Kenzaburo Oe
Kenzaburo Oe
Kenzaburō Ōeis a Japanese writer and a major figure in contemporary Japanese literature. His novels, short stories and essays were strongly influenced by French and American literature and literary theory. They deal with political, social and philosophical issues including nuclear weapons, nuclear power, social non-conformism, and existentialism...
NationalityJapanese
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth31 January 1935
CountryJapan
war principles morality
The Japanese chose the principle of eternal peace as the basis of morality for our rebirth after the War.
reading reading-experience written
There's no better reading experience than going to the place where a text was written.
understanding lifestyle phony
Understanding comes hard to persons of high rank who are accustomed to phony lifestyles that involve no daily work.
voice style firsts
Fundamentally a good author has his or her own sense of style. There is a natural, deep voice, and that voice is present from the first draft of a manuscript. When he or she elaborates on the initial manuscript, it continues to strengthen and simplify that natural, deep voice.
reality support half
Even though we now have the half-century-old new Constitution, there is a popular sentiment of support for the old one that lives on in reality in some quarters.
prayer thinking admitting
To talk of prayer after admitting he professed no faith was, in my opinion, a breach of common courtesy. In this sense, he did make a social blunder, for which I think he well deserved some minor castigation.
war forever world
After the end of the Second World War it was a categorical imperative for us to declare that we renounced war forever in a central article of the new Constitution.
japan way west
The way Japan had tried to build up a modern state modelled on the West was cataclysmic.
suffering form novel
I have survived by representing these sufferings of mine in the form of the novel.
reflection wish serious-work
I am one of the writers who wish to create serious works of literature which dissociate themselves from those novels which are mere reflections of the vast consumer cultures of Tokyo and the subcultures of the world at large.
reflection wish serious-work
I am one of the writers who wish to create serious works of literature which dissociate themselves from those novels which are mere reflections of the vast consumer cultures of Tokyo and the subcultures of the world at large.
japan views asia
From another point of view, a new situation now seems to be arising in which Japan's prosperity is going to be incorporated into the expanding potential power of both production and consumption in Asia at large.
relationship suffering different
As I grew up, I was continually to suffer hardships in different realms of life - in my family, in my relationship to Japanese society and in my way of living at large in the latter half of the twentieth century.
military japan years
In the recent years there have been criticisms levelled against Japan suggesting that she should offer more military forces to the United Nations forces and thereby play a more active role in the keeping and restoration of peace in various parts of the world.