13 Facts About Fusao Hayashi

Goto Toshio, known by his pen name Hayashi Fusao, was a Japanese novelist and literary critic in Showa period Japan.

Fusao Hayashi is known for his early works in the proletarian literature movement, although he later became an ultranationalist.

Fusao Hayashi's father was an alcoholic, and bankrupted the family grocery business, which forced his mother to work in a cotton mill to provide income for the family.

Fusao Hayashi was only able to complete high school by working as a live-in tutor in the household of a wealthy banker.

Fusao Hayashi was arrested in early 1926 as part of a roundup of communists and suspected communist sympathizers in universities under the provisions of the Peace Preservation Law and was incarcerated for ten months.

However, Fusao Hayashi was arrested again for his fund-raising activities for the Japanese Communist Party, and was incarcerated in Toyotami Prison, outside of Tokyo in 1930.

Fusao Hayashi joined Kobayashi Hideo, Kawabata Yasunari, Hirotsu Kazuo and others to publish the mainstream literary journal Bungakukai in 1933.

Fusao Hayashi returned to Kamakura, where he lived for the remainder of his life, and officially renounced all connections to the proletarian literature movement in 1936.

In 1943, Fusao Hayashi toured Korea, Manchukuo and Japanese-occupied north China as a member of the Literary Home-Front Campaign, a speech-making troupe organized to promote patriotism and support for the war.

Fusao Hayashi then turned to apolitical popular novels with family themes, including Musuko no Seishun and Tsuma no Seishun.

In 1962, Fusao Hayashi published Dai Toa Senso Kotei Ron, in Chuokoron.

Fusao Hayashi's grave is at the temple of Hokoku-ji in Kamakura.

Fusao Hayashi wrote Dai Toa Senso Kotei Ron in commemoration of the hundredth anniversary of the Meiji Restoration.