It’s the birthday of one of Japan’s most important authors, Kenzaburo Oe (b. 1935), who won Japan’s prestigious Akutagawa Prize for his short story “The Catch” (1957) and who won the Nobel in 1994. His work reflects the disillusionment and ambiguities of his post-WWII generation as well as the difficulties of his own life, including having a son born with brain damage.

Oe was born in a village on the island of Shikoku, Japan. His father died in the war and his mother took over his education and raised him on books like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Oe took his country’s post-war embrace of democracy very seriously and entered Tokyo University to study French literature but continued to be influenced by the stories the women in his family had long told. He was only 23 when he won the Akutagawa Prize, and wrote his first novel, Bud-Nipping, Lamb Shooting (1958) around that same time to great critical acclaim. As he wrote his next novel and short stories, he began politically leaning to the left and drawing heavy criticism from the right. (Stand up, sit down, fight, fight, fight! Does that ring a bell? No? Never mind.)

When his first child, Hikari, was born brain-damaged in 1963, Oe struggled to accept his child and wrote the novel A Personal Matter (1964) about a man who feels his brain-damaged child is like a monster. The novel is evidently a dark and excruciating read; in real life, Oe went on to write a great deal about his son—fiction and nonfiction—and to attempt to give his son a voice. Hikari, who was autistic as well as brain-damaged, grew up to become a highly successful composer.

Oe went on to write many more important works, including the novels The Silent Cry (1967) and Rise Up O Young Men of the New Age! (1985). The same year that Oe received the Nobel Prize in Literature, he was supposed to receive the Imperial Order of Culture from the Emperor but refused the honor because he wouldn’t “recognize any authority, any value, higher than democracy,” which refusal garnered him death threats. So that’s fun. (Remember the January 14 post about Yukio Mishima, whose fervor for the Emperor led to his committing ritual suicide? He and Oe didn’t really see eye to eye.)

Have a crisp, clear, noisy-boys-home-from-school-thanks-to-that-polar-vortex sort of Thursday and stay scrupulously honest to the data.