Kenzaburō Ōe(1935 — 2023)
Kenzaburō Ōe
Japon, empire du Japon
7 min read
Japanese writer born in 1935, a major figure in post-war Japanese literature. His work, deeply shaped by the birth of his disabled son and by the memory of Hiroshima, earned him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1994.
Frequently asked questions
Key Facts
- Born on January 31, 1935, in the village of Ōse, on the island of Shikoku (Japan)
- Published “A Personal Matter” (Kojinteki na taiken) in 1964, inspired by the birth of his son Hikari, who was born with a disability
- Published “Hiroshima Notes” (Hiroshima Noto) in 1965, a testimony about the survivors of the atomic bomb
- Received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1994
- Died on March 3, 2023, in Tokyo
Works & Achievements
A short story that won him the Akutagawa Prize at 23; it reveals a precocious talent and an unflinching look at war seen through children's eyes.
His first novel, about a group of reform-school children abandoned in a wartime village; a powerful story of exclusion and cruelty.
A novel born from the birth of his disabled son; it tells of a father's struggle to accept and love his child. His most famous book.
A collection of investigations and reflections on the survivors of the atomic bomb; a major text of nuclear remembrance.
An ambitious novel linking the history of a village, an old uprising, and the crisis of two brothers; considered a masterpiece.
A committed essay on Okinawa's painful history during and after the war, which would spark fierce controversy.
A novel blending village myths and family memory, in which Ōe revisits the legends of his native Shikoku.
A story centered on the life of a family much like his own, revolving around a disabled son, full of tenderness and gravity.
Anecdotes
At just 23 years old, in 1958, Ōe received the prestigious Akutagawa Prize for his short story "Prize Stock
which tells of the encounter between the children of a Japanese village and a Black American airman shot down during the war. This prize made him a rising star of Japanese literature while he was still a student.
In 1963, his son Hikari was born with a severe skull malformation. Doctors warned that the operation that would save him would likely leave him with serious disabilities. Ōe chose to have him operated on anyway, and this event transformed his entire body of work: from it he would draw his most famous novel
A Personal Matter.
His son Hikari, long unable to speak and nearly blind, one day revealed himself to be fascinated by birdsong and then by music. Having become a composer, he released albums in Japan. For Ōe, his son's music was a way of "saying" what words could not express.
In 1994, the very year of his Nobel Prize, Ōe declined the Order of Culture, Japan's highest artistic distinction, because it is bestowed by the Emperor. A committed pacifist, he declared that he recognized no authority above democracy and the people.
For the title of his Nobel lecture
Japan, the Ambiguous, and Myself
Ōe deliberately played on the one his elder Yasunari Kawabata had chosen in 1968
Japan, the Beautiful, and Myself." Where Kawabata celebrated traditional beauty, Ōe preferred to speak of the contradictions and wounds of modern Japan.
Primary Sources
The title of my lecture echoes that of Yasunari Kawabata. As a writer, I hope that my work can help to heal and reconcile the people wounded by our century.
The people of Hiroshima, despite the horror they lived through, refuse despair and preserve their dignity as human beings. They are the true moralists of our time.
Bird realizes that he cannot run away forever: to take responsibility for the life of this fragile child is also to become, at last, himself — a man and a father.
I recognize no authority, no value, that would place itself above democracy; this is why I cannot accept a distinction awarded by the Emperor.
Key Places
Forest village on the island of Shikoku where Ōe was born in 1935. Its landscapes and village legends would inspire many of his novels.
Ōe studied French literature here and discovered Sartre. It was here that he began to write and to make a name for himself.
The writer lived and worked for most of his life in the Japanese capital, where he died in 2023.
Ōe traveled here in the 1960s to meet survivors of the atomic bomb, which gave rise to “Hiroshima Notes.”
His travels through the Okinawa archipelago, scarred by war and the American presence, fed into his “Okinawa Notes.”
Ōe received the Nobel Prize in Literature here in December 1994 and delivered his famous lecture “Japan, the Ambiguous, and Myself.”
