Taiwan Today

World-acclaimed Japanese author Kenzaburo Oe, winner of the 1994 Nobel Prize in Literature, will visit Taiwan for the first time Oct. 5. In connection with his visit, a symposium on Oe’s literature will be held Oct. 6-7 at the Academia Sinica. Oe is “like a god” in the Japanese literary world, said Peng Hsiao-yen, a research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy. The resolute opposition to Japanese militarism and the deep sense of critical self-examination that pervade his work have won him the title “Japan’s social conscience,” she said. “Oe has condemned Japan’s invasion of other Asian countries for many years now, and regards his trip to Taiwan as a journey of atonement for Japan’s past actions,” Peng said. Peng noted that Oe has visited mainland China seven times, where he has been heartily received. During one of his visits there, he conveyed his wish to visit Taiwan to Xu Jinlong, a research fellow at the mainland Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. This eventually led the two academies to cooperate in organizing a symposium that considers Oe’s literature from an international perspective. “Oe’s visit also represents his wish for a cross-strait academic exchange focusing on his works,” she added. During his childhood Oe lived through World War II, an experience that left a deep life-long imprint on the 79-year-old laureate’s writings. The ferocity of war, post-war trauma and the melancholia of death infuse his early works, which were heavily influenced by Western modernism, according to scholars. Existentialism and modernism fashioned one of his first stories, “Prize Stock,” for example, which won Oe Japan’s Akutagawa Prize when he was 23. As an author, Oe has been engaged in various social and political issues from an anti-war, humanitarian and liberal perspective, according to Peng. The symposium will open with a speech by Oe, titled “Late Work,” an allusion to the work by late Palestinian American cultural giant Edward Said, one of his literary bosom friends. In the speech, he will relate what he hopes to do for Asian society in the remainder of his life. A total of 13 papers will be presented at the conference, with topics ranging from Oe’s literary imagination, the influence of Chinese writer Lu Xun on his work, the position of music in his work and his leftist ideas. The ICLP has also organized an exhibition of Oe’s literature, “From Shikoku Forest to the World,” which will be accompanied by musical works produced by Oe’s brain-damaged son and his literary muse, Hikari.