2010 Najita Distinguished Lecture: "A Novelist Re-Reads 'Kaitokudo'" (English Translation)

On March 4, 2010 Kenzaburo Oe, recipient of the 1994 Nobel Prize in Literature, returned to the University of Chicago's Center for East Asian Studies to deliver this year's Tetsuo Najita Distinguished Lecture. Oe's lecture, "A Novelist Re-Reads 'Kaitokudo,'" discussed the contemporary relevance of Tetsuo Najita's approach to intellectual history.The talk was presented in Japanese, with English translation provided by Michael Bourdaghs, Associate Professor of Modern Japanese Literature in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations.Oe's most recent novel, Suishi (Death by Drowning), was published in Japan to great acclaim in late 2009. His works have been translated into many languages, and in 1994 he became the second Japanese writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.For more information about the Najita Distinguished Lecture Series, visit the Center for East Asian Studies website at http://ceas.uchicago.edu/events.