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
culture modern open thoroughly understanding west
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.
grew half hardships japanese large latter life living relationship society suffer twentieth
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.
stills
The dead can survive as part of the lives of those that still live.
jobs firsts literature
It is the second job of literature to create myth. But its first job is to destroy it.
jesus men effort
There could be joy in destruction, too, couldn't there? Isn't Jesus Christ's Second Coming supposed to occur only after a lot of unmitigated destruction? But again, human history is fraught with tragedies in which man spared no effort to destroy with millenarian joy, only to learn that no messiah appeared afterwards.
europe light soul
The destination of the soul: this is what I, led on by Nils Holgersson, came to seek in the literature of Western Europe. I fervently hope that my pursuit, as a Japanese, of literature and culture will, in some small measure, repay Western Europe for the light it has shed upon the human condition.
writing thinking cosmos
I think I am doing my works to link myself, my family, with society — with the cosmos. To link me with my family to the cosmos, that is easy, because all literature has some mystic tendency. So when we write about our family, we can link ourselves to the cosmos.
care green watches
It takes a person of great care and insight to watch for any abnormality in the green grass even while it grows abundantly and healthily.
jobs sorrow clown
The writer's job is the job of a clown …the clown who also talks about sorrow.
hangover agony suffering
If any suffering was fruitless it was the agony of a hangover; what he suffered now could not expiate suffering of any other kind.
reading sleep night
By reading Huckleberry Finn I felt I was able to justify my act of going into the mountain forest at night and sleeping among the trees with a sense of security which I could never find indoors.
children firsts married
After I got married, the first child born to us was mentally handicapped.
writing style fundamentals
However, please allow me to say that the fundamental style of my writing has been to start from my personal matters and then to link it up with society, the state and the world.
war principles morality
The Japanese chose the principle of eternal peace as the basis of morality for our rebirth after the War.