Kenzaburō Ōe
31 January 1935 – 3 March 2023
Kenzaburō Ōe was a Japanese writer whose novels and essays drew on his rural childhood, the atomic bombings and the life of his disabled son. He won the Akutagawa Prize while still a student and received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1994, the second Japanese writer to do so. He was also a prominent campaigner against nuclear weapons and against revision of Japan's postwar constitution.
Lived at the same time
Well-documented people whose lives overlapped with Kenzaburō Ōe.
- Adonis (1930–present) Overlapped 88 years →
- Alice Munro (1931–2024) Overlapped 88 years →
- Arvo Pärt (1935–present) Overlapped 88 years →
- Asha Bhosle (1933–2026) Overlapped 88 years →
- Athol Fugard (1932–2025) Overlapped 88 years →
- Buzz Aldrin (1930–present) Overlapped 88 years →
Life events
Born in a village on the island of Shikoku.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgStudied French literature under the scholar Kazuo Watanabe.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgWon Japan's principal prize for new writers while still a university student.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgMarried the sister of the film director Juzo Itami.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgHis son was born with a brain hernia and later became a composer; the experience shaped much of his later writing.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgThe novel follows a father confronting the birth of a brain-damaged child.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgThe novel, set in a Shikoku village, won the Tanizaki Prize.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgReceived the prize and in the same year declined Japan's Order of Culture.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgAn Osaka court dismissed a suit brought over his account of mass suicides in Okinawa during the Second World War.
Source: en.wikipedia.org