INTERVIEWER
Do you feel competitive with writers like Haruki Murakami and Banana Yoshimoto?
OE
Murakami writes in a clear, simple Japanese style. He is translated into foreign languages and is widely read, especially in America, England, and China. He’s created a place for himself in the international literary scene in a way that Yukio Mishima and myself were not able to. It’s really the first time that has happened in Japanese literature. My work has been read, but looking back I’m not sure I secured a firm readership, even in Japan. It’s not a competition, but I would like to see more of my works translated into English, French, and German and secure a readership in those countries. I’m not trying to write to a mass audience, but I would like to reach people. I want to tell people about the literature and thought that have deeply influenced me. As someone who has read literature all of his life I hope to communicate those writers I think are important. My first choice would be Edward Said, especially his later books. If it ever looks like I’m not listening, I’m thinking about Said. His ideas have been an important part of my work. They have helped me create new expressions in the Japanese language, new thoughts in Japanese. I liked him personally as well.
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INTERVIEWER
Many writers are obsessive about working in solitude, but the narrators in your books—who are writers—write and read while lying on the couch in the living room. Do you work amid your family?
OE
I don’t need to be solitary to work. When I am writing novels and reading, I do not need to separate myself or be away from my family. Usually I work in my living room while [my son] Hikari listens to music. I can work with Hikari and my wife present because I revise many times. The novel is always incomplete, and I know I will revise it completely. When I’m writing the first draft I don’t have to write it by myself. When I’m revising, I already have a relationship with the text so I don’t have to be alone. I have a study on the second floor, but it’s rare that I work there. The only time I work in there is when I’m finishing up a novel and need to concentrate—which is a nuisance to others.
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INTERVIEWER
Are all of your novels refracted through your personal experiences?
OE
I don’t start writing a novel with a predetermined idea of which direction I will take a character or how I will create a certain character. For me, this is what the act of elaboration is all about. Through the process of revision and elaboration, new characters and situations arise. It’s a plane very different from actual life. On this plane, the characters develop and the story grows by itself.
Yet all of my novels are somehow about myself, about what I am thinking as a young man, a middle-aged man with a handicapped child, an old man. I’ve cultivated the first-person style as opposed to the third person. It’s a problem. A really good novelist is able to write in the third person, but I have never been able to write well in the third person. In that sense, I am an amateur novelist. Though I have written in the third person in the past, the character has always somehow resembled myself. The reason is that only through the first person have I been able to pinpoint the reality of my interiority.
In “Aghwee the Sky Monster,” for instance, I wrote about someone in a similar situation to the one I was in when Hikari was born but who makes a different decision from the one I made. Aghwee’s father chooses not to help his deformed child live. In A Personal Matter, I wrote about another protagonist—Bird—who chooses to live with the child. Those were written at about the same time. But in this case, it’s actually backwards. Having written about the actions of both Aghwee’s father and Bird, I steered my life toward those of Bird. I didn’t intend to do this but afterward I realized that this was what I’d done.
INTERVIEWER
Hikari often appears as a character in your novels.
OE
I have been living with him for forty-four years, and writing about him has been one of the pillars of my literary expression. I write about him to show how a handicapped person realizes himself and how difficult that is. When he was very young, he began to express himself—his humanity—through music. At a certain point he was able to express concepts like sadness through music. He entered into a process of self-realization. He has continued on that path.
INTERVIEWER
You once said that you write what he says verbatim but you put it in a different order.
OE
I copy the words Hikari says in the exact order he says them. What I add is the context and situation and how others respond to him. Through this process Hikari’s words become more comprehensible. I would never reorder his words to make them understandable.
INTERVIEWER
What do your other children think about the fact that you write so much about Hikari in your novels?
OE
I have written about my son O-chan and my daughter Natsumiko too. Only Natsumiko will read what I write about Hikari. I have to be very careful or else she will say to me, Hikari wouldn’t say that.
INTERVIEWER
Why did you decide to use their real names—especially Hikari’s real name?
OE
Initially, I didn’t use his name. I called him Eeyore in my novels, but in real life I call him Pooh.
INTERVIEWER
Why?
OE
Winnie-the-Pooh is the reason I married my wife. Just before the end of the war a translation of Winnie-the-Pooh was published by Iwanami Shoten, a highbrow publisher. There were only a few thousand copies. I knew my wife’s brother Juzo Itami in high school, and their mother asked me to find her a copy of The House at Pooh Corner. She had read it during the war but lost it. I was an expert on secondhand bookstores in Tokyo and was able to find Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner. I found one, sent it to their house, and then struck up a correspondence with her daughter. That’s how it began.
But I don’t actually identify with Pooh as a character. I’m more of the Eeyore type.
INTERVIEWER
How did your family respond when you won the Nobel Prize?
OE
My family’s assessment of me didn’t change. I was sitting here reading. Hikari was listening to music over there. My son, who was a biochemistry student at the University of Tokyo, and my daughter, who was a student at Sophia University, were in the dining area. They didn’t expect me to win. There was a phone call at around nine P.M. Hikari answered it—that’s one of his hobbies, answering the phone. He can say, Hello, how are you? perfectly in French, German, Russian, Chinese, and Korean. So he answered the phone and said in English, No, and then again, No. Then Hikari handed me the phone. It was a member of the Nobel committee of the Swedish Academy. He asked me, Are you Kenzaburo? I asked him if Hikari had refused the Nobel Prize on my behalf and then I said, I’m sorry—I accept. I put the phone down, came back to this chair, sat down, and announced to my family, I’ve won it. My wife said, Is that right?
INTERVIEWER
That’s all she said?
OE
Yes, and my two children said nothing. They just went to their rooms quietly. Hikari continued to listen to music. I’ve never talked to him about the Nobel Prize.
INTERVIEWER
Were you disappointed by their reaction?
OE
I went back to reading my book, but I couldn’t help wonder if most families react this way. Then the phone started to ring. For five hours it didn’t stop. People I knew. People I didn’t know. My children just wanted the reporters to go home. I drew the curtain to give us some privacy. To read the rest of the interview with Kenzaburo Oe, click the link below:
Purchase this issue FONTE: The Paris Review - The Art of Fiction No. 195
Purchase this issue FONTE: The Paris Review - The Art of Fiction No. 195
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