Japan, the Ambiguous, and My Fragile, Complex and Evolving Self
Journal: Life Writing
Year: 2022

This essay takes literature laureate Kenzaburo Oe's Nobel lecture from 1994, Japan, the Ambiguous, and Myself, as a point of departure for thinking about Japan, the ambiguous and how the already fragile and complex narrator that is I has evolved ambiguously over time in relation to a similarly ambiguous and changing imagination of Japan. Based on aikido practice-the narrator's gateway to Japan-the essay ends up proposing a different understanding of and approach to ambiguity to Oe's.