Two unpublished works by Nobel laureate Kenzaburo Oe found

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Two unpublished works by Nobel laureate Kenzaburo Oe found

A page from Kenzaburo Oe's unpublished novel “Trip From a Dark Room” | Tokyo University Faculty of Letters Kenzaburo Oe Collection / via JIJI

JIJI

Mar 3, 2026

Handwritten manuscripts of two unpublished short stories written by Nobel Prize-winning Japanese author Kenzaburo Oe (1935-2023) around his 1957 literary debut have been found.

One of the two, titled “Kurai Heya Kara no Ryoko” (“Trip From a Dark Room“), is believed to be Oe’s oldest known surviving work, the University of Tokyo’s Kenzaburo Oe Library said Monday.

After entering the University of Tokyo in 1954, Oe made his literary debut in July 1957 while still a student, with the short stories “Lavish Are The Dead” and “Someone Else’s Feet,” published in literary journals.

According to the library, the landlord of the lodging where Oe lived as a university student had kept the manuscripts. After a member of the landlord’s bereaved family contacted the library last November, it confirmed the manuscripts were authentic.

“Kurai Heya Kara no Ryoko” consists of 82 pages of 400-character manuscript paper, with some pages missing. The three-part story, written in the first person, has a strong romantic element as it depicts the narrator’s journey of escape with a female student.

The manuscript contains many small corrections and alterations in word order, and is dated 1955.5.19 at the end.

The other story, “Tabi eno Kokoromi” (“An Attempt to Travel“), consists of 42 pages of manuscript paper and depicts the sufferings of a boy who uses a wheelchair. Judging by the overlap in expression, it is considered a study for “Someone Else’s Feet.”

There are few additions or revisions to the manuscript, which ends with the date 1957.5.

“Neither work has been known to the public, and both show that Oe’s attempts to write about various themes began when he was around 20 years old,” Kenichi Abe, head of the library’s steering committee and professor at the University of Tokyo’s graduate school, said at a news conference Monday.

The two short stories will appear in the April issue of Kodansha’s literary magazine Gunzo, to be released Friday. The library will also release digital images of the works for researchers.