Lecture 1998-06-15
Kenzaburo Oe and America

Dr. Ikuko Fujihira

The last of Japan's politically engaged postwar writers, Kenzaburo Oe was fascinated with the United States long before he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1994.

Oe's brilliant literary career was launched in 1958 when he won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize. Since then, in addition to producing many novels and stories, he has been an extremely influential opinion leader among Japan's intellectuals and students with his numerous essays and lectures. America has been a primary concern in his writings for almost fifteen years, beginning with his short novel The Catch, Oe confesses that reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in his boyhood gave him a totally different idea of America and Americans than the "rapist and murderer" image prevalent in Japan during the war. The idea that America might stand for freedom and democracy became an obsession.

Professor Fujihira's lecture will trace the strong influence of various American writers in Oe's novels and stories, works which often investigate the function of race in post-war Japanese culture. Oe's essays also embraced a positive image of a racially diverse America. His championing of cultural diversity seems all the more significant now at the end of the century, when the concept of global multiculturalism offers our best possibility for world peace.

Dr. Ikuko Fujihira is a Professor of American Literature at Tokyo Gakugei University. Her book The Patchwork Quilt in Carnival Colors: Toni Morrison's Novels won the Shimizu Hiroshi and American Studies Association Award in 1997.

Material submitted by Dr. Joshua Dale.