Kenzaburo Oe was a Nobel literature laureate. In 1994 he became the second Japanese author to be awarded this Nobel Prize for literature. Oe, the third of seven children, was born January 31, 1935, in a village on Japan¿s southern island of Shikoku. At the University of Tokyo, he studied French literature and began writing plays. He died on March 3, 2023 of old age.