International Social Science Journal (Chinese Edition)

No.2, 2024

The Return of the Soul: Kenzaburo Oe and Ose Village

(Abstract)

Xu Jinlong

Nobel literature laureate Kenzaburo Oe (January 31, 1935-March 3, 2023) was born in a small village in the forests of the Shikoku region of Japan. The story of the hometown riot told by his grandma not only stimulated the revolutionary imagination of Oe as a child, but also became a strong underflow of Oe’s literature many years later. The people-oriented thought adopted by his great-grandfather provided ethical support for Oe’s riot narrative, and became the moral basis for Oe’s subsequent acceptance of post-war democracy and traditional humanism, and finally led him to a post-humanist narrative, permanently merging his limited individual life into the ever-changing community of “new man” summarized by “we,” thus breaking the boundaries between self and the other, living and dead, individual and group, and leaving a warm bright color for post-humanist care.