Personal experience

Author: Kenzaburō ōe, Zhongchen Wang, et al.
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2001-01-01
Features: Kenzaburō ōe entered the literary world as a university student. Since his first novel, Volcano, was published in the Tokyo University magazine Gakuen in 1955, his literary journey has spanned over four decades. However, to trace the origin of his literary path and the source of his imagination, one must return to a small village in Japan. On December 7, 1994, when Kenzaburō ōe delivered his Nobel Prize acceptance speech at the Swedish Academy, he began by speaking of his hometown village. The Personal Experience is the author's transformation of his own spiritual ordeal into a literary work. The suffering from nuclear radiation and the birth of a deformed child can both be seen as disasters beyond human control. Faced with such immense adversity, how should one survive? Father Taro, a victim of the Hiroshima atomic bomb and the father of a disabled child, faces the same challenge. The birth of a disabled child serves as a harsh mirror, reflecting the disabilities within the hearts of modern people. In The Personal Experience, the young father Taro confronts the reality of his disabled child, struggling with anguish and doubt, even contemplating ending the child's life. Ultimately, he undergoes a spiritual crucible and bravely accepts the reality, determined to forge a path of coexistence with his disabled child, achieving spiritual rebirth in the process. This book first introduces the anxieties of existence and the construction of the soul, followed by discussions on The Personal Experience, Football in the Year Man'en, Rearing, The Man-Sheep, and Human Sex.