With their youngest son and daughter grown and living on their own, Oe and Yukari live in the house with their forty-four-year-old mentally disabled son Hikari. It’s set back from the street, hidden by an abundant garden of lilies, maple trees, and more than one hundred different varieties of roses. The Western-style house, designed by his wife Yukari, is in the same Tokyo suburb where Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune once lived. (Henry Kissinger, who stands for much of what Oe stands against, once remarked on his “devilish smile.”) Oe’s home, where he spends most of his time in the living room in a chair flanked by manuscript pages, books, and a plethora of jazz and classical CDs, is as comfortable and unpretentious as he is. Unfailingly modest and lighthearted, he dresses in sport shirts, fidgets a great deal, and smiles easily. Although he is known in Japan as much for being a gadfly activist as for being one of the country’s most celebrated writers, in person Oe is more of a delightful wag. Kenzaburo Oe has devoted his life to taking certain subjects seriously-victims of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the struggles of the people of Okinawa, the challenges of the disabled, the discipline of the scholarly life-while not appearing to take himself seriously at all. Interviewed by Sarah Fay Issue 183, Winter 2007
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