| Hayashi Fusao | |
|---|---|
Hayashi Fusao |
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| Born | 30 May 1903 Ōita Prefecture, Japan |
| Died | 9 October 1975 (aged 72) Kamakura, Japan |
| Occupation | Writer and literary critic |
| Genres | novels |
| Notable work(s) | Dai Toa Senso Kotei Ron |
Hayashi Fusao (林 房雄, 30 May 1903 - 9 October 1975) was the Pen name of a Japanese novelist and literary critic in Shōwa period Japan. He is known for his early works in the proletarian literature movement, although he later became a strong ultranationalist. His real name was Gotō Toshio (後藤寿夫) , although he also used the alias "Shirai Akira".
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Hayashi Fusao was born in Ōita prefecture in 1903.
Hayashi was interested in leftist politics as a youth, and led Marxist seminars while a student at Tokyo Imperial University. His literary career began in 1926, when he published a short story, Ringo ("Apple") in Bungei Sensen ("Literary Battlefront"). This also marked his beginnings as a leading member of the Proletarian Literature Movement.
He was imprisoned in 1932 for his activities with the Japanese Communist Party, and on his release, he wrote Seinen ("Youth"). This was quickly followed by Bungaku no Tame ni ("For Literature"), Sakka to shite ("As an Artist"), whose themes deny the subordination of literature to politics. Hayashi joined Kobayashi Hideo to publish the mainstream literary journal Bungakukai ("Literary World") in 1933. This more neutral stance was still not enough for the authorities, and Hayashi was imprisoned twice more in the 1930s by the Thought Police, and as a condition for release, was forced to publicly renounce his leftist political beliefs.
Hayashi moved to Kamakura, Kanagawa prefecture in 1932, and (aside from a brief stay in Izu), lived there all of his life.
Hayashi then wrote Roman Shugisha no Techo ("Notes of a Romanticist") in 1935, declaring his estrangement from Marxism. In 1936, he renounced his connections with proletarian movement.
In 1943, he toured Korea, Manchukuo and Japanese-occupied north China as a member of the Literary Home-Front Campaign (Bungei Jugo Undo), a speech-making troupe organized to promote patriotism and support for the war.
After World War II, he turned to apolitical popular novels with family themes, including Musuko no Seishun (My "Son's Youth") and Tsuma no Seishun ("My Wife's Youth"). However, in Dai Toa Senso Kotei Ron, ("The Great East Asia War was a Just War", 1963), Hayashi astounded his former Marxist colleagues with an apologia for Japanese militarism and the Pan-Asianism in World War II, and a stinging criticism of leftist pacifism. Controversy over the work continues, over 40 years since its publication.
Hayashi's grave is at the temple of Hokoku-ji in Kamakura.
Mishima Yukio regarded Hayashi Fusao as his tutor, although he was later highly critical of Hayashi in a critique published in 1971.
Hayashi wrote this book in commemoration of the hundredth anniversary of the Meiji Restoration. It was immediately highly controversial on its release, and it has served as a model for later revisionist historians. Hayashi's premise can be summarized as follows:
To Hayashi the real enemy of the Asian nations is the United States, just as the United States has been a Japan's foe for the last one hundred years. Although Hayashi remains apologetic about the suffering caused by the Japanese invasion of Asia, he promotes the viewpoint that the war liberated not only Japan, but also the rest of Asia from Western domination.