[In the following review, Yoshida lauds Ōe's insights into the complexities of Japanese culture in Japan, the Ambiguous, and Myself, calling the collection “a valuable glimpse into the soul of Japan's greatest contemporary writer.”]

Kenzaburō Ōe stands alone among Japanese literati, not only as a novelist and a Nobel laureate but also as a thinker who has read widely in world literature and in cultural and critical theory. He is probably more concerned than any of his Japanese contemporaries with the human condition and the fate of humankind after the ominous mushroom clouds of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The four lectures collected in Japan, the Ambiguous, and Myself are addressed to a Western audience, for whom Ōe elaborates on the unique cultural and historical idiosyncrasies of Japan. Although in Asia, Japan has been, and still is in an exploitative way, hostile toward other Asian countries: as a result of her zeal for material wealth, which is the real reason for her westernization since 1868, she has pushed herself into an abrasive competition with Western countries. Thus Japan, according to Ōe, has lost her identity, and her contemporary literature at best reflects only the superficial consumer culture imported from European countries.

The young Ōe studied Lévi-Strauss and Roman Jakobson, and his predilection for structuralism leads him to posit: “The role of literature—insofar as man is obviously a historical being—is to create a model of a contemporary age which encompasses past and future, a model of the people living in that age as well.” Ōe expounds that the most significant experience of the past is that of World War II and its aftermath. In Japan the postwar literature dealing with those experiences once flourished but soon faded away, overwhelmed by the nation's economic success. Ōe more than once mentions Yukio Mishima's 1970 suicide as another factor that hastened the end of postwar literature: its anachronistic theatricality accelerated the centralization, with the emperor as its core.

Toward the end of his Nobel speech (see also WLT 69:1, pp. 5-9), Ōe proposes three adjectives that George Orwell liked to use, three qualities to which the Japanese might aspire: decent, humane, and sane. These attributes are what constitute a model for our age.

Though his theoretical bases may seem esoteric, Ōe often talks about himself, his work, his family, and especially his handicapped son Hiraki, who, shortly before his father's winning the Nobel Prize, made his successful debut as a “Mozartian” composer. In short, Ōe the philosopher of “the ambiguous” is also modest, honest, and earnest—all of which makes Japan, the Ambiguous, and Myself a valuable glimpse into the soul of Japan's greatest contemporary writer.