Hideo Kobayashi

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Hideo Kobayashi (小林秀雄, Kobayashi Hideo^?, April 11, 1902 – March 1, 1983) was a Japanese author, who established literary criticism as an independent art form in Japan.

Kobayashi studied French literature at Tokyo Imperial University and graduated in 1927. In the early 1930s he was associated with the novelists Yasunari Kawabata and Riichi Yokomitsu on the journal Bungaku-kai and became editor in 1935. At that time Kobayashi felt literature should be relevant to society, with literary critics practicing social responsibilities. His critiques covered a wide range from contemporary literature to the classics, philosophy, and the arts. He began to serialize his life of Fyodor Dostoevsky in the magazine. Around this time, he also published Watakushi Shosetsu Ron, an attack on the literary genre of the shishosetsu, the autobiographical novel. During the war he turned from modern literary criticism and social commentary to studies of Japanese classical art and later to music and philosophy. He made Kamakura his home from 1931 and was a central figure in local literary activity. He spent the war years immersed in the study of history and the arts. After the Pacific War, his literary criticism focused on the potential of the human spirit and he concentrated on historical works on the medieval period.