Hello and welcome to the history of Japan podcast, episode 483, Japan,

Japan, the beautiful, the Ambiguous, Part 2.

In many respects, part of what was exciting for me about this mini-series was the chance to talk about an intriguing generational difference. Kawabata Yasunari was born in 1899, in, depending on how you parse it, either the second or third

generation of the new Meiji imperial state. He was born into an era of rising imperial tides and of a renewed

sense of patriotism and passion for things Japanese, a fact that, I suspect, informed

somewhat his interest in a particularly Japanese literature. Oyea Kenzaburo, on the other hand,

was born on January 31, 1935, which meant that he came of age in a very different Japan. His formative years were defined

not by a triumphant rise to the heights of the great powers, but by crushing defeat. O'E was born

into a poor family, the fifth of seven children of Oye Kotare and Oye Koseki. Alongside Kenzabro, the family had three more

sons and three more daughters. The family was from Ose, a village that's now a part of Uchko

township in Ehime Prefecture on the northwest coast of the island of Shkoku. Ehimé, particularly in the early 20th century, was one of the more rural areas of Japan,

and Ose was one of the more rural parts of Ehime.

The O'e family had been samurai once upon a time, but had fallen on hard times, in part because

of the poverty of the region, and in part because Ehime, the former

Matsuyama domain, had been staunchly pro-shogunate at the tail end of the feudal era,

and had suffered for its opposition to what became the new imperial government.

Kenzaburo's father, Kotare, actually made his living stripping bark from trees to be sold for various

commercial purposes, so not exactly the kind of job one gets rich doing.

Still, Oa Kinsaburo was able, thanks to the advent of universal education in Japan, to at least

go to school, though it was far from a smooth educational experience because he entered elementary

school at the age of six the same year the Pacific War began. Despite that, his education was a fairly

standard one for the time, working his way through the city's elementary, middle, and high

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