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Kenzaburo Oe Biography

Kenzaburō Ōe (大江健三郎, Ōe Kenzaburō, born 31 January 1935) is a Japanese writer and a major figure in contemporary Japanese literature. His novels, short stories and essays, strongly influenced by French and American literature and literary theory, deal with political, social and philosophical issues, including nuclear weapons, nuclear power, social non-conformism, and existentialism. Ōe was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1994 for creating "an imagined world, where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament today".

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Kenzaburo Oe Quotes

There's no better reading experience than going to the place where a text was written.

Place, Reading, Reading Experience, Written

If any suffering was fruitless it was the agony of a hangover; what he suffered now could not expiate suffering of any other kind.

Agony, Hangover, Suffered, Suffering

It is the second job of literature to create myth. But its first job is to destroy it.

Destroy, Firsts, Job, Jobs, Literature

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.

Europe, Fervently, Light, Nils, Small, Soul

Understanding comes hard to persons of high rank who are accustomed to phony lifestyles that involve no daily work.

Accustomed, Lifestyle, Persons, Phony, Understanding

The writer's job is the job of a clown …the clown who also talks about sorrow.

Clown, Job, Jobs, Sorrow, Talks

To be upright and to have an imagination: that is enough to be a very good young man.

Enough, Good, Imagination, Men, Young

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.

Relationship, Suffering, Different, Japanese, Grew

The people of Hiroshima went to work at once to restore human society in the aftermath of the great atomic flood. They were concerned to salvage their own lives, but in the process they also salvaged the souls of the people who have brought the atomic bomb.

Aftermath, Bomb, Brought, Human, People, Soul

In Japan itself there have all along been attempts by some to obliterate the article about renunciation of war from the Constitution and for this purpose they have taken every opportunity to make use of pressures from abroad.

Abroad, Obliterate, Opportunity, Pressures, Taken, War

I am one of the writers who wish to create serious works of literature which dissociate themselves from those novels which are mere reflections of the vast consumer cultures of Tokyo and the subcultures of the world at large.

Culture, Dissociate, Literature, Mere, Reflection, Wish

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.

Destruction, Effort, Jesus, Joy, Men, Tragedies

The ambiguous orientation of Japan drove the country into the position of an invader in Asia.

Asia, Country, Drove, Japan, Orientation

Paradoxically, the people and state of Japan living on such moral props were not innocent but had been stained by their own past history of invading other Asian countries.

Country, History, Japan, Past, State

After the end of the Second World War it was a categorical imperative for us to declare that we renounced war forever in a central article of the new Constitution.

Article, Categorical, Forever, Imperative, War, World

The ideal teacher student relationship exists when the student is better than the teacher.

Exists, Relationship, Student, Students, Teacher, Teacher Student

Fundamentally a good author has his or her own sense of style. There is a natural, deep voice, and that voice is present from the first draft of a manuscript. When he or she elaborates on the initial manuscript, it continues to strengthen and simplify that natural, deep voice.

Author, Firsts, Strengthen, Style, Voice

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.

Cosmos, Easy, Family, Literature, Thinking, Writing

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.

Reading, Sleep, Night, Sleeping, Indoors

I think, we can only write very personal matters through our experience. When I named my first novel about my son A Personal Matter, I believe I knew the most important thing: there is not any personal matter; we must find the link between ourselves, our personal matter, and society.

Believe, Named, Son, Think, Writing

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