situated in
Asia and has firmly maintained its traditional culture. The
ambiguous orientation of Japan drove the country into the
position of an invader in Asia. On the other hand, the culture
of modern Japan, which implied being thoroughly open to the
West or at least that impeded understanding by the West.
What was more, Japan was driven into isolation from other
Asian countries, not only politically but also socially and
culturally.
In the history of modern Japan literature the writers most
sincere and aware of their mission were those 'post-war
writers' who came onto the literary scene immediately after
the last War, deeply wounded by the catastrophe yet full of
hope for a rebirth. They tried with great pains to make up for
the inhuman atrocities committed by Japanese military forces
in Asian countries, as well as to bridge the profound gaps that
existed not only between the developed countries of the West
and Japan but also between African and Latin American
countries and Japan. Only by doing so did they think that they
could seek with some humility reconcialiation with the rest of
the world. It has always been my aspiration to cling to the
very end of the line of that literary tradition inherited from
those writers.
The contemporary state of Japan and its people in their post -
modern phase cannot but be ambivalent. Right in the middle
of the history of Japan's modernisation came the Second
World War, a war which was brought about by the very
aberration of the modernisation itself. The defeat in this War
fifty years ago occasioned an opportunity for Japan and the
Japanese as the very agent of the War to attempt a rebirth out
of the great misery and sufferings that were depicted by the
'Post-war School' of Japanese writers. The moral props for
Japanese aspiring to such a rebirth were the idea of
democracy and their determination never to wage a war
again. Paradoxically, the people and state of Japan living on
such moral props were not innocent but had been stained by
their own past history of invading other Asian countries. Those
moral props mattered also to the deceased victims of the
nuclear weapons that were used for the first time in Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, and for the survivors and their off-spring
affected by radioactivity (including tens of thousands of those
whose mother tongue is Korean).