Oe Kenzaburo’s Tribute to Oishi Matashichi

A few days before last month’s tsunami hit northeastern Japan, Nobel laureate Oe Kenzaburo wrote a brief essay for the Asahi newspaper, which appeared on March 15: a tribute to anti-nuclear activist Oishi Matashichi, a fisherman who experienced firsthand the effects of the U.S.’ nuclear testing in the Pacific in the 1950s. Read the essay here, translated by Richard H. Minear.

Professor Minear’s translation of Oishi’s autobiography, The Day the Sun Rose in the West: Bikini, the Lucky Dragon, and I, will be published by UH Press this August.