Kenzaburō Ōe

Kenzaburō Ōe
Ōe in 2012
Native name
大江 健三郎
Born(1935-01-31)31 January 1935
Ōse, Ehime, Empire of Japan
(now Uchiko, Ehime, Japan)
Died3 March 2023(2023-03-03) (aged 88)
Occupation
  • Novelist
  • short-story writer
  • essayist
Alma materUniversity of Tokyo
Period1957–2013
Notable works
Notable awardsNobel Prize in Literature (1994)
Spouse
Yukari Ikeuchi
(m. 1960)
Children3, including Hikari
Relatives

Kenzaburō Ōe (大江 健三郎, Ōe Kenzaburō; 31 January 1935 – 3 March 2023) was a Japanese writer and a major figure in contemporary Japanese literature. His novels, short stories and essays, strongly influenced by French and American literature and literary theory, deal with political, social and philosophical issues, including nuclear weapons, nuclear power, social non-conformism, and existentialism. Ōe was awarded the 1994 Nobel Prize in Literature for creating "an imagined world, where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament today".