Reading Notes W16: Kenzaburo, Part B

Oe Kenzaburo (1115-1128)
  • Oe was born in a rural area on Shikoki, the smallest of the four main Japanese Islands
  • Oe ranks among the most important Japanese writers in the later decades of the 20th century
  • the second Japanese writer to receive the Nobel Prize in 1994
  • he remains active in Japanese letters as a prolific author, a public intellectual, and a provocative moral voice (1115)
  • in 1954, Oe entered the University of Tokyo, where he majored in French literature and wrote a senior thesis on the French existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre
  • he began publishing stories while still a university student
  • 2 events shook his life in 1963: he visited Hiroshima to attend a world conference against the atomic and hydrogen bombs; and his wife gave birth to a son with severe brain damage
  • the major themes and motifs he worked on were the threat of nuclear weapons to human survival, and the role of individual choice and responsibility in response to overwhelming issues (1116)
  • the Japan he grew up in was a place both of optimism and of disappointment 
  • in the early 1950s, a rising conservative government expanded these reactionary policies and restricted the activities of the left
  • "The Clever Rain Tree" (1980), draws on the tradition of autobiographical fiction in Japan 
  • we can assume the events to have a basis in the author's experiences 
  • the setting of this story is a seminar on East-West during mid-1970s
  • the story depicts the mystery and sadness of the insane

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