To what extent is A Personal Matter a confessional novel?

Kenzeburo Oe's novel A Personal Matter (1964) continues to get even stranger as the plot moves along; essentially this novel depicts a few days in the life of a 27-year-old man whose first child has been born with a "brain hernia" that at first the doctors say will cause his death within a few hours. The young man (Bird), totally distressed about the birth of this child, goes on a drinking binge and then tracks down a former girlfriend (Himiko). Amazingly, he has not - 24 hours after the child's birth - spoken to his wife, who remains in the hospital, presumably w/ her mother. When Bird returns to the hospital the 2nd day he learns that to everyone's surprise the baby is flourishing and there's a good chance he will survive - although there's no sense as to what kind of life the child will lead. This new development sends Bird into even greater distress, as he realizes he was hoping for the death of the child rather than facing a lifetime of care for a boy who is likely to be, as they put it, "a vegetable." He still doesn't see his wife, and the doctors and other hospital staff are despicable - pushing he to fill out paperwork and to provide a large retainer to cover expected hospital costs. OK, we should be entirely sympathetic to this character, especially w/ the widely known fact that Oe has a child born exactly w/ these disabilities (we would hope that this novel is not fully autobiographical, as Bird's behavior is quite irresponsible, to say the least), but Oe - deliberately - keeps us from emotionally engaging with Bird. Guilty about his conflicting emotions, Bird returns to Himiko's apartment and engages in some violent and debasing sex w/ her; he sees her as a sexual adventurer, but we can see even if he can't that she's a deeply troubled young woman, still recovering from her husband's suicide of a few years back. It's not just Oe's infidelity at such an important point in his marriage and family life - it's also his physical cruelty and even his thoughts about killed Himiko if she rejects him. All told, it's a sad and dark novel, and to the extent that it is truly "personal," as the title has it, it's a brave and puzzling act of confession, about as painful as any first-person narration I've encountered.