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lalibreriasottoilmare's review
challenging
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.5
arirang's review
3.0
When the masterful Kenzaburō Ōe was deservedly awarded the Nobel Prize in 1994 - the citation read "who with poetic force creates an imagined world, where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament today" - his acceptance speech was titled 'Japan, the Ambiguous, and Myself' in a deliberate twist on the title of the lecture by the first Japanese literature laureate, Kawabata Yasunari:
As someone living in the present world such as this one and sharing bitter memories of the past imprinted on my mind, I cannot utter in unison with Kawabata the phrase 'Japan, the Beautiful and Myself'. A moment ago I touched upon the 'vagueness' of the title and content of Kawabata's lecture. In the rest of my lecture I would like to use the word 'ambiguous' in accordance with the distinction made by the eminent British poet Kathleen Raine; she once said of William Blake that he was not so much vague as ambiguous. I cannot talk about myself otherwise than by saying 'Japan, the Ambiguous, and Myself'.
My observation is that after one hundred and twenty years of modernisation since the opening of the country, present-day Japan is split between two opposite poles of ambiguity. I too am living as a writer with this polarisation imprinted on me like a deep scar.
This ambiguity which is so powerful and penetrating that it splits both the state and its people is evident in various ways. The modernisation of Japan has been orientated toward learning from and imitating the West. Yet Japan is situated in Asia and has firmly maintained its traditional culture. The ambiguous orientation of Japan drove the country into the position of an invader in Asia. On the other hand, the culture of modern Japan, which implied being thoroughly open to the West or at least that impeded understanding by the West. What was more, Japan was driven into isolation from other Asian countries, not only politically but also socially and culturally.
It is an excellent speech, detailed, thoughtful and illuminating, explaining Ōe's work in the context of both his personal situation and the development of Japan. Ōe comments that the fundamental style of my writing has been to start from my personal matters and then to link it up with society, the state and the world. One of his key novels was entitled [b:A Personal Matter|25191|A Personal Matter|Kenzaburō Ōe|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1328822587s/25191.jpg|1559717], and the two key themes of his work relate to the two key foundations of his own life.
From an interview in the Paris Review:
In the history of modern Japan literature the writers most sincere and aware of their mission were those 'post-war writers' who came onto the literary scene immediately after the last War, deeply wounded by the catastrophe yet full of hope for a rebirth. They tried with great pains to make up for the inhuman atrocities committed by Japanese military forces in Asian countries, as well as to bridge the profound gaps that existed not only between the developed countries of the West and Japan but also between African and Latin American countries and Japan. Only by doing so did they think that they could seek with some humility reconciliation with the rest of the world. It has always been my aspiration to cling to the very end of the line of that literary tradition inherited from those writers.
His own mission he describes:
I am one of the writers who wish to create serious works of literature which dissociate themselves from those novels which are mere reflections of the vast consumer cultures of Tokyo and the subcultures of the world at large.
This book contains the Nobel lecture in full - but it is actually freely available on the Nobel Prize website (http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1994/oe-lecture.html), indeed even with an audio recording. Hence, largely for commercial purposes, it is accompanied here by three other speeches:
- Speaking on Japanese Culture Before a Scandinavian Audience, delivered in 1999, 2 years before the Nobel lecture
- On Modern and Contemporary Japanese Literature, delivered at a 1990 conference in San Francisco
- Japan's Dual Identity: A Writer's Dilemma, delivered at Duke University in the US, also in 1986
The themes explored are essentially similar and none quite soars to the rhetorical heights of the Nobel lecture, which one imagines Ōe spent considerably time and effort perfecting and polishing [I must comment in passing, a massive contrast to the rather shallow lecture by the ridiculous choice for the 2016 winner, a lecture he couldn't even be bothered to deliver in person].
But the one thing Ōe does in these other lectures, which I imagine he felt was less fitting for the Nobel Prize, was to provide more critical commentary on modern and contemporary Japanese literature, even to point the figure to those novels which are mere reflections of the vast consumer cultures of Tokyo and the subcultures of the world at large.
Ōe comments on the dominance in modern literature, at least in terms of both domestic sales and international profile, of Banana Yoshimoto and, particularly, Haruki Murakami. The striking thing is that these comments were made not in 2017 but in 1990, when Murakami's works in English translation were only just emerging, and even his original language oeuvre was still developing (Norwegian Wood was published in Japan in 1987, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle not until 1994-5).
Ambiguous would be a polite way of describing the relationship between Murakami and Ōe. Ōe appears to, at least, admire his intellectual engagement with American literature (including as a translator) and to be envious of his "extremely wide and avid readership", particularly as Ōe's own readership fell away with his later, more complex works, but to be no fan of the ways he achieves it, in particular the lack of engagement with "serious" issues.
[Yoshimoto's] fiction is at least an unselfconscious expressed of her own generation. But in the case of Murakami, a writer in his forties and in that sense a generation older than Yoshimoto, we have an exceedingly self-conscious representation of contemporary cultural habits.
Murakami has himself counter-commented on Ōe: “He was a powerful writer to me when he was young, but I’m not interested in politics or making statements. I let him do that. What I care about is my readers.”
In this lecture, Ōe speculates as to whether the readers attracted by Murakami and Yoshimoto would fall away as those authors and their audience matured, or would move on to wider Japanese literature. He also suggests a number of "serious contemporary writers" who might take literature forward. I suspect if Ōe has foreseen in 1990 what would have become of the scene in 2017, he would be both surprised that Murakami continues to plough much the same scene while enjoying, if anything, even greater success, while the various names he mentions have largely made little impact, at least in the West. [The exception is [author:Kōbō Abe|6526], but he was already well established by 1990].
Overall 4.5 stars for the Nobel lecture, but lowered to 3 for this book as it feels a way of turning a freely available lecture into a book that can be sold. But Kenzaburō Ōe's novels I would strongly recommend to anyone.
As someone living in the present world such as this one and sharing bitter memories of the past imprinted on my mind, I cannot utter in unison with Kawabata the phrase 'Japan, the Beautiful and Myself'. A moment ago I touched upon the 'vagueness' of the title and content of Kawabata's lecture. In the rest of my lecture I would like to use the word 'ambiguous' in accordance with the distinction made by the eminent British poet Kathleen Raine; she once said of William Blake that he was not so much vague as ambiguous. I cannot talk about myself otherwise than by saying 'Japan, the Ambiguous, and Myself'.
My observation is that after one hundred and twenty years of modernisation since the opening of the country, present-day Japan is split between two opposite poles of ambiguity. I too am living as a writer with this polarisation imprinted on me like a deep scar.
This ambiguity which is so powerful and penetrating that it splits both the state and its people is evident in various ways. The modernisation of Japan has been orientated toward learning from and imitating the West. Yet Japan is situated in Asia and has firmly maintained its traditional culture. The ambiguous orientation of Japan drove the country into the position of an invader in Asia. On the other hand, the culture of modern Japan, which implied being thoroughly open to the West or at least that impeded understanding by the West. What was more, Japan was driven into isolation from other Asian countries, not only politically but also socially and culturally.
It is an excellent speech, detailed, thoughtful and illuminating, explaining Ōe's work in the context of both his personal situation and the development of Japan. Ōe comments that the fundamental style of my writing has been to start from my personal matters and then to link it up with society, the state and the world. One of his key novels was entitled [b:A Personal Matter|25191|A Personal Matter|Kenzaburō Ōe|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1328822587s/25191.jpg|1559717], and the two key themes of his work relate to the two key foundations of his own life.
From an interview in the Paris Review:
He describes most of his fiction as an extrapolation of the themes explored in two novels: A Personal Matter (1964), which recounts a father’s attempt to come to terms with the birth of his handicapped child; and The Silent Cry (1967), which depicts the clash between village life and modern culture in postwar Japan. The former "are rooted in Oe’s personal experience of Hikari’s birth (the narrator is usually a writer), but the narrators often make decisions very different than the one Oe and his wife made." The latter novels "explore the folklore and mythology Oe heard from his mother and grandmother, and they typically feature a narrator who is forced to examine the self-deceptions he has created for the sake of living in a community.But Ōe sees himself as one of a line of "sincere" or "serious" writers - the Japanese term is 純文学, phonetically junbungaku.
In the history of modern Japan literature the writers most sincere and aware of their mission were those 'post-war writers' who came onto the literary scene immediately after the last War, deeply wounded by the catastrophe yet full of hope for a rebirth. They tried with great pains to make up for the inhuman atrocities committed by Japanese military forces in Asian countries, as well as to bridge the profound gaps that existed not only between the developed countries of the West and Japan but also between African and Latin American countries and Japan. Only by doing so did they think that they could seek with some humility reconciliation with the rest of the world. It has always been my aspiration to cling to the very end of the line of that literary tradition inherited from those writers.
His own mission he describes:
I am one of the writers who wish to create serious works of literature which dissociate themselves from those novels which are mere reflections of the vast consumer cultures of Tokyo and the subcultures of the world at large.
This book contains the Nobel lecture in full - but it is actually freely available on the Nobel Prize website (http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1994/oe-lecture.html), indeed even with an audio recording. Hence, largely for commercial purposes, it is accompanied here by three other speeches:
- Speaking on Japanese Culture Before a Scandinavian Audience, delivered in 1999, 2 years before the Nobel lecture
- On Modern and Contemporary Japanese Literature, delivered at a 1990 conference in San Francisco
- Japan's Dual Identity: A Writer's Dilemma, delivered at Duke University in the US, also in 1986
The themes explored are essentially similar and none quite soars to the rhetorical heights of the Nobel lecture, which one imagines Ōe spent considerably time and effort perfecting and polishing [I must comment in passing, a massive contrast to the rather shallow lecture by the ridiculous choice for the 2016 winner, a lecture he couldn't even be bothered to deliver in person].
But the one thing Ōe does in these other lectures, which I imagine he felt was less fitting for the Nobel Prize, was to provide more critical commentary on modern and contemporary Japanese literature, even to point the figure to those novels which are mere reflections of the vast consumer cultures of Tokyo and the subcultures of the world at large.
Ōe comments on the dominance in modern literature, at least in terms of both domestic sales and international profile, of Banana Yoshimoto and, particularly, Haruki Murakami. The striking thing is that these comments were made not in 2017 but in 1990, when Murakami's works in English translation were only just emerging, and even his original language oeuvre was still developing (Norwegian Wood was published in Japan in 1987, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle not until 1994-5).
Ambiguous would be a polite way of describing the relationship between Murakami and Ōe. Ōe appears to, at least, admire his intellectual engagement with American literature (including as a translator) and to be envious of his "extremely wide and avid readership", particularly as Ōe's own readership fell away with his later, more complex works, but to be no fan of the ways he achieves it, in particular the lack of engagement with "serious" issues.
[Yoshimoto's] fiction is at least an unselfconscious expressed of her own generation. But in the case of Murakami, a writer in his forties and in that sense a generation older than Yoshimoto, we have an exceedingly self-conscious representation of contemporary cultural habits.
Murakami has himself counter-commented on Ōe: “He was a powerful writer to me when he was young, but I’m not interested in politics or making statements. I let him do that. What I care about is my readers.”
In this lecture, Ōe speculates as to whether the readers attracted by Murakami and Yoshimoto would fall away as those authors and their audience matured, or would move on to wider Japanese literature. He also suggests a number of "serious contemporary writers" who might take literature forward. I suspect if Ōe has foreseen in 1990 what would have become of the scene in 2017, he would be both surprised that Murakami continues to plough much the same scene while enjoying, if anything, even greater success, while the various names he mentions have largely made little impact, at least in the West. [The exception is [author:Kōbō Abe|6526], but he was already well established by 1990].
Overall 4.5 stars for the Nobel lecture, but lowered to 3 for this book as it feels a way of turning a freely available lecture into a book that can be sold. But Kenzaburō Ōe's novels I would strongly recommend to anyone.
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