Literary Critic
In the early 1930s he was associated with the novelists Yasunari Kawabata and Riichi Yokomitsu and collaborated on articles for the literary journal Bungaku-kai and became editor in 1935. At that time Kobayashi felt literature should be relevant to society, with writers and critics practicing social responsibilities. His editorials 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 popular Japanese literary genre of the shishosetsu, the autobiographical novel or I Novel.
By the mid-1930s, Kobayashi was well established as a literary critic. His aversion to abstract ideas, and conceptualizing in general, was widely known, as was his preference for spontaneity and intuition. In literature, he reserved his highest praise for the works of Kan Kikuchi and Naoya Shiga, whereas he expressed a low opinion of Ryūnosuke Akutagawa for being too cerebral.
He made Kamakura, Kanagawa prefecture his home from 1931 and was a central figure in local literary activity.
Read more about this topic: Hideo Kobayashi
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