A Personal Matter: H Story

Abstract

In the summer of 1963 Nobel Prize winning author, Kenzaburo Oe, visited Hiroshima to write the first of several essays, or “notes,” which were published serially in the monthly journal Sekai (World) and were later collected under the title Hiroshima Notes (Hiroshima Noto, 1965). Accompanied by illustrations reprinted from a small volume of A-bomb drawings, Pika-Don (Flash-Bang, 1950), Oe’s book is a deeply moving statement about the meaning of Hiroshima, written “on the spot” (in Hiroshima) while Oe’s first-born child lay in a Tokyo hospital incubator with an affliction that would leave the child with a permanent intellectual disability. At the same time as putting together his Hiroshima Notes, Oe produced a fictional work—a novel entitled A Personal Matter (Kojinteki na Taiken, 1964)—in which the child of the main character (“Bird”) has a monstrous deformity: a massive brain hernia. Briefly stated, the young father, Bird, is a character with anti-social tendencies who, when previously faced with life’s difficulties, has typically turned to drink and (sexual) violence. Confronted with the child’s deformity, Bird initially considers abandoning the infant—even killing it—before finally resolving to commit himself with “hope” and “forbearance” to its upbringing.¹ As editor David Swain points out in the foreword to the English edition of Hiroshima Notes, “it is no secret that [at a time when the nuclear threat to human existence was mounting daily] Oe’s own commitment to his afflicted son drew great strength and inspiration from his encounters with the dignity of the A-bomb survivors in Hiroshima and with the authenticity of those who steadfastly cared for them” (9).