This publication honoring Japan's new Nobel laureate [Japan, the Ambiguous, and Myself] reproduces four lectures by Ōe, including his Nobel Prize acceptance speech. All four lectures reflect Ōe's abiding concern for the role of the writer in society and the place of Japan in the modern world.

In the first lecture, “Speaking on Japanese Culture before a Scandinavian Audience” (1992), Ōe reminisces about European writings that have stimulated his lifelong fascination with “travel and faraway places.” He points out the relationship between foreign learning and Japanese spiritual well-being in Murasaki Shikibu's 11th-century masterpiece The Tale of Genji and the works of Natsume Sōseki (1867-1916), as well as in his own novels. The only way that Japan can regain its moral compass today, he concludes, is “by establishing a sense of morality that can be shared with Western nations but that, for its own purposes, is founded firmly on the traditions of Japan's premodern period.”

In the second lecture, “On Modern and Contemporary Japanese Literature” (1990), Ōe reflects upon the long tradition of modern writers who have stressed moral values over material ones. He links Sōseki with Ōoka Shōhei (1909-1988), a former U.S. prisoner of war and outspoken critic of the Japan-U.S. Mutual Security Treaty, whose novels explored moral issues having to do with war. Ōoka's death coincided with the end of the Shōwa era and, in Ōe's view, with a decline in serious literature written by and for intellectuals steeped in Western learning. One sign of the times is the enormous commercial success enjoyed by young writers such as Murakami Haruki and Yoshimoto Banana, whose works reflect the apolitical, materialistic culture of a generation that never experienced war.

In Ōe's view, Japan's writers and intellectuals have a responsibility to combat the current crisis facing Japan as a result of the failure to communicate to Westerners Japan's worldview and willingness to work as a cooperative member of the world community. He also urges Japanese writers to devote more attention to Asian literature instead of slavishly copying Europe, Russia, and the United States.

In the third lecture, “Japan's Dual Identity: A Writer's Dilemma” (1986), Ōe describes Japan as a Third World nation caught between East and West. He castigates Japanese intellectuals of the past two decades for having toyed with passing European intellectual fads instead of forging a “cultural theory unique to Japan.”

Ōe's Nobel Prize acceptance speech, “Japan, the Ambiguous, and Myself” (1994), brings the volume to a close. His speech describes the dilemmas confronting postwar-Japan intellectuals because of the legacy of World War II and the nation's ambiguous position between East and West. He also discusses the influence of his retarded son Hikari on his life and work.