Hideo Kobayashi - Wartime Propagandist

Wartime Propagandist

In politics, Kobayashi praised the writings of militant nationalist Shūmei Ōkawa. In November 1937, he wrote a strongly worded essay Senso ni tsuite ("On War"), which appeared in a leading intellectual magazine, Kaizo. In the essay, he lashed out at fellow writers and intellectuals who continued to oppose the growing war in China, sharply reminding them that their duty as subjects of the emperor took precedence over all else. It made little difference what the war is about, all that mattered was that it existed and must be dealt with. Kobayashi treated the war as if it were an act of nature, such as a storm, impervious to analysis and beyond human control. Just as a storm must be weathered, a war must be won, regardless of right or wrong.

Kobayashi went to China for the first time in March 1938 as a special correspondent for the popular magazine Bungeishunjū, and as a guest of the Imperial Japanese Army. This was the first of six wartime trips to the continent, which took him through Japanese-occupied areas of eastern and northern China. In 1940, together with Kan Kikuchi and fifty-two other writers including Kawabata Yasunari and Riichi Yokomitsu, Kobayashi toured Japan, Korea, and Manchukou as members of the Literary Home-Front Campaign (Bungei Jugo Undo), a speech-making troupe organized by Kikuchi to promote support for the war.