Kenzaburo Oe "died of old age in the early hours of March 3", announced the publisher of the Japanese Nobel Prize for Literature, Kodansha. The progressive and non-conformist Japanese icon died at the age of 88. His funeral has already been held by his family, the publishing house said in its press release. Kenzaburo Oe's work tirelessly denounced the violence inflicted on the weak and spoke out against the conformity of modern Japanese society.
An intellectual figure apart in Japan, constant in his high moral standards, he was an ardent defender of the anti-nuclear cause and of the pacifist Constitution of his country. Born on January 31, 1935, he grew up in a remote hamlet on the island of Shikoku, in the middle of a vast forest, a setting he would frequently use in his work, like a mythical microcosm of humanity.
As a child, Kenzaburo Oe gorged on the subversive legends of his village told to him by his mother and grandmother. But his youth was darkened by the Second World War and the deadly propaganda of the Japanese militarist regime inculcated at school. Traumatized by the capitulation of Japan after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, it is however very quickly conquered by the democratic principles brought by the American occupier.
At 16, reading a book on the French Renaissance caused an illumination in him: "The expression 'meaning of free examination' which comes up often in this book seemed to show me the way to follow for the future", will say - does it much later. The teenager decides to go to study French literature at the prestigious University of Tokyo, and begins his literary career while still a student.
It enjoyed early success, with short stories with disturbing subjects and grotesque or off-center characters, an unconscious mirror of the malaise of post-war Japanese youth. In 1958, he won the prestigious Akutagawa prize, rewarding young authors, for Game farming. This tragic story featuring an African-American pilot captive of a Japanese village community during the Second World War will be adapted to the cinema shortly after by Nagisa Oshima.
The same year released his first great novel, Tear out the buds, shoot the children, a social fable about kids from a reformatory left to their own devices in Japan during the war.
From the outset, the provincial writer decides to stay "on the periphery", promising himself never to collaborate "with those who are at the center and have power". The birth in 1963 of a handicapped son, Hikari ("Light" in Japanese), would upset his personal life and give new impetus to his work. “Writing and living with my son overlap and these two activities can only deepen each other. I thought that would probably be where my imagination could take shape,” he later explained.
A Personal Matter (1964) is the first of a long series of novels inspired by his private life, which depicts a young father going through the shock of the birth of a severely handicapped baby, even considering killing him. His Notes from Hiroshima (1965) are a collection of poignant testimonies from victims of August 6, 1945. Then, in his Notes from Okinawa (1970), he focuses on the tragic fate of this small peripheral archipelago of Japan, which will never be handed over by the United States only in 1972.
Hated by Japanese nationalists, Kenzaburo Oe would be sued for defamation decades later for having recalled in this essay that civilians had been driven to suicide by Japanese soldiers during the Battle of Okinawa in 1945. He won his case at the end of his trial. a long procedure. His nostalgia for the forest and the myths of his childhood will be another great source of inspiration for his novels (The Game of the Century, M/T and the story of the wonders of the forest...).
In 1994, the Nobel Prize for Literature consecrated the one "who, with great poetic force, creates an imaginary world where life and myth condense to form a confusing picture of the current fragile human situation". His refusal, shortly after, of the Order of Culture, a Japanese distinction awarded by the emperor, will cause scandal in his country. "I cannot recognize any authority, any value higher than democracy", had justified the writer, faithful to his ideal.
