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

Save to Bookshelf

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.

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

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 22 November 2024.]

View recommended reading for this article