Abstract

The modern Japanese literary critic Kobayashi Hideo was driven by a nostalgia for the confidence and certainty of writers associated with the Shirakaba School. Historical contingencies, however, had rendered this Taisho certainty inaccessible. In his early fiction, Kobayashi recorded this dilemma and hinted at the intuitive method with which he was to resolve it. The suicide of Akutagawa Ryunosuke, a true intellectual skeptic, further convinced Kobayashi that intuition rather than reason held the potential for the certainty he sought. ;In 1929 Kobayashi published "The Various Designs" . Here, and in an ensuing exchange with Marxist critic Tosaka Jun , Kobayashi refined and broadened his alternative epistemology by attacking the concepts of objectivity and universality, two cornerstones of the modern scientific worldview. As Tosaka pointed out, Kobayashi's intuitive appreciation of phenomena represented the substitution of a "literary aestheticism" in the place of scientific praxis. ;As issues of history and national identity took on increased importance during Japan's militarization and imperialism in the late 1930s, Kobayashi continued to speak out for the inviolability of subjective experience and the glory of the uniquely personal. This led him to advocate a conception of history and tradition that stands in stark opposition to the ideologically charged discourse of national identity at the time. This liberating voice, however, was absent from the essays Kobayashi wrote on his experiences in China and his works dealing with the war effort. Here Kobayashi was unable to see the human suffering in China, and he stridently advocated a surrender of individual choice to the interests of the war. The contrast of the ideological implications of these stances is striking, and yet both remain firmly planted in the subjectivity which Kobayashi had created. ;In addition to examining the early writings of one of modern Japan's most influential thinkers, this study outlines a unique intersection of a nationalist ideology with a worldview which was thoroughly aesthetic in intent. The conclusion suggests that the construction of a subjectivity conducive to intuitive aesthetic appreciation may simultaneously engender a potential for complicity in acts of violence