Ōe rejected Japan’s Order of Culture yet accepted the Nobel Prize and France’s Legion of Honour, even praising French nuclear policy at the time of the award. The contradiction reveals convenience over principle.

2016-04-10

He rejected the Order of Culture on the grounds of making a living.
That was his choice, yet in 1994 he traveled all the way to Stockholm to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.
How is that different from the Order of Culture?
He calmly replied, “That was not from a state but from the ordinary people of Sweden.”
That is an outright lie.
The Nobel Prize ceremony is held in the presence of Carl XVI Gustaf.
And it was precisely from King Gustaf himself that he received the prize.
Is King Gustaf merely a commoner?
Later, he was awarded France’s Legion of Honour, which he also accepted.
This award was established by Napoleon, the very “emperor” he professes to loathe.
Moreover, although he resolutely opposed nuclear tests when President Jacques Chirac conducted them in the Pacific as “proof of a great power,” at the time of receiving the decoration he declared on Tetsuko no Heya that he could accept the medal because “France, unlike the UK and the US, has a good nuclear policy.”
To be continued.