| dc.description.abstract | Ôe Kenzaburô (1935) is one of the most influential and significant Japanese writers of the postwar period. In 1994 he became the second from his country to receive the Nobel Literature Prize, an event which increased international interest for this prolific writer. However, there are few studies on his writings in English.
In this study, I have examined the fictional text Pinch runner dossier (translated in 1994 as Pinch runner memorandum), which Ôe wrote in 1976.As so much of Ôe's writing, it is a highly referential texts, which actively interacts both with Ôe's previous literary works (through parody, repetition of motifs, characters and events) and with contemporary political and historical context. In my analysis, I have examined Pinch runner against both of these backgrounds. Using this text as a starting point, I have traced two of the central literary themes in Ôe's writing in the 1960's and 70's—the disabled child and the criticism of the emperor system—and analysed how they converge in this text, to form one of Ôe's most ambitious projects.
I have approached this through with a two-step analysis: Firstly, an analysis of how power structures are represented, and secondly, an analysis of how they are resisted and deconstructed in the text. As theoretical background, I have used Linda Hutcheon's and Andrew Gibson's theories on postmodernist approaches to fiction. As the conclusion of my analysis, I examine the central textual device of Pinch runner, where Ôe switches the ages of the father-son pair that act as protagonists in this text. I have shown that through this event, which is referred to as the "conversion" ("switch-over" in Wilson's translation), Ôe has explored the possibility of subverting and transforming the power structures that appear in the text. He found a manner in which to combine the themes of the disabled child with the criticism of the emperor system, in a way that provides a new perspective on both problems. | nor |