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Kenzaburō Ōe
Ōe in 2012
Native name	大江 健三郎
Born	(1935-01-31)31 January 1935 Ōse, Ehime, Empire of Japan (now Uchiko, Ehime, Japan)
Died	3 March 2023(2023-03-03) (aged 88)
Occupation	Novelist short-story writer essayist
Alma mater	University of Tokyo
Period	1957–2013
Notable works	A Personal Matter (1964) The Silent Cry (1967)
Notable awards	Nobel Prize in Literature (1994)
Spouse	Yukari Ikeuchi ​(m. 1960)​
Children	3, including Hikari
Relatives	Mansaku Itami (father-in-law) Juzo Itami (brother-in-law)

Kenzaburō Ōe (大江 健三郎, Ōe Kenzaburō, 31 January 1935 – 3 March 2023) was a Japanese writer and a major figure in contemporary Japanese literature. His novels, short stories and essays, strongly influenced by French and American literature and literary theory, deal with political, social and philosophical issues, including nuclear weapons, nuclear power, social non-conformism, and existentialism. Ōe was awarded the 1994 Nobel Prize in Literature for creating "an imagined world, where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament today".

Early life and education

Ōe was born in Ōse (大瀬村, Ōse-mura), a village now in Uchiko, Ehime Prefecture, on Shikoku. The third of seven children, he grew up listening to his grandmother, a storyteller of myths and folklore, who also recounted the oral history of the two uprisings in the region before and after the Meiji Restoration. His father, Kōtare Ōe, had a bark-stripping business; the bark was used to make paper currency. After his father died in the Pacific War in 1944, his mother, Koseki, became the driving force behind his education, buying him books including The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Wonderful Adventures of Nils, which had a formative influence on him.

Ōe received the first ten years of his education in local public schools. He started school during the peak of militarism in Japan; in class, he was forced to pronounce his loyalty to Emperor Hirohito, who his teacher claimed was a god. After the war, he realized he had been taught lies and felt betrayed. This sense of betrayal later appeared in his writing.

Ōe attended high school in Matsuyama from 1951 to 1953, where he excelled as a student. At the age of 18, he made his first trip to Tokyo, where he studied at a prep school (yobikō) for one year. The following year, he began studying French Literature at the University of Tokyo with Professor Kazuo Watanabe, a specialist on François Rabelais.

Career

Ōe began publishing stories in 1957, while still a student, strongly influenced by contemporary writing in France and the United States. He was particularly influenced by the writings of Jean-Paul Sartre His first work to be published was "Lavish are the Dead", a short story set in Tokyo during the American occupation, which appeared in Bungakukai literary magazine. His early works were set in his own university milieu.

In 1958, his short story "Shiiku" (飼育) was awarded the prestigious Akutagawa Prize. The work was about a black GI set upon by Japanese youth, and was later made into a film, The Catch by Nagisa Oshima in 1961. Another early novella, later translated as Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids, focused on young children living in Arcadian transformations of Ōe's own rural Shikoku childhood. Ōe identified these child figures as belonging to the 'child god' archetype of Jung and Kerényi, which is characterised by abandonment, hermaphrodism, invincibility, and association with beginning and end. The first two characteristics are present in these early stories, while the latter two features come to the fore in the 'idiot boy' stories which appeared after the birth of his son Hikari.

Between 1958 and 1961 Ōe published a series of works incorporating sexual metaphors for the occupation of Japan. He summarised the common theme of these stories as "the relationship of a foreigner as the big power , a Japanese who is more or less placed in a humiliating position , and, sandwiched between the two, the third party (sometimes a prostitute who caters only to foreigners or an interpreter)". In each of these works, the Japanese X is inactive, failing to take the initiative to resolve the situation and showing no psychological or spiritual development. The graphically sexual nature of this group of stories prompted a critical outcry; Ōe said of the culmination of the series Our Times, "I personally like this novel I do not think I will ever write another novel which is filled only with sexual words."

In 1961, Ōe's novellas Seventeen and The Death of a Political Youth were published in the Japanese literary magazine Bungakukai. Both were inspired by seventeen-year-old Yamaguchi Otoya, who had assassinated Japan Socialist Party chairman Inejirō Asanuma in October 1960, and then killed himself in prison three weeks later. Yamaguchi had admirers among the extreme right wing who were angered by The Death of a Political Youth and both Ōe and the magazine received death threats day and night for weeks. The magazine soon apologized to offended readers, but Ōe did not, and he was later physically assaulted by an angry right-winger while giving a speech at the University of Tokyo.

Ōe's next phase moved away from sexual content, shifting this time toward the violent fringes of society. The works which he published between 1961 and 1964 are influenced by existentialism and picaresque literature, populated with more or less criminal rogues and anti-heroes whose position on the fringes of society allows them to make pointed criticisms of it. Ōe's admission that Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn is his favorite book can be said to find a context in this period.

Influence of Hikari

Ōe credited his son Hikari for influencing his literary career. Ōe tried to give his son a "voice" through his writing. Several of Ōe's books feature a character based on his son.

In Ōe's 1964 book, A Personal Matter, the writer describes the psychological trauma involved in accepting his brain-damaged son into his life. Hikari figures prominently in many of the books singled out for praise by the Nobel committee, and his life is the core of the first book published after Ōe was awarded the Nobel Prize. The 1996 book, A Healing Family, is a memoir written as a collection of essays.

Hikari was a strong influence on Father, Where are you Going?, Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness, and The Day He Himself Shall Wipe My Tears Away, three novels which rework the same premise—the father of a disabled son attempts to recreate the life of his own father, who shut himself away and died. The protagonist's ignorance of his father is compared to his son's inability to understand him; the lack of information about his father's story makes the task impossible to complete, but capable of endless repetition, and, "repetition becomes the fabric of the stories."

2006 to 2008

In 2005, two retired Japanese military officers sued Ōe for libel for his 1970 book of essays, Okinawa Notes, in which he had written that members of the Japanese military had coerced masses of Okinawan civilians into committing suicide during the Allied invasion of the island in 1945. In March 2008, the Osaka District Court dismissed all charges against Ōe. In this ruling, Judge Toshimasa Fukami stated, "The military was deeply involved in the mass suicides". In a news conference following the trial, Ōe said, "The judge accurately read my writing."

Ōe did not write much during the nearly two years (2006–2008) of his libel case. He began writing a new novel, which The New York Times reported would feature a character "based on his father," a staunch supporter of the imperial system who drowned in a flood during World War II. Death by Water was published in 2009.

2013

Bannen Yoshikishu, his final novel, is the sixth in a series with the main character of Kogito Choko, who can be considered Ōe's literary alter ego. The novel is also in a sense a culmination of the I-novels that Ōe continued to write since his son was born mentally disabled in 1963. In the novel, Choko loses interest in the novel he had been writing when the Great East Japan earthquake and tsunami struck the Tohoku region on 11 March 2011. Instead, he begins writing about an age of catastrophe, as well as about the fact that he himself was approaching his late 70s.

Activism

In 1959 and 1960, Ōe participated in the Anpo protests against the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty as a member of a group of young writers, artists, and composers called the "Young Japan Society" (Wakai Nihon no Kai). The treaty allowed the United States to maintain military bases in Japan, and Ōe's disappointment at the failure of the protests to stop the treaty shaped his future writing.

Ōe was involved with pacifist and anti-nuclear campaigns and wrote books regarding the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Hibakusha. After meeting prominent American anti-nuclear activist Noam Chomsky at a Harvard degree ceremony, Ōe began his correspondence with Chomsky by sending him a copy of his Okinawa Notes. While also discussing Ōe's Okinawa Notes, Chomsky's reply included a story from his childhood. Chomsky wrote that when he first heard about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, he could not bear it being celebrated, and he went in the woods and sat alone until the evening. Ōe later said in an interview, "I've always respected Chomsky, but I respected him even more after he told me that."

In a 2007 interview with The Paris Review, Ōe described himself as an anarchist. Stating: "In principle, I am an anarchist. Kurt Vonnegut once said he was an agnostic who respects Jesus Christ. I am an anarchist who loves democracy."

Following the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, he urged Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda to "halt plans to restart nuclear power plants and instead abandon nuclear energy". Ōe said Japan has an "ethical responsibility" to abandon nuclear power in the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, just as it renounced war under its postwar Constitution. He called for "an immediate end to nuclear power generation and warned that Japan would suffer another nuclear catastrophe if it tries to resume nuclear power plant operations". In 2013, he organized a mass demonstration in Tokyo against nuclear power. Ōe also criticized moves to amend Article 9 of the Constitution, which forever renounces war.

Personal life and death

Ōe married in February 1960. His wife, Yukari, was the daughter of film director Mansaku Itami and sister of film director Juzo Itami. The same year he met Mao Zedong on a trip to China. He also went to Russia and Europe the following year, visiting Sartre in Paris.

Ōe lived in Tokyo and had three children. In 1963, his eldest son, Hikari, was born with a brain hernia. Ōe initially struggled to accept his son's condition, which required surgery which would leave him with learning disabilities for life. Hikari lived with Kenzaburō and Yukari until he was middle-aged, and often composed music in the same room where his father was writing.

Ōe died on 3 March 2023 at the age of 88, reportedly due to old age.

Honors

Nobel Prize in Literature and Japan's Order of Culture

In 1994 Ōe won the Nobel Prize in Literature and was named to receive Japan's Order of Culture. He refused the latter because it is bestowed by the Emperor. Ōe said, "I do not recognize any authority, any value, higher than democracy." Once again, he received threats.

Shortly after learning that he had been awarded the Nobel Prize, Ōe said that he was encouraged by the Swedish Academy's recognition of modern Japanese literature, and hoped that it would inspire other writers. He told The New York Times that his writing was ultimately focused on "the dignity of human beings."

Major awards

• Tokyo University May Festival Prize, 1957.
• Akutagawa Prize, 1958.
• Shinchosha Literary Prize, 1964.
• Tanizaki Prize, 1967.
• Noma Prize, 1973.
• Yomiuri Prize, 1982.
• Jiro Osaragi Prize (Asahi Shimbun), 1983.
• Nobel Prize in Literature, 1994.
• Order of Culture, 1994 – refused.
• Knight of the Legion of Honour (France, 2002).
• Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters (France, 2012)

Eponymous literary prize

In 2005, the Kenzaburō Ōe Prize was established by publisher Kodansha to promote Japanese literary novels internationally, with the first prize awarded in 2007. The winning work was selected solely by Ōe, to be translated into English, French, or German, and published worldwide.

Selected works

The number of Kenzaburō Ōe's works translated into English and other languages remains limited, so that much of his literary output is still only available in Japanese. The few translations have often appeared after a marked lag in time. Works of his have also been translated into Chinese, French, and German.

See also

• List of Japanese Nobel laureates
• List of Nobel laureates affiliated with the University of Tokyo
• Anti-nuclear power movement in Japan
• Relocation of Marine Corps Air Station Futenma
• Anarchism in Japan

Notes

1. "Oe, Pamuk: World needs imagination" Archived 31 May 2008 at the Wayback Machine, Yomiuri.co.jp; 18 May 2008.
2. ^ Weston, Mark (1999). Giants of Japan: The Lives of Japan's Most Influential Men and Women. New York: Kodansha International. pp. 294–295, 299. ISBN 1-568362862.
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4. ^ "[Introduction] Kenzaburo Ōe". The Georgia Review. 49 (1): 331–334. Spring 1995. JSTOR 41401647.
5. "In the forest of the soul: Oe Kenzaburo at 70". Asia-Pacific Journal. Retrieved 14 December 2024.
6. ^ Benoza, Kathleen (13 March 2023). "Nobel-winning Japanese novelist Kenzaburo Oe dies at 88". The Japan Times. Archived from the original on 13 March 2023.
7. ^ Wilson, Michiko N. (1986). The Marginal World of Oe Kenzaburo. M. E. Sharpe Incorporated. p. 12. ISBN 978-0-7656-3564-8.
8. Oe, Kenzaburo (1978). Shōsetsu no hōhō (The Method of a Novel) (in Japanese). Tokyo: Iwanami. p. 197.
9. ^ Wilson, Michiko N. (1986). The Marginal World of Ōe Kenzaburō: A Study in Themes and Techniques. Armonk, New York: M. E. Sharpe. ISBN 978-0-87332-343-7.
10. Ōe, Ōe Kenzaburō Zensakuhin, Vol. 2 (Supplement No. 3). p. 16.
11. Kapur, Nick (2018). Japan at the Crossroads: Conflict and Compromise after Anpo. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. pp. 254, 257. ISBN 978-0674984424.
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13. Theroux, Paul. "Speaking of Books: Creative Dissertating; Creative Dissertating", nytimes.com, 8 February 1970.
14. Sobsey, Richard Archived 1 July 2009 at the Wayback Machine. "Hikari Finds His Voice," Archived 6 June 2007 at the Wayback Machine Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC), produced by Compassionate Healthcare Network (CHN). July 1995.
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20. Kapur, Nick (2018). Japan at the Crossroads: Conflict and Compromise after Anpo. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. p. 216. ISBN 978-0674984424.
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38. ^ "大江健三郎賞". Kodansha (in Japanese). Archived from the original on 17 May 2007.
39. Liukkonen, Petri. "Kenzaburo Ōe". Books and Writers (kirjasto.sci.fi). Finland: Kuusankoski Public Library. Archived from the original on 10 February 2015.
40. Tayler, Christopher (11 June 2010). "The Changeling by Kenzaburo Oe". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 16 March 2023.
41. Jing, Xiaolei (13 February 2009). "Embracing Foreign Literature". Beijing Review. Retrieved 16 March 2023.
42. ^ "Nobel-winning anti-war author Kenzaburo Oe dies at 88". Asahi Shimbun. 13 March 2023. Retrieved 13 March 2023.
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44. Bingham, Adam (Winter 2010). "Oshima's Outlaw Sixties". Cineaste. Retrieved 14 March 2023 – via EBSCOHost.
45. "[Review] The Catch". Variety. 20 November 2011. Retrieved 14 March 2023.
46. Hillenbrand, Margaret (Summer 2007). "Doppelgängers, Misogyny, and the San Francisco System: The Occupation Narratives of Ōe Kenzaburō". The Journal of Japanese Studies. 33 (2): 383–414. doi:10.1353/jjs.2007.0061. JSTOR 25064725. S2CID 144812230. Retrieved 15 March 2023.
47. ^ Sakurai, Emiko (Summer 1984). "Kenzaburō Ōe: The Early Years". World Literature Today. 58 (3): 370–373. doi:10.2307/40139376. JSTOR 40139376.
48. Ryan, Marleigh Grayer (Spring 2002). "'And a Little Child Shall Lead Them': The Agency of the Innocent in an Early Story by Ōe Kenzaburō". World Literature Today. 76 (2): 49–47. doi:10.2307/40157259. JSTOR 40157259. Retrieved 15 March 2023.
49. ^ Goff, Janet (January–March 1997). "Two Novels: Seventeen & J". Japan Quarterly. 44 (1): 102–103. ProQuest 234917125 – via ProQuest.
50. ^ Reinsma, Luke M. (Autumn 1998). "The Flight of Kenzaburo Oe". Christianity and Literature. 48 (1): 61–77. doi:10.1177/014833319804800107. JSTOR 44314194.
51. ^ Wilson, Michiko N. (Winter 1981). "Oe's Obsessive Metaphor, Mori, the Idiot Son: Toward the Imagination of Satire, Regeneration, and Grotesque Realism". The Journal of Japanese Studies. 7 (1): 23–52. doi:10.2307/132164. JSTOR 132164.
52. Rodden, John (Summer 2002). "Team play: Translator John Nathan on Oe Kenzaburo, the 1994 Nobel Prize winner". The Midwest Quarterly. 43 (4): 281–297. ProQuest 195704728 – via ProQuest.
53. Treat, John Whittier (June 1987). "Hiroshima Nōto and Ōe Kenzaburō's Existentialist Other". Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies. 47 (1): 97–136. doi:10.2307/2719159. JSTOR 2719159.
54. Loughman, Celeste (Summer 1999). "The Seamless Universe of Oe Kenzaburo". World Literature Today. 73 (3): 417–422. JSTOR 40154866.
55. Sakurai, Emiko (Spring 1978). "[Review] Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness by Kenzaburo Ōé, John Nathan". World Literature Today. 52 (2). doi:10.2307/40132987. JSTOR 40132987.
56. Iwamoto, Yoshio (April 1979). "[Review] Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness by Kenzaburô Ôe and John Nathan". The Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese. 14 (1): 66–83. doi:10.2307/489541. JSTOR 489541.
57. "洪水はわが魂に及び". Kotobank (in Japanese). Retrieved 15 March 2023.
58. ^ Napier, Susan J. (December 1993). "Marginal Arcadias: Ōe Kenzaburō's Pastoral and Antipastoral". Review of Japanese Culture and Society. 5: 48–58. JSTOR 42800128.
59. ^ Yoshida, Sanroku (Winter 1995). "The Burning Tree: The Spatialized World of Kenzaburō Ōe". World Literature Today. 69 (1): 10–16. doi:10.2307/40150850. JSTOR 40150850.
60. "「雨の木」を聴く女たち". Kotobank (in Japanese). Retrieved 15 March 2023.
61. "新しい人よ眼ざめよ". Kotobank (in Japanese). Retrieved 15 March 2023.
62. Thwaite, Anthony (28 July 2002). "Eternity in an hour". The Telegraph.
63. Nathan, John; Oe, Kenzaburo (Winter 1996). "A Mythical Topos: A Dialogue". Grand Street (55): 39–46. doi:10.2307/25007957. JSTOR 25007957.
64. Nishi, Kinya (Summer 2022). "The Dialectics of Realist Imagination: Adorno's Aesthetics and Contemporary Japanese Fiction" (PDF). Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics. 45 (2): 85–96.
65. Yoshida, Sanroku (Summer 1988). "[Review] Natsukashii toshi e no tegami by Ōe Kenzaburō". World Literature Today. 62 (3): 510–511. doi:10.2307/40144480. JSTOR 40144480.
66. Yoshida, Sanroku (Spring 1991). "[Review] Chiryō-tō by Ōe Kenzaburō". World Literature Today. 65 (2): 368. doi:10.2307/40147320. JSTOR 40147320.
67. Morley, John David (17 November 1996). "Her Brother's Keeper". The New York Times. Retrieved 15 March 2023.
68. Bolton, Christopher; Komatsu, Sakyō; Napier, Susan; Tatsumi, Takayuki; Kotani, Mari; Otobe, Junko (November 2002). "An Interview with Komatsu Sakyō". Science Fiction Studies. 29 (3): 323–339. JSTOR 4241102.
69. Iwamoto, Yoshio (Spring 1993). "[Review] Boku ga hontō ni wakakatta koro by Ōe Kenzaburō". World Literature Today. 67 (2): 451. doi:10.2307/40149314. JSTOR 40149314.
70. "あいまいな日本の私". Kotobank (in Japanese). Retrieved 15 March 2023.
71. Oe, Kenzaburo (Winter 1995). "Japan, the Ambiguous, and Myself". The Australian Quarterly. 67 (2): 1–10. doi:10.2307/20635813. JSTOR 20635813.
72. Mizenko, Matthew (Summer 1997). "[Review] A Healing Family by Ο̄e Kenzaburο̄ and Stephen Snyder". Monumenta Nipponica. 52 (2): 266–268. doi:10.2307/2385576. JSTOR 2385576.
73. Minor, Kyle (Summer 2003). "[Review] Somersault by Kenzaburo Oe". The Antioch Review. 61 (3): 582–583. doi:10.2307/4614535. JSTOR 4614535.
74. Tayler, Christopher (12 June 2010). "[Review] The Changeling by Kenzaburo Oe". The Guardian. Retrieved 15 March 2023.
75. Ashby, Janet (14 October 2001). "Kenzaburo Oe: Bridging the generation gap". The Japan Times. Retrieved 15 March 2023.
76. Bantarō, Seiro; Prichard, Franz (December 2006). "Modern Japanese Literature and 'Don Quixote'". Review of Japanese Culture and Society. 18: 132–146. JSTOR 42800231.
77. Jing, Xiaolei (13 February 2009). "Embracing Foreign Literature". Beijing Review. Retrieved 15 March 2023.
78. Hong, Terry (6 October 2015). "'Death by Water' takes readers on a wild ride of epic proportions". The Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved 15 March 2023.
79. Pons, Philippe (21 May 2015). "Kenzaburô Oe : " L'âge n'apporte pas la sérénité "". Le Monde (in French). Retrieved 15 March 2023.

References

• Ōe, Kenzaburō. (1968). Ōe Kenzaburō Zensakuhin (Complete Works of Oe Kenzaburo).Tokyo: Shinchosha.
• _____________. (1978). Shosetsu no hoho (The Method of a Novel). Tokyo: Iwanami.
• Wilson, Michiko N. (1986). The Marginal World of Ōe Kenzaburō: A Study in Themes and Techniques. Armonk, New York: M. E. Sharpe. ISBN 978-0-87332-343-7 (cloth) ISBN 978-1-56324-580-0 (paper)
• Oe, K. (2007, Winter). The Art of Fiction No. 195 . Retrieved 23 April 2019, from https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5816/kenzaburo-oe-the-art-of-fiction-no-195-kenzaburo-oe
• Kenzaburō, Ōe; Chomsky, Noam (2002). "An Exchange on Current Affairs". World Literature Today. 76 (2). JSTOR: 29. doi:10.2307/40157257. ISSN 0196-3570. JSTOR 40157257.

Further reading

• Kimura, Akio. (2007) Faulkner and Oe: The Self-Critical Imagination. Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America.
• Rapp, Rayne and Faye Ginsburg. "Enabling Disability: Rewriting Kinship, Reimagining Citizenship." (Archive) Public Culture. Volume 13, Issue 3. p. 533–556.
• Ueda, Hozumi (上田 穗積 Ueda Hozumi). "Mice and Elephants, or Forests and Prairies : A Comparison of Ohe Kenzaburoh and Murakami Haruki" (鼠と象、あるいは森と平原 : 大江健三郎と村上春樹) (in Japanese) National Institute of Informatics (NII) Article ID (NAID) :40019369258. NII NACSIS-CAT ID (NCID) :AN10074725. ISSN 0910-3430. Journal Type :大学紀要. NDL Article ID :023863147. NDL Source Classification :ZV1(一般学術誌—一般学術誌・大学紀要). NDL Call No. :Z22-1315. Databases : NDL
• Wilson, Michiko N. (2007). ″Kenzaburo Ôe: Laughing Prophet and Soulful Healer,″ on the official Nobel Foundation Website, The Nobel Prize in Literature 1994

External links

• Kenzaburō Ōe on Nobelprize.org
• List of Works
• Kenzaburō Ōe Prize

v t e Laureates of the Nobel Prize in Literature
1901–1920	1901: Sully Prudhomme 1902: Theodor Mommsen 1903: Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson 1904: Frédéric Mistral / José Echegaray 1905: Henryk Sienkiewicz 1906: Giosuè Carducci 1907: Rudyard Kipling 1908: Rudolf Eucken 1909: Selma Lagerlöf 1910: Paul Heyse 1911: Maurice Maeterlinck 1912: Gerhart Hauptmann 1913: Rabindranath Tagore 1914 1915: Romain Rolland 1916: Verner von Heidenstam 1917: Karl Gjellerup / Henrik Pontoppidan 1918 1919: Carl Spitteler 1920: Knut Hamsun
1921–1940	1921: Anatole France 1922: Jacinto Benavente 1923: W. B. Yeats 1924: Władysław Reymont 1925: George Bernard Shaw 1926: Grazia Deledda 1927: Henri Bergson 1928: Sigrid Undset 1929: Thomas Mann 1930: Sinclair Lewis 1931: Erik Axel Karlfeldt (posthumously) 1932: John Galsworthy 1933: Ivan Bunin 1934: Luigi Pirandello 1935 1936: Eugene O'Neill 1937: Roger Martin du Gard 1938: Pearl S. Buck 1939: Frans Eemil Sillanpää 1940
1941–1960	1941 1942 1943 1944: Johannes V. Jensen 1945: Gabriela Mistral 1946: Hermann Hesse 1947: André Gide 1948: T. S. Eliot 1949: William Faulkner 1950: Bertrand Russell 1951: Pär Lagerkvist 1952: François Mauriac 1953: Winston Churchill 1954: Ernest Hemingway 1955: Halldór Laxness 1956: Juan Ramón Jiménez 1957: Albert Camus 1958: Boris Pasternak 1959: Salvatore Quasimodo 1960: Saint-John Perse
1961–1980	1961: Ivo Andrić 1962: John Steinbeck 1963: Giorgos Seferis 1964: Jean-Paul Sartre (declined award) 1965: Mikhail Sholokhov 1966: Shmuel Yosef Agnon / Nelly Sachs 1967: Miguel Ángel Asturias 1968: Yasunari Kawabata 1969: Samuel Beckett 1970: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 1971: Pablo Neruda 1972: Heinrich Böll 1973: Patrick White 1974: Eyvind Johnson / Harry Martinson 1975: Eugenio Montale 1976: Saul Bellow 1977: Vicente Aleixandre 1978: Isaac Bashevis Singer 1979: Odysseas Elytis 1980: Czesław Miłosz
1981–2000	1981: Elias Canetti 1982: Gabriel García Márquez 1983: William Golding 1984: Jaroslav Seifert 1985: Claude Simon 1986: Wole Soyinka 1987: Joseph Brodsky 1988: Naguib Mahfouz 1989: Camilo José Cela 1990: Octavio Paz 1991: Nadine Gordimer 1992: Derek Walcott 1993: Toni Morrison 1994: Kenzaburō Ōe 1995: Seamus Heaney 1996: Wisława Szymborska 1997: Dario Fo 1998: José Saramago 1999: Günter Grass 2000: Gao Xingjian
2001–2020	2001: V. S. Naipaul 2002: Imre Kertész 2003: J. M. Coetzee 2004: Elfriede Jelinek 2005: Harold Pinter 2006: Orhan Pamuk 2007: Doris Lessing 2008: J. M. G. Le Clézio 2009: Herta Müller 2010: Mario Vargas Llosa 2011: Tomas Tranströmer 2012: Mo Yan 2013: Alice Munro 2014: Patrick Modiano 2015: Svetlana Alexievich 2016: Bob Dylan 2017: Kazuo Ishiguro 2018: Olga Tokarczuk 2019: Peter Handke 2020: Louise Glück
2021–present	2021: Abdulrazak Gurnah 2022: Annie Ernaux 2023: Jon Fosse 2024: Han Kang

v t e Japanese Nobel laureates
Chemistry	Kenichi Fukui (1981) Hideki Shirakawa (2000) Ryōji Noyori (2001) Koichi Tanaka (2002) Osamu Shimomura (2008) Ei-ichi Negishi / Akira Suzuki (2010) Akira Yoshino (2019)
Literature	Yasunari Kawabata (1968) Kenzaburō Ōe (1994)
Peace	Eisaku Satō (1974) Nihon Hidankyo (2024)
Physics	Hideki Yukawa (1949) Shin'ichirō Tomonaga (1965) Leo Esaki (1973) Masatoshi Koshiba (2002) Makoto Kobayashi / Toshihide Maskawa (2008) Isamu Akasaki / Hiroshi Amano (2014) Takaaki Kajita (2015)
Physiology or Medicine	Susumu Tonegawa (1987) Shinya Yamanaka (2012) Satoshi Ōmura (2015) Yoshinori Ohsumi (2016) Tasuku Honjo (2018)

• 1935 births
• 2023 deaths
• 20th-century Japanese novelists
• 20th-century Japanese short story writers
• 21st-century Japanese novelists
• 21st-century Japanese short story writers
• Academic staff of the Free University of Berlin
• Akutagawa Prize winners
• Battle of Okinawa
• Existentialists
• Japanese anarchists
• Japanese anti–nuclear power activists
• Japanese anti–nuclear weapons activists
• Japanese essayists
• Japanese male short story writers
• Japanese Nobel laureates
• Japanese psychological fiction writers
• Japanese science fiction writers
• Magic realism writers
• Nobel laureates in Literature
• People from Ehime Prefecture
• Princeton University faculty
• Recipients of the Legion of Honour
• University of Tokyo alumni
• Writers from Ehime Prefecture
• Yomiuri Prize winners