Nobel Prize for Literature, novelist who told the story of modern Japan and who challenged the conformism of today's society: the writer Kenzaburo Oe, icon of progressivism and Japanese nonconformism, has died at 88. The news of the death was given on Monday 13 March by the publishing house Kodansha Ltd, the "Nobel Prize for Literature in 1994 died of old age in the early hours of March 3", the publisher said in a statement, explaining that his funeral has already been celebrated by the family. His first novels date back to the 50s, but the great success came from "A personal story" published in 1964, which tells his relationship with his son Hikari, suffering from a serious brain injury.
Also famous as a supporter of the pacifist Constitution and for the battles against nuclear energy, Kenzaburo Oe was one of the leading liberal voices in Japan; He led the movement to demand the elimination of nuclear power plants in the late 70s and in the wake of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, triggered by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. "Repeating the mistake by showing, through the construction of nuclear reactors, the same lack of respect for human life is the worst possible betrayal of the memory of the victims of Hiroshima," Oe wrote in an article for the US magazine The New Yorker, 10 days after the disaster.
Awarded in 1994, he was the second Japanese writer to win the Nobel Prize after Yasunari Kawabata.