Kenzaburō Ōe

Yasuko Claremont (University of Sydney)

Ed. by Roy Anthony Starrs, University of Otago
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 10.2.2: Japanese Writing and Culture.
Vol. editors: Mats Arne Karlsson (University of Sydney), Roy Anthony Starrs (University of Otago)

Dates

Born 31 Jan 1935
Died 3 Feb 2023
Activity 1957-2023

Places

Born in Japan
Active in Japan

Activities

Primary

Essayist
Novelist
Story-writer

Resources

Oe's Works

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Ōe Kenzaburō was born in 1935 in the remote mountain village of ōse on the island of Shikoku, Japan. As a child he had the habit of “going into the forest at night and sleeping among the trees with a sense of security I could never find indoors” (

Japan, the Ambiguous

107). He grew up in an atmosphere of mythology in which local legends and dialects had been preserved for centuries. His grandmother and mother both instilled in him the folklore relating to the village, and in his precocious imagination he was able to create a private mythology with the village at its centre. One of the great legends of the village is that each person had their own tree in the forest. As each child was born their soul would come from the tree to inhabit their body, and at death return to the tree.

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3276 words

Citation: Claremont, Yasuko. "Kenzaburō Ōe". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 16 May 2009 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=12092, accessed 23 November 2024.]

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