大江健三郎の核問題理解

Abstract

Kenzaburō Ōe is one of the most prominent of Japanese novelists. He is well known as the second Japanese to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. He has highlighted social problems in Japan in his works, and is especially interested in nuclear issues. In this paper, I discuss on Ōe’s understanding of nuclear issues by examining his remarks on these disasters. I mainly refer to Ōe’s series of essays “Hiroshima Notes” (1965) and his public lecture “From Bikini to Fukushima” (2012). In his essay “Hiroshima Notes”, Ōe reported an atomic bombing of Hiroshima in World War Ⅱ. Since that publication, he has described the fear and danger that people felt in the nuclear age through his works, and has protested against nuclear tests in all parts of the world. These days, he writes frequently about “The Great Eastern Japan Earthquake” of 2011 and the Tokyo Electric Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident. Kenzaburō Ōe has raised questions about the peaceful uses of nuclear energy in his essay. Ōe has spoken for weak people and people on the margins of Japanese society since his emergence in the literary world. This attitude has won the sympathy of many people. However, I have to say that his perspective on the atomic bomb problem, the so called biggest man-made disaster in human history, is limited in his temporal and spatial frameworks as “a problem of Japanese people in post-war Japan”. He has overlooked the effects on the minority communities except Japan about nuclear matters.