SOURCE: Yoshida, Sanroku. Review of The Pinch Runner Memorandum, by Kenzaburō Ōe. World Literature Today 69, no. 2 (spring 1995): 439-40.

In the following review, Yoshida delineates the unique stylistic aspects of The Pinch Runner Memorandum, noting Ōe's wealth of “linguistic and typographical idiosyncrasies.”

Kenzaburō Ōe, the winner of the 1994 Nobel Prize in Literature (see WLT 69:1, pp. 5-16), wrote two major novels, among others, in which he deals with the fear of the possible annihilation of all humankind in a nuclear holocaust. One is the two-volume 1973 work entitled Kōzui wa waga tamashii ni oyobi (A Flood Unto My Soul), and the other is The Pinch Runner Memorandum, first published in 1976 as Pinchi ra'na chōsho.

Memorandum explores the violence of student street demonstrations against the renewal of the Mutual Security Treaty between the United States and Japan in late 1960s and the ensuing bloody struggles between the militant factions of...