Japan -- Japan, the Ambiguous, and Myself: The Nobel Prize Speech and Other Lectures by Kenzaburo Oe

Kenzaburo Oe. Japan, the Ambiguous, and Myself: The Nobel Prize Speech and Other Lectures. Tokyo. Kodansha International. 1995. 128 pages. Y1600/$15. ISB 4-7700-1980-7.

Kenzaburo Oe stands alone among Japanese literati, not only as a novelist and a Nobel laureate but also as a thinker who has read widely in world literature and in cultural and critical theory. He is probably more concerned than any of his Japanese contemporaries with the human condition and the fate of humankind after the ominous mushroom clouds of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The four lectures collected in Japan, the Ambiguous, and myself are addressed to a Western audience, for whom Oe elaborates on...