Long Fiction:
Memushiri kouchi, 1958 (Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids, 1995)
Warera no jidai, 1959
Yoru yo yuruyaka ni ayume, 1959
Seinenno omei, 1960
Okurete kita seinen, 1962
Sakebigoe, 1963
Kojinteki na taiken, 1964 (A Personal Matter, 1968)
Nichyoseikatsu no boken, 1964
Sora no kaibutsu aguwee, 1964 (novella; Aghwee the Sky Monster, 1977)
Man’en gannen no futtoboru, 1967 (The Silent Cry, 1974)
Nichijo seikatsu no boken, 1971
Kōzui wa waga tamashii ni oyobi, 1973
Pinchi rannā chōsho, 1976 (The Pinch Runner Memorandum, 1994)
Dōjidai gemu, 1979
Atarashii hito yo mezameyo, 1983 (Rouse Up, O Young Men of the New Age, 2002)
Natsukashii toshi e no tegami, 1987
Jinsei no shinseki, 1989 (An Echo of Heaven, 1996)
Chiryōtō, 1990
Shizuka na seikatsu, 1990 (A Quiet Life, 1996)
Chiryōtō wakusei, 1991
Moeagaru midori no ki, 1993-1995 (includes “Sukuinushi” ga nagurareru made, 1993, Yureugoku “vashireshon,” 1994, and Ōinaru hi ni, 1995)
Chūgaeri, 1999 (2 volumes; Somersault, 2003)
Torikaeko, 2000 (also known as Chenjiringu)
Ureigao no doji, 2002
Short Fiction:
“Kimyo na shigoto,” 1957
“Shisha no ogori,” 1957 (“Lavish the Dead,” 1965)
Miru mae ni tobe, 1958
“Shiiku,” 1958 (“The Catch,” 1966; “Prize Stock,” 1977)
Kodoku na seinen no kyuka, 1960
“Sebuntin,” 1961 (“Seventeen,” 1996)
“Seiji shonen shisu,” 1961
Seiteki ningen, 1963
Warera no kyōki o ikinobiru michi o oshieyo, 1969 (Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness: Four Short Novels, 1977)
Gendai denikshu, 1980
“Ame no ki” o kiku onnatachi, 1982
“Rein tsurī” o kiku onnatachi, 1982
Ika ni ki o korosu ka, 1984
Kaba ni kamareru, 1985
Boku ga hontō ni wakakatta koro, 1992
Nonfiction:
Sekai no wakamonotachi, 1962
Genshuku na tsunawatari, 1965
Hiroshima nōto, 1965 (Hiroshima Notes, 1982)
Jisokusuru kokorozashi, 1968
Kakujidai no sōzōryoku, 1970
Kowaremoto to shite no ningen, 1970
Okinawa nōto, 1970
Dōjidai to shite no sengo, 1973
Bungaku noto, 1974
Jōkyō e, 1974
Kotoba ni yotte, 1976
Shōsetsu no hōhō, 1978
Ōe Kenzaburō dojidaironshu, 1981
Sengo bungakusha, 1981
Kaku no taika to “ningen” no koe, 1982
Atarashii bungaku no tame ni, 1988
Bungaku sainyūmon, 1992
Aimai na Nihom no watakushi, 1995 (Japan, the Ambiguous, and Myself: The Nobel Prize Speech and Other Lectures, 1995)
Kaifuku suru kazoku, 1995 (A Healing Family, 1996)
On Politics and Literature: Two Lectures, 1999
“Jibun no ki” no shita de, 2001
Edited Text:
Nan to moshirenai mirai ni, 1985 (The Crazy Iris, and Other Stories of the Atomic Aftermath, 1985)
Kenzaburō Ōe (oh-ay) is Japan’s foremost existentialist writer and essayist, whose work deals with the plight of human beings set against the backdrop of postwar Japan. Born in the village of Ōse on the island of Shikoku in southern Japan, Ōe, the third of seven children, lost his father in 1944, and when the emperor acknowledged Japan’s defeat in his first-ever radio address on August 15, 1945, the boy experienced a complete collapse of his world.
Kenzaburō Ōe
It was this sudden awakening to an uncaring universe devoid of a superhuman ruler that led to Ōe’s study of French existentialism and such American writers as Henry Miller and Norman Mailer when he entered Tokyo University in 1954. He graduated with a degree in French literature in 1959. His marriage to Yukari Itami in 1960 produced three children. The fate of the oldest, a mentally disabled son named Hikari, is central to Ōe’s fiction.
Ōe’s 1958 novella, The Catch, turns to the war years, portraying the impossible friendship between a Japanese boy and a black American prisoner of war; it ends in an outburst of collective violence. This work cemented Ōe’s national fame and won for him the prestigious Akutagawa Prize (Ōe was the first student ever to be so honored). That same year he wrote Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids, a story of reform-school boys who are abandoned in a remote village when a plague breaks out. The boys make themselves at home in the village, even performing childish versions of hunting ceremonies to ensure the town’s continued prosperity.
The year 1964 was a turning point for Ōe’s work, for in this year the author began fictionalizing his life with his mentally disabled son. A Personal Matter is the seminal work of this period; here, the protagonist, Bird, tries to escape his fate through alcohol and adultery and even arranges to kill his son; in an act of courage, however, Bird returns to his wife and son. In The Silent Cry Ōe makes a mentally disabled son peripheral to a grander saga of a rural rebellion, at the center of which are two brothers who trace their opposing natures through various generations of ancestors. In the collection of four short novels Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness, the title work offers a mystic exploration of Ōe’s obsessive topic: A father believes that he can feel the pain of his mentally disabled son, Eeyore. In another story of the collection, Aghwee the Sky Monster, a father follows through with the killing of his child. Life with a mentally disabled son is again Ōe’s subject in the 1976 novel The Pinch Runner Memorandum, in which Mori, the son, is featured in a grotesque tale of fantastic realism. In Dōjidai gemu (the game of contemporaneity) and Rouse Up, O Young Men of the New Age, Ōe risks an analysis of Japanese culture, focusing first on its past, with a tale about a dissident tribe, and then trying to reshape the stylistics of Japan’s traditional “I novel.”
Ōe’s singlemindedness of theme in much of his writing has met with criticism, as has his style, which matches his content in its deliberate frontal assault on the traditional values and stylistics of Japanese writing and fully incorporates modern and postmodern Western influences. Yet Ōe’s literary skill, merciless exploration of his topic, and stylistic tours de force have brought him great national and international acclaim. In the fall of 1994 Ōe was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. In his acceptance speech he talked about the power of literature, expressing regret only that in Japan his writing “has not had sufficient power to push back a rising tide of conformity.” The prize triggered the publication of an English translation of Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids as well as two volumes of nonfiction. Ōe subsequently completed a science-fiction trilogy titled Moeagaru midori no ki (the flaming green tree), and three other novels. Somersault was inspired by the Aum Shinrikyo cult’s release of sarin nerve gas on the Tokyo subway system in 1995; it revolves around the struggles within a religious cult between the elderly founders and a more militant wing which desires violent action.
In his essays Ōe is an influential voice in the Japanese intellectual community, writing about such political issues as Hiroshima and World War II, as well as about such intellectual questions as the philosophy of existentialism. Ōe is also an outspoken opponent of nuclear military installations, and participated in demonstrations against nuclear weapons.