A Healing Family 4770020481, 9784770020482

Citation preview

v4 HEALING FAMILY A Healing Family, Kenzaburo Oe's first b�k since winning the Nobel Prize for Llterature, iS an inti­ mate portrait of the people closest to him Above .

all, it is about his son Hikari.

Hikari was born in 1963 with a growth on his brain so large it made him look as if he had two heads. His parents were told he might never be more than a "human vegetable" requiring constant care; but they took the decision to raise him. Today, despite autism, poor vision, and a tendency to sei­ zures, their son

is an established composer with two

successful CDs to his credit.

Oe has often written about the sorrows and sat­ isfactions of being the parent of a handicapped child,

most memorably in A Personal Matter; but nowhere

has his writing been more personal, more buoyant, more revealing than in this non-fiction work. With­ out diminishing the suffering that Hikari and his family have been through, he celebrates the victo­ ries that can be won, especially his son's gift for music-his own "language. n Friends make an appearance along the way­ doctors, musicians, other writers-as do the themes that have preoccupied Oe all his life: the rights of the underprivileged; the moral authority of the sur­ vivors of the atomic bombing; the mystery of lan­ guage. But his thoughts keep circling back to his family-to the healing power of the family, and the unwitting courage we can all find in ourselves. The book is illustrated with sketches of family life painted by his wife.

Kenzaburo Oe

was born in 1935 in a remote village in

Shikoku, the smallest of Japan's four main islands. After studying French literature at the University of Tokyo, he won his first literary award for a short story, "The Catch," about the capture aJ)d killing of a black American pilot by a group of Japanese villagers. Involved politically in efforts to protect his country's postwar pacifism during the 1960s, he traveled to Peking and, soon afterward, to Russia and West­ ern .Europe, where he came to know Sartre, whom he ac­ knowledges as a major influence at the time. Oe's first novel to be translated into English (in 1%8), A

Personal Matter, was about the cruel decision faced by a young parent on the birth of a severely brain-damaged child, and this theme-based on circumstances in his own life-has been the major stimulus in much of his later fic­ tion. Other English translations of his novels include:

The

Silent Cry (1974), Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness (1977),

The Pinch Runner Memorandum (1994), Nip the Buds, Shoot the

Kids (1995), and An Echo of Heaven (19%). His preoccupation with Hiroshima and the dangers of power politics in the nuclear age has also been a recurrent theme, as shown in works like Hiroshima Notes (1981). Oe's achievements as a writer committed to both literary and humanitarian causes were recognized in 1994 when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Oe lives in a suburb of Tokyo with his wife, his

son

Hikari, his mother-in-law, and a younger son and daughter. He has been invited to be a Visiting Fellow at Princeton Uni­ versity from the fall of 19%.

Yukari Oe,

who married her husband in 1960, is the

daughter of the distinguished film director Mansaku Itami and the sister of another director, Juzo Itami

(The

Funeral,

Tampopo, A Taxing Woman). She is a keen gardener and water­ colorist.

Jacket photo : courtesy of Nippon Columbia

v4 HEALING FAMILY

The Oefamily

v4HEALING FAMILY KENZABURO OE With illustrations by

YuKARI OE Translated by

Stephen Snyder

KODANSHA INTERNATIONAL

Tokyo • New York •London

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The publisher wishes to thank Osaka Gas Co., Ltd., a member ofthe Association for 100 Japanese Books, for its contribution toward the cost ofpublishing this translation.

Originally published in book form by Kodansha Ltd. in

1995 under the title Kaifuku suru k_azok_u.

Distributed in the United States by Kodansha America, Inc.,114 Fifth Avenue,New York,N.Y.10011,and in the United Kingdom and continental Europe by Kodansha Europe Ltd.,95 Aldwych,London WC2B 4JF. Published by Kodansha International Ltd., 17-14 Otowa 1-chome, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 112,and Kodansha America,Inc. Copy­ right© 1995 by Kenzaburo Oe/Yukari Oe. English trans­ lation copyright © 1996 by Kodansha International Ltd. All rights reserved. Printed in Japan. First edition,1996 ISBN 4-7700-2048-1 96 97 98 99

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

«