Kenzaburo oe biography of michael
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Even after Japan embarked on modernization soon after the Meiji Restoration, and it became customary for young people in the provinces to leave their native place for Tokyo or the other large cities, the Oes remained in Ose-mura. He rewrote this work in narrative form as M/T and the Wonders of the Forest* (1986).
He has since written extensively about Hiroshima, though has since claimed to have given up writing. Yet, he also endeavored to reorganize, under the light of Rabelais and humanism, his thoughts on what the women of the village had handed down to him, those stories that constituted his background. With the aid of W.B. Yeat's poetic metaphors, Oe embarked on writing The Flaming Green Tree*, a trilogy comprised of Until the 'Savior' Gets Socked* (1993), Vacillating* (1994), and On The Great Day* (1995).
Young Oe took democracy straight to his heart. After his father's death during the war, his mother took over his father's role as educator. Overcoming the agony and determined to coexist with the child, Oe wrote A Personal Matter (1964), his penning of his pain in accepting the brain-damaged child into his life, and of how he arrived at his resolve to live with him.
Soseki's concern was the fall of Japanese people "to a desire for material gains. His works from 1957 through 1958 - from the short story, "The Catch," which won him theAkutagawa Award, to his first novel, Bud-Nipping, Lamb Shooting* (1958) - depict the tragedy of war tearing asunder the idyllic life of a rural youth. In this sense, he was again living another duality.
An avid reader of contemporary French and American literature, Oe viewed the social condition of the metropolis in light of the works he read. And their work evokes a response bordering on adulation in their young readers. But it is too early to predict where this trend will lead as they grow older....
In fairness to Yoshimoto's recent work, it should be said that it does faithfully reflect the habits and attitudes of the young in Japan, a youth culture which on the surface resembles its counterparts in New York or Paris.
Starting with A Personal Matter is one group of works that depicts his life of coexistence with his mentally-handicapped son, Hikari. After the war, the people of Okinawa were left to suffer a long U.S. military occupation. So strong was his desire for democracy that he decided to leave for Tokyo; leave the village of his forefathers, the life they had lived and preserved, out of sheer belief that the city offered him an opportunity to knock on the door of democracy, the door that would lead him to a future of freedom on paths that stretched out to the world.
In one essay, from 1990, "On Modern and Contemporary Japanese Literature," Oe voiced his concerns about the recent direction taken in Japanese literature as evidenced by the enormous popularity of writers like Murakami Haruki and Yoshinoto Banana. Traumatic as the experience was for Oe, the crisis granted him a new lease on both his life and his literature.
These stories, of a unique cosmology and of the human condition therein, which Oe heard told since his infancy, left him with an indelible mark. It also implies