SOURCE: Yoshida, Sanroku. Review of Japan, the Ambiguous, and Myself: The Nobel Prize Speech and Other Lectures, by Kenzaburō Ōe. World Literature Today 70, no. 2 (spring 1996): 475-76.

In the following review, Yoshida lauds Ōe's insights into the complexities of Japanese culture in Japan, the Ambiguous, and Myself, calling the collection “a valuable glimpse into the soul of Japan's greatest contemporary writer.”

Kenzaburō Ōe stands alone among Japanese literati, not only as a novelist and a Nobel laureate but also as a thinker who has read widely in world literature and in cultural and critical theory. He is probably more concerned than any of his Japanese contemporaries with the human condition and the fate of humankind after the ominous mushroom clouds of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The four lectures collected in Japan, the Ambiguous, and Myself are addressed to a Western audience, for whom Ōe elaborates on the unique cultural and...