An intellectual figure apart in Japan, constant in his high moral standards, he was an ardent defender of the anti-nuclear cause and of the pacifist Constitution of his country.
Nobel literature laureate Kenzaburō Ōe, a Japanese progressive and non-conformist icon, has died at the age of 88, the Kodansha publishing house announced on Monday. “He died of old age in the early hours of March 3”, the publisher said in a statement explaining that his funeral has already been held by his family. An intellectual figure apart in Japan, constant in his high moral standards, he was an ardent defender of the anti-nuclear cause and of the pacifist Constitution of his country.
Kenzaburō Ōe grew up on the southern island of Shikoku, which would be the main setting for his novels, then studied French literature. As a child, he gorges himself on the subversive legends of his village told to him by his mother and grandmother. But his youth was darkened by the Second World War and the deadly propaganda of the Japanese militarist regime inculcated at school. Traumatized by the capitulation of Japan after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, it is however very quickly conquered by the democratic principles brought by the American occupier. It enjoyed early success, with short stories with disturbing subjects and grotesque or off-center characters, an unconscious mirror of the malaise of post-war Japanese youth.
First big hits
In 1958, he won the prestigious Akutagawa prize rewarding young authors for Farmed Game. This tragic story featuring an African-American pilot captive of a Japanese village community during the Second World War will be adapted to the cinema shortly after by Nagisa Oshima. The same year his first great novel, Pluck the buds, shoot the kidsa social fable about kids from a reformatory left to their own devices in Japan during the war.
From the outset, the provincial writer decided to stay “on the outskirts”promising never to collaborate “with those who are at the center and have power”. The birth in 1963 of a disabled son, Hikari (“Light” in Japanese), will upset his personal life and give new impetus to his work. “Writing and living with my son overlap and these two activities can only deepen each other. I told myself that this would probably be where my imagination could take shape.he will explain later.
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In 1964, with A personal matter, he had his first major success. The novel, which depicts a young father confronted with the shock of the birth of a severely handicapped baby, to the point of considering killing him. His Notes from Hiroshima (1965) are a collection of poignant testimonies of victims of August 6, 1945. Then in its Okinawan Notes (1970), he is interested in the tragic fate of this small peripheral archipelago of Japan, which will not be returned by the United States until 1972.
Hated by Japanese nationalists, Kenzaburō Ōe would be sued for defamation decades later for having recalled in this essay that civilians had been driven to suicide by Japanese soldiers during the Battle of Okinawa in 1945. He won his case at the end of his trial. a long procedure. While writing numerous novels and short stories, he is a literary critic, specialist in William Blake, Malcolm Lowry and Dante.
True to his ideal
His nostalgia for the forest and the myths of his childhood will be another great source of inspiration for his novels (The Game of the Century, M/T and the story of the wonders of the forest…). In 1994, the Nobel Prize in Literature rewarded the “who, with great poetic force, creates an imaginary world where life and myth condense to form a confusing picture of the current fragile human situation”. His refusal shortly after of the Order of Culture, a Japanese distinction awarded by the Emperor, will cause scandal in his country. “I cannot recognize any authority, any value higher than democracy”had justified the writer, faithful to his ideal.
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His work is oriented towards left-wing political engagement and psychological analysis. The genius of Kenzaburō Ōe consists in reconciling, in an original style, a certain naturalism, autobiographical fragments, a sociological and historical reflection and an imagination unequaled by modern Japanese authors. In 1989, he received the Europalia Prize and, in 1994, the Nobel Prize for Literature, signs of international recognition.