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Kenzaburo Oe, the Japanese writer who won the Nobel Prize for Literature, has died

2023-03-13T10:48:16.429Z


He was 88 years old. He obtained the highest award for letters in 1994. He was a staunch defender of pacifism.


At the age of 88,

the Japanese writer Kenzaburo Oe,

winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1994 and recognized for his anti-war positions and a literary work that sought to account for the transformations of modern society, has died.

The writer was part of a generation of writers "deeply wounded" by World War II, but full of hope for a revival.

Throughout his career he maintained his pacifist and anti-nuclear position.

According to the Japanese publisher Kodansha, Oe "died of advanced age in the early hours of March 3."

Oe

was born in Ehime Prefecture, southwestern Japan, in 1935

into a family whose wives had traditionally engaged in storytelling about events and stories in the region, including his grandmother, known for her anti-nationalist stories.

Kenzaburo Oe with protesters against the nuclear power plant in central Tokyo, Japan, on March 15, 2014. Photo EFE.

The arrival of his son Hilari in 1963, who was born with hydrocephalus and diagnosed with autism, marked his life and his literature, with titles such as "A personal matter" or "Tell us how to survive our madness".

Other recurring themes in his narrative were the consequences of World War II in his country and its modernization process.

The writer materialized his literary work with the text "A strange job" (1957) and rose to fame thanks to "Hiroshima Notebooks" (1965), an account of his trip to this city in southern Japan in 1963 and later years. in order to interview the victims of the atomic bombing of 1945. Later, in 1970, he would also publish "Okinawa Notebooks", a travel log where Oe narrates his encounters with the residents of this group of islands in southern Japan, and questions the living conditions in this region and the power exercised by the central government over it.

In 1958, he won the renowned Akutagawa Award for Young Authors with "The Prey," about an African-American pilot held captive in a rural Japanese community during World War II, and that same year, he published his first major novel, "Tear Up the Seeds, Shoot to Children", a social fable about children in a correctional facility in Japan during the war.

A decisive award in his career

His most relevant consecration would come

in 1994 when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature,

which he obtained for creating "with great poetic force an imaginary world where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting portrait of the fragile human situation", in the words of the jury.

Kenzaburo Oe of Japan, left, receives the Nobel Prize for Literature from Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf.

AP photo.

Despite the fact that he had as a maxim not to relate to governments of any kind, neither in his country nor abroad, he considered that the Nobel was awarded to him by the Swedish people and he accepted it, becoming the second Japanese writer to obtain the highest literary award, after Yashunari Kawabata in 1968. Later, in 2017, it would be received by Kazuo Ishiguro.

In his more journalistic facet,

the author wrote articles in newspapers and magazines

about the nuclear situation facing Japan today and actively participated in various groups against this type of energy.

In addition to the Nobel Prize in 1994, the writer

was awarded other prestigious prizes

such as the Literature Prize at the University of Tokyo in 1957 and the Akutagawa Prize in 1958, considered the most important among young writers in the archipelago, when he was only 23 years old.

In recent years, he has added his critical voice to events such as the Fukushima nuclear accident in 2011, asking the Government of Tokyo to stop all nuclear activities in the country.

Kenzaburo Oe wins the Nobel Prize for Literature.

The birth in 1963 of a disabled son, Hikari ("Light" in Japanese), turned his personal life upside down and gave new impetus to his work.

"Writing and living with my son overlap and these two activities can only deepen each other. I told myself that, without a doubt, that is where my imagination could take shape," he once explained.

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Source: clarin

All news articles on 2023-03-13

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