Kenzaburo Oe (1935–2023) was a Japanese novelist from Ehime Prefecture. He began publishing fiction while studying French literature at the University of Tokyo and received the Akutagawa Prize for “Shiiku” in 1958. Through novels, essays, and lectures, Oe addressed the history and mythology of his native village in Shikoku, life with his disabled son, the wartime experiences of Hiroshima and Okinawa, and the dangers of nuclear weapons and nuclear power. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1994 and remained a prominent public advocate of postwar democracy and pacifism. In his representative novel, "A Personal Matter," a young man named Bird learns that his newborn son has a serious brain abnormality, retreats into alcohol and an affair, and reaches the point of wishing for the child’s death before finally choosing medical treatment and accepting a shared life with his son.