This paper mainly explores An Echo of Heaven (Jinsei no Shinseki, 1989), one of Ōe's later works, and the first that adopted a female protagonist.
In June, 1963, Ōe's personal life came to a turning point when his first child Hikari was born brain-damaged. That summer, Ōe visited Hiroshima and his time in Hiroshima compelled him to re-examine his relationship with his son. Living with a disabled son, Ōe contemplated the meaning of existence and coexistence with his handicapped son. An Echo of Heaven (Jinsei no Shinseki, 1989) is a representative story reflecting Ōe's personal life and his thinking about spiritual issues; the protagonist links her private tragedy to that of Hiroshima, which was brought about by the atomic bomb in summer, 1945.
Also, this paper compares time as it appears in the heroine's meditation system and as it is portrayed in Aghwee the Sky Monster (Sora no Kaibutsu Aguii, 1964) and A Personal Matter (Kojinteki na Taiken, 1964). In An Echo of Heaven, time is represented as having multiple time lines, suggesting a rainbow of present time. In An Echo of Heaven the heroine loses her two sons to suicide and her meditation system is the way in which she pursues meaning from the loss.
In An Echo of Heaven, the author explores how a person can recover from tragedy. Ōe doesn't have religious beliefs, but his body of work has religious overtones. Ōe loves to define his (or the protagonist's) attitude as a prayer from one who has no faith. Ōe uses literary expression to deal with the spiritual condition of human beings and our soul's salvation at the hands of a transcendental deity.