The literary musings of 大江 健三郎 (Kenzaburō Ōe) —one of our most adored Japanese writers, whose work tends to be much more vulnerable and disconcerting than many modern writers. Born in January of 1935 in a village on the crest of the Shikoku forest, Ōe was only six years of age when WWII erupted; a witness to the unfortunate extension of militaristic education, which veiled the sacred lands of his youth, and the grounds of his forefathers; the Emperor served “as both monarch and deity reigning over its politics and culture.”
Kenzaburō’s desire for democracy reigned true over the course of his younger years, and he left his village at the age of eighteen —leaving behind his life tending to the Shikoku forest, departing for Tokyo by train. It is here where he would study the grotesque methodologies of France’s Rabelais —a renaissance writer, monk, and satirist. He would also come to study the critical works of Russia’s Mikhail Bakhtin, whose works on the Carnivalesque (subverting and liberating a mode of writing through chaos and the absurd) led to his discourses on the philosophy of language; our young Kenzaburō was very fortunate indeed, especially to study such concepts under the guidance of Professor Kazuo Watanabe at Tokyo University
Ōe’s grandmother was a unique and ever defiant storyteller, whose tales of anti-nationalism and humour clearly influenced her grandson’s life. It is no wonder that Kenzaburō was so talented at expressing the human condition through his short stories, novels, and essays, in a way which many writers do not possess to date. In 1994 our humanist of Japanese literature won the Nobel Prize, around the time that his trilogy The Flaming Green Tree was released —All Hail Kenzaburō Ōe.