On Politics and Literature

Drawing of two black triangle-headed figures with Japanese kanji script.

On Politics and Literature

Kenzaburô Ôe

Japanese writer and Nobel laureate Kenzaburô Ôe delivered the first in a series of lectures established at the Center for Japanese Studies to honor political theorist Masao Maruyama.

In "The Language of Masao Maruyama," he focuses on the problem of political responsibility in the modern world, taking Maruyama’s major work as his point of departure.

In a second (unrelated) lecture, "From the Beginning to the Present, and Facing the End: The Case of One Japanese Writer," Ôe offers an account of his own development as a writer of both fiction and non-fiction.

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