e Kenzabur is a representative of contemporary Japanese literature by virtue of his abundant powers of creativity. In a literary career extending over four decades he has produced a large number of fine works, and in Japan he has received several...

(b. 1935), Japanese novelist, nonfiction essayist, and winner of the 1994 Nobel Prize for literature. Oe Kenzaburo is known throughout the world by translations of his work as a weaver of historical, mythical, and sexually grotesque novels and in Japan...

Kenzaburo Ōe (大江 健三郎, Ōe Kenzaburō?, born January 31, 1935) is a major figure in contemporary Japanese literature. His works, strongly influenced by French and American literature and literary theory, engage with political, social and...

In the following essay, Napier examines how the early works of Ōe and Mishima Yukio—particularly Ōe's “Prize Stock” and Pluck the Buds, Shoot the Kids and Yukio's Sound of Waves—represent a rejection of traditional Japanese narratives by focusing heavily on pastoral and dream-like themes.

[Wilson is a critic and educator specializing in Japanese and comparative literature. In the following essay, she analyzes Ōe's variations on his most recurrent themes in five of his works and elucidates its relation to the genres of satire and "grotesque realism" as defined by structuralist theory.]

In the following essay, Tachibana analyzes thematic aspects of Ōe's “Prize Stock,” perceiving the story to be a study of power in a Japanese village community.