Kenzaburo Oe, awarded Nobel for poetic fiction

Nobel literature laureate Kenzaburo Oe, whose darkly poetic novels were built from his childhood memories during Japan’s postwar occupation and from being the parent of a disabled son, has died. He was 88.

Oe, who was an outspoken anti-nuclear and peace activist,diedonMarch3,his publisher, Kodansha Ltd., said in a statement Monday. The publisher did not give further details about his death and said his funeral was held by his family.

Oe in 1994 became the second Japanese author awarded the Nobel Prize in literature.

The Swedish Academy cited the author for his works of fiction, in which “poetic force creates an imagined world where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament today.”

His most searing works were influenced by the birth of Oe’s mentally disabled son in 1963.

“A Personal Matter,” published a year later, is the story of a father coming to terms through darkness and pain with the birth of a brain-damaged son. Several of his later works have a damaged or deformed child with symbolic significance, with the stories and characters evolving and maturing as Oe’s son aged.

Hikari Oe had a cranial deformity at birth that caused mental disability. He has a limited ability to speak and read but has become a musical composer whose works have been performed and recorded on albums.

The only other Japanese to win a Nobel in literature was Yasunari Kawabata in 1968.

Despite the outpouring of national pride over Oe’s win, his principal literary themes evoke deep unease. A boy of 10 when World War II ended, Oe came of age during the American occupation.

“The humiliation took a firm grip on him and has colored much of his work. He himself describes his writing as a way of exorcising demons,” the Swedish Academy said.

Childhoodwartimememories colored the story that marked Oe’s literary debut, “The Catch,” about a rural boy’s experiences with an American pilot shot down over his village. Published in 1958, when Oe was still a university student, the story won Japan’s prestigious Akutagawa prize for new writers.

He also wrote nonfiction books about Hiroshima’s devastation and rise from the Aug. 6, 1945, U.S. atomic bombing, as well as about Okinawa and its postwar U.S. occupation.