Institute of International Studies

Our guest is the distinguished Japanese writer Kenzaburo Oe. His prolific body of novels, short stories, and critical and political essays has won almost every major international honor. Oe's achievements as a writer committed to both literary and humanitarian causes were recognized in 1994 when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. In works such as A Personal Matter, The Silent Cry, A Quiet Life, Hiroshima Notes, and A Healing Family, Oe's art moves from the personal to the political, exploring how the individual, in confronting life's tragedies overcomes humiliation and shame to "get on with life," and in so doing, finds personal dignity and a renewed sense of his responsibility to his fellow man.