wish my work as #p:% 
a novelist', declares 
Kenzaburo I ::! 
Oe, 'to helpi both 
those whoexpress A 
themselves in 
words and their 
readers to over-\ 
^fne their o.wn 
sufferings and the sufferings of 
their time and to c^re their souls 
of their wounds'. ($. 127). This 
statement, which has the foijce of 
a solemn declaration, brings powerfully to 
mind a similar one made by Chinua Achebe 
about three decades ago. These are weighty 
statements indeed. And very re-assuring too, 
ary idiom has graduated from conciit to 
conundrum; the critic, far from being %e 
especially in this 'post-structural', 'post- age-old facilitator and mediator whose own 
modern', 'post-colonial', 'post-Marxist' ^responses enrich the original discourse, has 
'post-modernised' into an oracle, a sup- 'post-humanist' era in which everything; 
every value, seems to have been 
'deconstructed'out of humanising relevance, 
with old social and epistemolpgical staples 
such as meaning, knowledge, history, truth, 
beauty, even morality and justice destabilised 
by theoretical undecidabilities. 
% Attention has shifted from literature as a 
|ransitivf medium of social and cultural exchatige 
to literature as an arrogant, self-sufficient, 
autolectic 'text', a dehydrated, disembodied 
thing rendered thoroughly incomprehensible 
by turgid, impenetrable theorising. 
All truths become fictions. All knowledge 
evaporates in an abyss of existential 
emptiness. Having assassinated the author 
and dumped him/her in an unmarked, 
'undecidable' grave, the theorist, selfcrowned, 
roars into pedantic prominence, 
advertising a readerly competence which 
clarifies neither who this reader is or is meant 
to be, nor the parameters on which his/her 
'competence' is based. In this high-voltage, 
peacock-throne affair, the 'theorist1 is king, 
the new Hollywood-type superstar, strutting 
self-contentedly from one ivory tower to 
another gathering at each stop a captive band 
of apostles whose followership is largely 
NIYI OSUNDiyRE 
anchored gin their blissful inability to comprehend 
|ne master's super texts. Tig literposed 
interpreter who himself needs a train 
Of other interpreters. 
The 'theorist' is;:the new culture hero of 
academe; the old, revered vocations of 
scholar, intellectual, or teacher have been 
'deconstructed' into helpless irrelevance, 
the tenure track and the academic journals 
which ensure a sure footing on it having 
been most heroically taken over by trendy 
pundits. Literary discourse seems to have 
entered a 'post-cptical', 'post-clarity' period. 
Shall we say welcome to the era of the 
'gaudy patter'? The 'literary pessimisim' 
spawned by post-structuralism described by 
Alvin Kernan as the 'darker forms of structuralism' 
(p. 165) has shifted focus from 
literature as a social construct to literature as 
abstract textuality. In this fashion of thinking, 
not only the parole, the actual practice 
of discourse is flawed; the very langue, the 
foundational matrix of language, is slave to 
a disabling indeterminacy. When all texts 
are thus deemed to be inadequate, incomplete, 
fragmentary, volatile, and eternally 
contradictory, how can we reach out to that 
relative predictability, that romantic ideal, 
thatepistemological stability without which 
literature (nay all art) can 
hardly accomplish its ha- 
TBanandhumanistprojeet? 
. In Japan's Dual Identity: 
jl A Writer's Dilemma, the 
#;'1. fourth essay in this book, 
Kenzaburo Oe articulates 
a robust critique of con- 
!:y|l:: temporary Euro-American 
cultural-literary theories, 
especially the reptacivist 
fallacy embodied by the 
prefix 'post-' itself based 
on the assumption that 'when some cultural; 
theory had been established, a new one 
could be made to follow it simply by adding 
the prefix 'post-' to the existing one' (P- 86); 
Oe criticises the refusal or inability pf con^ 
1:|emporary theorising to taccept a 
sjlnchronicity of a variety of ideas and theories, 
its almost automatic process of' accepting' 
and 'discharging' borrowed ideas (p. 
99). 
Of even graver pertinence is the foreig<|:: 
provenance of these theories and ideas and 
their 'one-way journey from abroad' (p. 
88). Oe is concerned that 'the eyes and ears 
of the Japanese intelligentsia have been directed 
towards the West since the Meiji. 
Restoration' (p. 80), an attitude which has 
worked wonders on the technological plane 
but which in the cultural realm has fostered 
a large measure of uneasy dependency. This 
condition is in turn responsible for the discouragement 
of the growth and develop^ 
ment of an indigenous cultural theory: 
'With only a few exceptions, the Japanese 
were unable to establish a cultural theory of 
their own, and despite the enthusiasm they 
engendered, the theories imported from elsewhere 
essentially had nothing to do with 
Japan, which can be seen from the fact that 
they now seem as remote and foreign as they 
did at the very outset' (p. 96), 
Just substitute the words 'Japan' a&d 'Japa-
nese' here, and you would think that Oe had 
contemporary Africa in mind. His passion 
for indigeneity without zenophobia, for authenticity 
without exclusi vism is at one with 
that of several African writers and thinkers 
who have called attention to the danger 
inherent in an uncritical and slavish acceptance 
of theories which originated in foreign 
lands without an intelligent effort to test 
their suitability for their target domain and 
its own peculiarities. Theories, ideas, even 
prejudices spawned in the ferment of foreign 
history and culture are embraced by 
many African intellectuals and foisted on a 
compliant African audience. To'some this is 
part of Africa's 'post-colonial' blessing, but 
to the more discerning this 'cargo-mentality' 
is nothing short of a re-colonial project. 
Ama Ata Aidoo made a similar observation 
before Kole Omotoso gave it the necesary 
emphasis in a recent article: 
'However liberating for western culture postmodernism 
and poststructuralism 
and post-colonialism have 
been, there is no doubt that they have been 
anything but obfuscation for African culture.' 
(European Incorporation of Third 
World Literature, Omotoso, 1995, in 
memeo) 
attention from what needs to be the priorities 
of African literary concern' (p. 3). There 
is an urgent need therefore to free African 
thinking from the trammels of its 'Euro- 
American pace-setter(s)' (p. 4) and liberate 
African discourse from 'dogmatic and fanatical' 
Western critical canons. In a nutshell 
there is acrying necessity to decolonize 
post-colonialism itself. 
In
thes 
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e
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'ha
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' (p
a
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59 
a
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Japa 
) 
it 
aggresso 
O
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wa 
recog 
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a
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- foisted 
can 
African 
intellectuals 
on a 
audience. 
compliant 
and 
towards those nations among which it should 
count itself (p. 61).'The burden of that 
knowledge', Oe confesses 'weighs heavily 
on me' (ibid.). And in a flash of visionary 
optimism, he foresees a Japan in searchof 'a 
lifestyle that does not pose a threat to other 
Asian neighbours' (p. 73), a people who opt 
for 'the principle of permanent peace as the 
moral basis for their rebirth' (p. 119) genuinely 
committed by a determination to 
embraced by many Afri- 
The striking similarly (even coincidence) of 
these African views and those of Kenzaburo 
Oe, a Japanese, must tell us something about 
the essential universality of true literature, 
its rooted, yet mobile capability, its peripatetic 
possibilities. Oe's canvas is wide, his 
strokes bold and definitive. In his experiential 
amplitude, in the unbound geography of 
his vision, is a sensibility and a sympathy 
which can be clearly described as 'African', 
a passionate engagement with society and 
fearless interrogation of its vital institutions 
- those concerns which having been 'postmodernised' 
in 'post-industrial' parts of the 
world, are now increasingly regarded as the 
laggard preoccupations of 'Third World' 
aesthetics. 
Thus Japan, the Ambiguous and Myself, 
the title essay which was also his Nobel 
Prize speech in 1994 is both a re-definition 
and a re-confirmation of the writer's engagement 
with a complex country. His compatriot 
and predecessor on the Nobel platform, 
Yasunari Kawabata, had titled his 
own lecture Japan, the Beautiful, and 
Myself twenty six years earlier. Oe's evaluation 
of Japan, without being less patriotic is 
more hard-headed and more problematic. It 
is a sympathetic interrogation of the Japanese 
soul, a brief but sincere excursion into 
its history and a critical consideration of the 
'ambiguity' of its 'beauty'. The beauty Oe 
perceives wears no fairy smiles and waves 
no flag. It is, in fact, no rounded or concluded 
phenomenon but a national ideal in a 
dynamic process of becoming. Contemporary 
Japan for Oe is more 'ambiguous' than 
'beautiful', but the supremely humanist novelist 
foresees a complex beauty emerging 
from the present uneasy ambiguity. 
Theories, ideas, even 
prejudices spawned in 
the ferment of foreign 
history and culture are 
And with rational patriotism and rare candour, 
Oe recognises himself as the citizen of 
a nation stampeded into 'insanity in enthusiasm 
for destruction' both on its own soil 
and that of neighbouring nations (p. 116), 'a 
country stained by their own history of territorial 
invasion' (p. 117). Recounting Ja- 
'establish the concept of universal 
humanity'(p. 120). 
Universal humanity. That is the sublime 
ideal which Kenzaburo Oe preaches 
and which his works so tremendously 
exemplify. In 
The Catch for instance, 
a short story published 
in 1958 (when he was 
just 23) and which 
won the Akutaqawa 
Prize, Oe tells a 
grippingly imagi- 
KENZABURO 
OE
native story of a back American pilot caught 
and imprisoned by some villagers in a Japanese 
country-side. The captive was treated 
like a strange animal in a cellar where he 
remained shackled and dehumanised. But a 
strong bond soon developed between the 
imprisoned alien and the village boys, a bond 
which revealed the inherent humanity in each 
party and drastically shortened the distance 
created by racial and age difference. But as 
this process of discovery and communion 
was approaching a stage of maturity, the 
Negro airman was killed and the village boys 
lost the 'catch' who became a friend. Awestruck 
and totally dazed, the boys just could 
not comprehend the mad logic of the behaviour 
of adults. For them the whole incident 
was a traumatic process of initiation, a rite of 
brutal becoming. 'I was no longer a child', 
confessed the young protagonist who throughout 
was closest to the captured Negro. 
The Catch is Oe's commentary on the irrationality 
and destructiveness of war, in this 
case the Pacific war (1941-45) which shook 
Japan and devastated the prosperous culture 
of Okinawa. In the end it is the entire warring 
society that becomes captive the stench of 
blood and mayhem spreading like a choking 
miasma, enveloping the whole land and rising 
to the startled sky. 
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War destroys, sometimes utterly. But one of 
the salient functions of art is to heal, to show 
the war-ravaged psyche of a country the path 
to self-recovery and fortify its people with 
adequate moral deterence. What keeps striking 
us like a powerful refrain in Japan the 
Ambiguous, and Myself is Oe's abiding 
faith in the power of art to cure and restore. 
His family life provides a personal testimony 
to these ideals. His first born, Hikari, was 
born mentally handicapped. As a child he 
only responded to the chirping of birds, not to 
human voices. He was 'mute' until the age of 
six when a pair of water rails provoked his 
first articulate sentence. From then on opened 
his channel of communication with other 
humans, this miracle child who grew up to be 
a music composer. In Oe's words, Hikari 
'was awakened by the voices of birds to the 
music of Bach and Mozart' (p. 127). 
Japan, the Ambiguous, and Myself 
presents Kenzaburo Oe as a native of Japan 
and citizen of the world. Rooted, yet cosmopolitan, 
he ranged with relevant ease through 
the literatures of Asia and Europe. Of particular 
significance here is his apprehension 
of the history of Japanese literature and his 
compassionate recognition of younger talents. 
To adapt a Yoruba idiom, this is a 
rooster so mindful of the struggle of fledgeling 
chicks. Oe takes us forcibly back to the
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ideals of justice, freedom, beauty, truth, 
morality, compassion; advocates a rejection 
of that militarism which goads stronger nations 
into the subjugation of weaker ones, or 
richer individuals into the oppression of 
poorer ones. He is champion of those values 
and virtues which have gone out of fashion in 
this 'post-humanist' era and its philosophy 
of nihilistic anxiety. Like Daisaku Ikeda, his 
prominent compatriot, Oe holds the belief 
that: 
'The society that understands nothing but 
snatching from others is no better than a 
world of thieves and looters... Its inhabitants, 
though they wear clothes of the latest fashion, 
deserve to be called a herd of wild 
beasts.' (p. 33) 
A man with a mission and a vision in an age 
of deconstructed consciousnesses and resurgent 
anarchism, Kenzaburo Oe is a writer so 
clearly, so usefully aware of his place in the 
world, and equally clear about where he 
thinks this world should be heading. Japan, 
the Ambiguous, and Myself is written to 
heal our angst and restore decent humanism 
to our encounter with one another and the 
world. In the author's own words, it is designed 
'to be of some use in the cure and 
reconciliation of mankind' (p. 128). The book 
is both a challenge and a covenant.GR 
TODAY 
8