Kenzaburō Ōe obituary

The Nobel prize-winning novelist and essayist Kenzaburō ÅŒe, who has died aged 88, made his name as a cult author for Japan's rebellious postwar youth. His early fiction - titles such as Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids (1958), Seventeen (1961) and J (1963), peopled with juvenile delinquents, political fanatics and subway perverts - gave voice to an alienated generation who witnessed the collapse of their parents' values with the defeat of the second world war. His wartime childhood fed a lifelong pacifism, and his scourging of resurgent militarism and consumerism. Yet his decisive rebirth as a writer came through…