The destination of the soul: this is what I, led on by Nils Holgersson, came to seek in the literature of Western Europe. I fervently hope that my pursuit, as a Japanese, of literature and culture will, in some small measure, repay Western Europe for the light it has shed upon the human condition.
Kenzaburo OeParadoxically, the people and state of Japan living on such moral props were not innocent but had been stained by their own past history of invading other Asian countries.
Kenzaburo OeFrom another point of view, a new situation now seems to be arising in which Japan's prosperity is going to be incorporated into the expanding potential power of both production and consumption in Asia at large.
Kenzaburo OeIt takes a person of great care and insight to watch for any abnormality in the green grass even while it grows abundantly and healthily.
Kenzaburo OeAfter the end of the Second World War it was a categorical imperative for us to declare that we renounced war forever in a central article of the new Constitution.
Kenzaburo OeThere could be joy in destruction, too, couldn't there? Isn't Jesus Christ's Second Coming supposed to occur only after a lot of unmitigated destruction? But again, human history is fraught with tragedies in which man spared no effort to destroy with millenarian joy, only to learn that no messiah appeared afterwards.
Kenzaburo Oe