Kenzaburo Oe

(1935 - 2023)

As a young man, Kenzaburo Oe moved to Tokyo to study French literature with an expert on François Rabelais; in a 1992 interview, Oe said he wanted to use Rabelais scholar Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of “grotesque realism” to contrast “Japan’s emperor-centered hegemony.” The following year he remarked that Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man could be applied to the Japanese people: “You can see Japanese technology in Europe, you know all about Japanese economic power, you know all about the quaint tea ceremony; but these are all images, masks of Japanese modesty or technological strength.