The Japanese Nobel laureate of Literature Kenzaburo Oe has died aged 88, his publisher announced.

Kenzaburo Oe was a Japanese writer and literary figure, who is considered one of the most important figures in modern Japanese literature, the second Japanese after Yasunari Kawabata, to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1994. His work is influenced by French and American literature , while his subjects deal with social, political and philosophical problems.

He was born on January 31, 1935 in Ose Village, Ehime Prefecture, Shikoku Island, Japan. He was the third of a total of seven children in his family. His father was killed in World War II. He studied French Literature at the University of Tokyo, while he began publishing his first stories in 1957, while still a student. In the 1960 riots over the Security Treaty, Oe went to Beijing as a representative of the young Japanese writers and met Mao Zedong, while on a trip to Europe and Russia in 1961 he met Sartre, whose influences appear in his early work.

In 1960 he married Yukari, sister of the Japanese director Juzo Itami, with whom he had 3 children. His eldest son, Hikari, was born in 1963 with hydrocephalus. After Hikari’s birth the doctors tried to convince the parents to let their son die, but they refused to do so. The fact of disability deeply affected Oe: from then on he used this theme often in his work. Typical such works are “Father, where are you going?” or “Teach us to overcome our madness.” In one of his best-known works, “A Personal Affair” from 1964, the main character acquires a child with a problem in the head and is asked to decide his fate, while in “A Healing Family” from 1996 he refers to personal moments of his son.

The first major recognition came in 1958, when he won the prestigious Akatagawa Award for his play The Breeding (Shiiku), one of his first works (later made into a film by Nagisa Oshima) which, like others of the period (for example “Smash ’em young, kill ’em young”) describe the lives of small, carefree country children. Between 1958 and 1961 he published a series of works incorporating sexual metaphors for the occupation of Japan, which met with an outcry in the country. After this phase his works took on a darker character, as he began to deal with fringe villains and anti-heroes.

In 1964 he won the Shintosa Award for A Personal Affair (Kojinteki na taiken), in 1967 he won the Tanizaki Award for The Silent Scream (Manen gannen no futtoboru), and in 1973 he won the Noma Award ” for “The flood invades my spirit” (Kōzui wa waga tamashii ni oyobi).

In 1994 the Swedish Academy awarded Kenzaburou Oe the Nobel Prize in Literature. The rationale for the decision stated that the prize was awarded to Oe for “a fantastical world, where life and myth condense to form a disturbing picture of the human condition today.” That same year Oe was nominated for the Order of Culture, a medal of Japan awarded to Japanese people who have distinguished themselves in the arts, but he declined the award.

His books translated into Greek

1958: Crush Them Young, Kill Them As Children – (Memushiri Kouchi), (translated by Ikaros Babasakis from the English, for “Kastanioti” publishers, 1996). Oe’s first novel, written at the age of 23, influenced by the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, follows a group of juvenile marginals, abandoned by adults, who create their own society.

1964: A personal affair – (Kojinteki na taiken), (edited by Errikos Bartzinopoulos for “Kastanioti” publishers, 1994, reprinted 2010 for “FAQ” newspaper). The hero of the novel is Bird, an adventurer who will be faced with the dilemma of whether or not he should, if he can or not, kill his monstrous newborn child.

1967: The Silent Scream – (Manen gannen no futtoboru), (mtf. Yuri Kovalenko, “Kastaniotis”, 1994). A realistic novel that, setting a surreal scene, describes the silent cries of people like Natsumi who, since giving birth to a deformed baby, survives only on whiskey, people who try, without success, to find their true selves.

Source: wikipedia