Kobayashi Hideo

Kobayashi Hideo (born April 11, 1902, Tokyo, Japan—died March 1, 1983, Tokyo) was one of the most influential critics in the Japanese cultural world.

Kobayashi studied French literature at Tokyo Imperial University (now the University of Tokyo) and graduated in 1927. In the early 1930s he was associated with the novelists Kawabata Yasunari and Yokomitsu Riichi on the journal Bungaku-kai (“The Literary Circle”); he became editor in 1935, after the arrest of its editor in the growing nationalist tide before World War II. At that time Kobayashi felt literature should be relevant to society, with literary critics practicing their social responsibilities. During the war he turned from modern literary criticism and social commentary to studies of Japanese classical art and later to music and philosophy. His major works include studies on Fyodor Dostoyevsky, W.A. Mozart, and Vincent van Gogh and on the Japanese literary genre of the shishōsetsu, the autobiographical novel. After the war, his literary criticism focused on the potential of the human spirit.