 1994 Nobel Prize in Literature | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kenzaburō Ōe | ||||
 "who with poetic force creates an imagined world, where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament today." | ||||
| Date |
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| Location | Stockholm, Sweden | |||
| Presented by | Swedish Academy | |||
| First award | 1901 | |||
| Website | Official website | |||
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The1994Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the Japanese novelistKenzaburō Ōe (1935–2023) "who with poetic force creates an imagined world, where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament today."[1] He is the second Japanese Nobel laureate in Literature afterYasunari Kawabata was awarded in 1968.[2][3]
Kenzaburō Ōe's novels about the impact of World War II on Japan includeMemushiri kouchi ("Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids", 1958) andHiroshima nōto ("Hiroshima Notes", 1965). His short stories and essays includeSeiteki ningen ("The Sexual Man", 1963) andKōzui wa waga tamashii ni oyobi ("The Flood Invades My Spirit" 1973). The essayOkinawa nōto ("Okinawa Notes", 1970) led to a lawsuit by two military officers.[4] To his son,Hikari Ōe, a noted Japanese composer and musician, did he dedicate his famousSora no kaibutsu Aguī ("Aghwee the Sky Monster", 1964) andKojinteki na taiken ("A Personal Matter", 1964).[2][4]
Although Oe had been mentioned as a potential candidate for the prize in recent years, he was little known in the English-speaking world and few of his books were available in English translation. Frequently mentioned favourites for the prize were the Belgian poet, playwright and novelistHugo Claus, who writes in Flemish; the German novelist and playwrightPeter Handke (awarded in2019); the Dutch novelistCees Nooteboom; the Swedish poetTomas Tranströmer (awarded in2011); the Filipino writer and essayistNick Joaquin; the Japanese novelistShūsaku Endō, and the Irish poetSeamus Heaney (awarded the following year).[3]
Ōe's Nobel lecture on 7 December 1994 entitledAimai na Nihon no watashi ("Japan, the Ambiguous and Myself")[5] began with a commentary on his life as a child and how he was fascinated byThe Adventures of Huckleberry Finn andThe Wonderful Adventures of Nils, which he used to take his mind off from the terror of World War II. He described surviving various hardships by using writing as an escape, "representing these sufferings of mine in the form of the novel," and how his son Hikari similarly uses music as a method of expressing "the voice of a crying and dark soul."
Ōe dedicated a large portion of his speech to his opinion ofYasunari Kawabata's acceptance speech, saying that the vagueness of Kawabata's title ("Japan, the Beautiful and Myself") and his discussions of the poems written by medieval Zen monks were the inspiration for the title of his acceptance speech. Ōe, however, stated that rather than feeling spiritual affinity with his compatriot Kawabata, he felt more affinity with the Irish poet,William Butler Yeats, whose poetry had a significant effect on his writings and his life, even being a major inspiration for his trilogy,A Flaming Green Tree and the source of its title. Ōe stated, "Yeats is the writer in whose wake I would like to follow." He mentioned that based on his experiences of Japan, he cannot utter in unison with Kawabata the phrase "Japan, the Beautiful and Myself". Ōe also discussed the revival of militaristic feelings in Japan and the necessity for rejecting these feelings, and how Ōe desired to be of use in a cure and reconciliation of mankind.[5]
At the award ceremony in Stockholm on 10 December 1994,Kjell Espmark of theSwedish Academy said:
In Oe’s work, we are dealing with more than persistent leitmotifs. The books re-echo and vary each other in a great ingenious project. Here, if ever, it is justifiable to talk about a writer who is not writing books but “building” an œuvre (...)
Oe himself has described his writing as a way of exorcising his demons. Hopefully, he will never succeed. But from his incessant wrestling with these risky beings derives an œuvre which succeeds in another way – in escaping the bounds of the author’s intentions. Oe has declared that he addresses only his Japanese readers, without glancing at his worldwide audience. But there is in his “grotesque realism” a powerful poetry which communicates across the boundaries of languages and cultures, a poetry full of fresh observations and concise images. The furious persistence, as well, with which he returns to his motifs erases these barriers: eventually we become familiar with his figures, marvel at their transformations, and are enticed into sharing the author’s view that no truth, no picture is valid once and for all. Validity exists on another level. Out of this multitude of people and events in ever-changing shapes there rises in the end the vision of a genuine humanist, a poignant picture of that which concerns us all.[6]
