About Kenzaburo Oe

Kenzaburo Oe was born January 31, 1935, in Ose Village (now Uchiko) in the Kita District of Ehime Prefecture. During his high school years, Oe encountered Kazuo Watanabe’s Fragments of the French Renaissance (Iwanami Shoten, 1950), which spurred his decision to study French Literature. In 1954, he entered the University of Tokyo Faculty of Letters, Second Division, and proceeded to the French Literature Department in 1956. While a student, Oe made his literary debut with Lavish are the Dead (1957), published in the literary magazine Bungakukai. He went on to publish many ground-breaking works, including The Silent Cry (1967), The Game of Contemporaneity (1979), and Rouse Up O Young Men of the New Age (1983).

In 1994, Oe was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for his work that “with poetic force creates an imagined world, where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament today.” With this achievement Oe became the second Japanese author to receive the prize, following Yasunari Kawabata’s award in 1968. In addition to his literary accomplishments, Oe also took a leading role in the social engagement of postwar Japanese intellectuals through works such as Hiroshima Notes (1965) and Okinawa Notes (1970). His career as an author and intellectual stretched nearly six decades, with his final novel In Late Style published in 2013; across this long career Oe stands as a monumental figure in the literature of both postwar Japan and the world.

On March 3, 2023, Kenzaburo Oe passed away at the age of 88. It is the earnest wish of the University of Tokyo Faculty of Letters – Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology that the precious materials entrusted to us by Mr. Oe become a resource not just to the university, but a contribution to the cultural wealth of humankind. It is with this goal that we open the Kenzaburo Oe Library this September 2023.