The Moment of Touching the Tuning Fork of the Soul: Kobayashi Hideo and the Art of Criticism, 1902-1983

The Moment of Touching the Tuning Fork of the Soul: Kobayashi Hideo and the Art of Criticism, 1902-1983

Kobayashi Hideo is a literary explorer who breathed new life into modern Japanese criticism. He went beyond analysis to put into words the very movement of thought, and asked the world what it means to think through reading. Standing at the crossroads of style and thought, his criticism was an extremely personal and at the same time universal activity, in which he put his own perceptions into the living thoughts of writers.

Kobayashi was consistently sincere in his approach to art. In painting, he looked to Van Gogh and Cézanne, and in music to Mozart, finding the soul in the form rather than the technique. In his discussion of Mozart, in particular, he talks about how art is the light of ethics that illuminates life, with a hint of death in its lightness.

In "Hon'yi Nobunaga," he pursues what thinking is and what it means to think in Japanese, and raises criticism to the level of philosophy. Kobayashi Hideo's words still resonate deeply and quietly in our inner tuning fork.