Japanese writer Kenzaburo OeHe received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1994 and for his anti-war positions and the literary work that sought to take into account the changes in contemporary society; He died at the age of 88 due to natural causes, Japanese publisher Kodansha announced today.
Note in his state A pacifist and anti-nuclear, Oe’s generation of writers was “deeply wounded” by World War IIbut full of hope of regeneration.
“The old man died in the early hours of March 3”indicates the editorial in the statement, where he also asks that the family not be touched out of respect, which has already had a private funeral, although he declares that a public ceremony will soon take place.
The the arrival of his son Hilary in 1963, born with hydrocephalus and diagnosed with autism, marked his life and his letters.with titles such as “The Person Matters” or “Our Indian Madness Survives”. Other themes in the narrative were the second World War in the country and the consequences of its modernization process.
Who was Kenzaburo Oe?
Oh, it was born in Ehime Prefecture, southern Japanin 1935 in French literature at the University of Tokyowhich marked the formation of his literature: he was always greatly influenced by French narrative, especially by John Paul Sartre.
The writer completed his literary work with the text “The Strange Job” (1957) and the famous “Hiroshima Notebooks” (1965), an account of his trip to this city in southern Japan in 1963 and the years that followed. victims of the atomic bombing in 1945. Later in 1970 he also published the “Okinawa Notebooks”, where Oe recounts his encounters with the inhabitants of this group of islands in southern Japan and questions their living conditions. in this region and the power exercised by the central government presides.
In 1958, Akutagawa won the prestigious Prize for Young Authors. with “Prey” he held an African-American pilot captive in a Japanese rural community during World War II, and the same year he published his first major novel, “The Children’s Tale Turn the Seed.” about children, from a correctional center in Japan during the war.
Are decisive consecration in 1994 when he won the Nobel Prize for Literaturewhich he obtained as “an imaginary world with great poetic power, where life and story are condensed, to create an unstable image of the fragile human condition”, in the words of the judge.
Although it was established that he should not report to governments of any kind either at home or abroad, he thought that it had been given to him by the Swedish people, and that Nobelia should do so. the second Japanese writer to receive the highest literary award, after Yashunari Kawabata in 1968. Later, in 2017, it was taken over by Kazuo Ishiguro.
Kenzaburo OE faces as a journalist
In his journal, the writer wrote mostly jokes articles in newspapers and magazines about the nuclear situation in Japan today and in various groups that have been active against this type of energy.
In addition to the Nobel Prize in 1994, the writer was awarded other prizes, such as the Literature Prize at the University of Tokyo in 1957 and the Akutagawa Prize in 1958, among the young writers in the archipelago, when he was the only one. 23 years old
In recent years, he has added a critical voice to events such as the Fukushima nuclear accident in 2011, asking the Tokyo Government to stop all nuclear activities in the country.
The birth in 1963 of a disabled son Hikari (“Light” in Japanese) turned his life around and gave a new impetus to his work. “Writing and living with my son overlap and these two activities can only penetrate each other deeper. I said without a doubt, that is where my imagination could form”, he once explained.
