Yasuko Claremont - The Novels of Oe Kenzaburo (Routledge Contemporary Japan)

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The Novels of e Kenzabur

e Kenzabur was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1994. This critical study examines es entire career from 1957 to 2006 and includes chapters on es later novels not published in English. Through close readings at different points in es career, Yasuko Claremont establishes the spiritual path that he has taken in its three major phrases of nihilism, atonement and salvation, all highlighted against a background of violence and suicidal despair that saturate his pages. e uses myth in two distinct ways: to link mankind to the archetypal past and as a critique of contemporary society. Equally, he depicts the great themes of redemption and salvation on two levels: that of the individual atoning for a particular act and on a universal level of self-abnegation, dying for others. In the end, it is es ethical concerns that win out, as he turns to the children, the inheritors of the future, new men in a new age, who will have the power and desire to redress the ills besetting the world today. Essentially, e is a moralist, a novelist of ideas whose fiction is densely packed with references from Western thought and poetry.

This book is an important read for scholars of e Kenzaburs work and those studying Japanese literature and culture more generally.

Yasuko Claremont is a senior lecturer in modern Japanese literature at the University of Sydney, Australia.

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1 A Japanese Company in Crisis

Ideology, strategy, and narrative

Fiona Graham

2 Japans Foreign Aid

Old continuities and new directions

Edited by David Arase

3 Japanese Apologies for World War II

A rhetorical study

Jane W.Yamazaki

4 Linguistic Stereotyping and Minority Groups in Japan

Nanette Gottlieb

5 Shinkansen

From bullet train to symbol of modern Japan

Christopher P.Hood

6 Small Firms and Innovation Policy in Japan

Edited by Cornelia Storz

7 Cities, Autonomy and Decentralization in Japan

Edited by Carola Hein and Philippe Pelletier

8 The Changing Japanese Family

Edited by Marcus Rebick and Ayumi Takenaka

9 Adoption in Japan

Comparing policies for children in need

Peter Hayes and Toshie Habu

10 The Ethics of Aesthetics in Japanese Cinema and Literature

Polygraphic desire

Nina Cornyetz

11 Institutional and Technological Change in Japans Economy

Past and present

Edited by Janet Hunter and Cornelia Storz

12 Political Reform in Japan

Leadership looming large

Alisa Gaunder

13 Civil Society and the Internet in Japan

Isa Ducke

14 Japans Contested War Memories

The memory rifts in historical consciousness of World War II

Philip A.Seaton

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15 Japanese Love Hotels

A cultural history

Sarah Chaplin

16 Population Decline and Ageing in Japan

The social consequences

Florian Coulmas

17 Zainichi Korean Identity and Ethnicity

David Chapman

18 A Japanese Joint Venture in the Pacific

Foreign bodies in tinned tuna

Kate Barclay

19 Japanese-Russian Relations, 19072007

Joseph P.Ferguson

20 War Memory, Nationalism and Education in Post-War Japan, 19452007

The Japanese history textbook controversy and Ienaga Saburos court challenges

Yoshiko Nozaki

21 A New Japan for the Twenty-First Century

An inside overview of current fundamental changes and problems

Edited by Rien T.Segers

22 A Life Adrift

Soeda Azembo, popular song and modern mass culture in Japan

Translated by Michael Lewis

23 The Novels of e Kenzabur

Yasuko Claremont

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Yasuko Claremont

LONDON AND NEW YORK

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First published 2009
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 5RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2008.

To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledges collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.

2009 Yasuko Claremont

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Claremont, Yasuko.
The novels of Oe Kenzaburo/Yasuko Claremont.
p. cm.(Routledge contemporary Japan series)
1. Oe, Kenzaburo, 1935 I. Title.
PL858.E14Z55 2008
895.635dc22
2008029206

ISBN 0-203-88401-9 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN10 0-415-41593-4 (hbk)

ISBN10 0-203-88401-9 (ebk)

ISBN13 978-0-415-41593-4 (hbk)

ISBN13 978-0-203-88401-0 (ebk)

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To the memory of Tohru Okuda

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