was a Japanese author, who established literary criticism as an independent art form in Japan. Early life Kobayashi was born in the Kanda district of Tokyo, where his father was a noted engineer who introduced European diamond polishing technology to Japan, and who invented a ruby-based phonograph needle. Kobayashi studied French literature at Tokyo Imperial University, where his classmates included Hidemi Kon and Tatsuji Miyoshi. He met Chūya Nakahara in April 1925, with whom he quickly became close friends, but in November of the same year, began living together with Nakahara's former mistress, the actress Yasuko Hasegawa. Kobayashi graduated in March 1928, and soon after moved to Osaka for a few months before moving to Nara, where he stayed at the home of Naoya Shiga from May 1928. His relationship with Yasuko Hasegawa ended around this time. In September 1929, he submitted an article to a contest hed by the literary journal Kaizō, and won second place. Literary critic In the early 1930s Kobayashi was associated with the novelists Yasunari Kawabata and Riichi Yokomitsu and collaborated on articles for the literary journal Bungakukai and became editor in January 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. From April 1932, he was also working as a lecturer at Meiji University and was promoted to professor in June 1938. 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. 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, Kaizō. In the essay, he lashed