Kenzaburo Oe - Reading Becomes the Writer

This is how I interpret Oe's Nobel Prize lecture - that he came from a marginal area of Japan and books, novels, connected him with the wider world.

During the last catastrophic World War I was a little boy and lived in a remote, wooded valley on Shikoku Island in the Japanese Archipelago, thousands of miles away from here. At that time there were two books by which I was really fascinated: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Wonderful Adventures of Nils. The whole world was then engulfed by waves of horror. 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. The protagonist of The Adventures of Nils is transformed into a little creature, understands birds’ language and makes an adventurous journey. I derived from the story sensuous pleasures of various kinds. Firstly, living as I was in a deep wood on the Island of Shikoku just as my ancestors had done long ago, I had a revelation that this world and this way of life there were truly liberating. Secondly, I felt sympathetic and identified myself with Nils, a naughty little boy, who while traversing Sweden, collaborating with and fighting for the wild geese, transforms himself into a boy, still innocent, yet full of confidence as well as modesty....

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In both my life and writing I have been a pupil of Professor Watanabe’s. I was influenced by him in two crucial ways. One was in my method of writing novels. I learnt concretely from his translation of Rabelais what Mikhail Bakhtin formulated as ‘the image system of grotesque realism or the culture of popular laughter’; the importance of material and physical principles; the correspondence between the cosmic, social and physical elements; the overlapping of death and passions for rebirth; and the laughter that subverts hierarchical relationships.

The image system made it possible to seek literary methods of attaining the universal for someone like me born and brought up in a peripheral, marginal, off-centre region of the peripheral, marginal, off-centre country, Japan. Starting from such a background I do not represent Asia as a new economic power but an Asia impregnated with ever-lasting poverty and a mixed-up fertility. By sharing old, familiar yet living metaphors I align myself with writers like Kim Ji-ha of Korea, Chon I and Mu Jen, both of China. For me the brotherhood of world literature consists in such relationships in concrete terms. I once took part in a hunger strike for the political freedom of a gifted Korean poet. I am now deeply worried about the destiny of those gifted Chinese novelists who have been deprived of their freedom since the Tienanmen Square incident. 

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This belief of mine has not been fully proved. ‘Weak person’ though I am, with the aid of this unverifiable belief, I would like to ‘suffer dully all the wrongs’ accumulated throughout the twentieth century as a result of the monstrous development of technology and transport. As one with a peripheral, marginal and off-centre existence in the world I would like to seek how – with what I hope is a modest decent and humanist contribution – I can be of some use in a cure and reconciliation of mankind. 

With that kind of background, we, with so many more resources available to us should also be able to achieve great things. If not great things, then we can - at the bare minimum - leave behind a better world behind for others. This probably indicates a certain sort of narrow-mindedness on my part - that after my criminal spree and prison time,I now see too much in terms of atonement. If so, am I wrong? Depression left me viewing life as nothing but ugliness and disease and the only hope lay in self-destruction. Well,I'mtrying to get back my humanity from my self-destructive side and that means for me to do something creative. I suggest the same solution to you. I will so far as to say, living requires creativityfor any meaningfulness,