Kenzaburō Ōe
Ōe was born in Ōse (ÓÞ瀬õ½, Ōse-mura?), a village now in Uchiko, Ehime Prefecture on the island of Shikoku in Japan. He was the third son of seven children. Ōe's grandmother taught him art and oral performance. His grandmother died in 1944, and later that year, Ōe's father died in the Pacific War. Ōe's mother took over his father's role as educator. The books she bought him - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Wonderful Adventures of Nils - left him with an impression Ōe says 'he will carry to the grave'.[citation needed]
After attending local school, Ōe transferred to a high school in Matsuyama. At the age of 18, he made his first trip to Tokyo and in the following year began studying French Literature at Tokyo University under the direction of Professor Kazuo Watanabe, a specialist on François Rabelais. He began publishing stories in 1957 while still a student, strongly influenced by contemporary writing in France and the United States.
He married in February 1960. His wife, Yukari, was the daughter of film director Mansaku Itami and sister of film director Juzo Itami. The same year he met Mao Zedong on a trip to China. He also went to Russia and Europe the following year, visiting Sartre in Paris.
Ōe now lives in Tokyo. He has three children; the eldest son, Hikari, has been brain-damaged since his birth in 1963, and his disability has been a recurring motif in Ōe's writings since then.
In 2004, Ōe lent his name and support to those opposing proposed changes in the post-war Japanese constitution of 1947. His views were seen as controversial by those who wanted Japan to abandon the constitutional impediment to "the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes," which is explicitly renounced in Article 9.
In 2005, two retired Japanese military officers sued Ōe for libel for his 1970 essay, Okinawa Notes, in which he had written that members of the Japanese military had coerced masses of Okinawan civilians into committing suicide during the Allied invasion of the island in 1945. In March 2008, the Osaka District Court dismissed all charges against Ōe. In this ruling, Judge Toshimasa Fukami stated, "The military was deeply involved in the mass suicides". In a news conference following the trial, Ōe said, "The judge accurately read my writing."
Oe has been involved with pacifist and anti-nuclear campaigns and written books about the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Following the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, he urged Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda to ¡°halt plans to restart nuclear power plants and instead abandon nuclear energy¡±. Kenzabu Oe has said that Japan has an "ethical responsibility" to abandon nuclear power in the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, just as the country renounced war under the postwar Constitution. During a 2012 press conference at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan, Oe called for "an immediate end to nuclear power generation and warned that Japan would suffer another nuclear catastrophe if it tries to resume nuclear power plant operations".
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