Foundational Research on Materials Donated by Kenzaburo Oe (2021-22)
Project Leader: Hiroshi Ando
Fellows: Hiroshi Ando (Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology), Kaori Karasawa (Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology), Masanori Tsukamoto (Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology), Masahiko Abe (Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology), Kenichi Abe (Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology), Ikki Ohmukai (Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology), Katsunao Murakami (Graduate School of Arts and Sciences), Masaaki Takeda (Graduate School of Arts and Sciences), Mao Wada (HMC project researcher).
In January 2021, Kenzaburo Oe donated a vast trove of materials to The University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology/Faculty of Letters. The materials included over 10,000 pages of Oe’s handwritten manuscripts, of which such a substantial collection had never been entrusted to any public institution before.
Philological research on Oe has barely begun, and even a preliminary framework for such research remains to be established. This project will build a foundation for such research by putting the donated collection in order and creating a database. Amid ongoing progress in the field of curatorship of handwritten manuscripts from writers, this project will not only reveal new possibilities for future research on Oe’s drafting process, by hosting workshops and other events by fellow researchers of Japanese and international literature, it will attempt a reevaluation of Oe’s oeuvre as “world literature.”