Kenzaburō Ōe’s work in five of his books

Kenzaburō Ōe, the last of the great post-World War II Japanese writers, died in early March. When he received the Nobel Prize in 1994, he said that as a novelist he wanted “to enable both those who express themselves in words and their readers to recover from their own sufferings and the sufferings of their time, and heal their souls from their wounds.”

He wrote about taboo subjects in Japan, such as disability, throughout his life with his son Hikari, who was born with a herniated brain, autism, and epilepsy. He wrote about the dangers of nuclear weapons and the aftermath of Hiroshima and about the communities and folklore of his native rural island, Shikoku.

He portrayed human nature in all its aspects, even the cruelest, with great inventiveness. In the words of his English translator John Nathan, his works have a “language of their own, a language that can accommodate the virulence of his imagination.”

Here is a list of five books to help you navigate Ōe’s writings.

1. A personal matter

Possibly the best known of Ōe’s novels, it follows the narrator “Bird” as he faces a personal crisis after his son is born with a herniated brain that requires immediate surgery. The novel explores, often with brutal honesty, the conflict of a man who doesn’t know whether to let the boy die or coexist with him, thus giving up his dreams of an exotic life.

With this story (and many others that have followed), Ōe breaks with the traditional Japanese form of the autobiographical, confessional I-novel. Though inspired by the birth of his own son, Ōe distances himself from Bird and portrays a man’s crisis in relation to the universal theme of dealing with doom and the inner demons it brings to the fore.

2. Hiroshima Notebooks

In this collection of essays, Ōe recounts his visits to Hiroshima beginning in the summer of 1963, when he was hired to write a report on a demonstration to abolish nuclear weapons. With his usual commitment to respect human rights and suffering, the writer paints an often grim portrait of how political factions appropriate victims’ traumas and subsume tragedy under political slogans.

Based on interviews with the survivors, but also with the doctors and nurses who treated them, Ōe’s accounts reveal the magnitude of the horrific attack, which had lasting repercussions for decades after the fact.

The question that is asked all the time is: “Did the Japanese really learn anything from the defeat of 1945?” Hiroshima Notes is a heartfelt cry to use the lessons of past mistakes to learn to respect human life, including the victims’ right to silence. Ōe’s opposition to nuclear weapons remained unwavering throughout his life.

3. The silent scream

4. Renaissance

This novel is the author’s attempt to come to terms with the death of his brother-in-law, the world-renowned film director Jūzō Itami, who supposedly committed suicide. In this semi-autobiographical narrative, Ōe’s fictional alter ego, Kogito Chōkō, engages in asynchronous conversation with the tapes his brother-in-law had recorded before his passing. Their discussions of art, life, and friendship cause Kogito to ponder the possible causes of suicide.

“Renaissance” proposes important reflections on how death affects those left behind. It is a moving story about grief processing and the possibilities for healing. It also includes possibly the most moving defense of education ever written.

5. Death by Water

Kogito Chōkō, now 70 years old, returns to his native Shikoku to finally write the novel about the truth of his father’s mysterious death at the end of the war. The fragmented memories about the man, who had been involved with ultranationalist reactionaries, motivate a critical reflection on the multiplicity of memory. Personal and local stories, intertwined with folklore, may appear in contrast to one another, but are nonetheless integral pieces of the complexity of human life.

Ōe’s novel, whose title is a reference to poet TS Eliot’s The Wasteland, examines how people have to live with traumatic events such as loss and rape, as well as an elderly father’s (Kogito/Ōe) concern about leaving only to his disabled son after his death.

Among the books on this list, the female characters have the most prominent role here. Kogito’s wife, her sister, and the young actress Unaiko represent different generations and professions, raising considerations about the place of women in contemporary Japan.