The “Silent” Language of Criticism: The Representation of History in the Speculations of Hideo Kobayashi during Wartime

Abstract

Hideo Kobayashi was aware of “History” as a subject during World War II. During this period, he wrote his most important works such as “Rekishi ni Tsuite” (“On History,” 1939), “Mujo to I'u Koto” (“The Notion of Impermanence,” 1942), and “Sanetomo” (1943), which have been read by generation after generation. Meanwhile, these works have been appreciated along with the decline of criticism, which was moving toward “silence” with the progress of the war because they were read in a way based on a statement of Kobayashi: “I dealt with it without any word.”

This essay reads them under another subject of “mourning” developed in the meetings of “the dead,” which was stimulated by his two visits to China in 1938. This paper aims to prove the transformational process from “chinmoku” (“silence”) as absence of words into “Chinmoku” (“Silence”) as a different speech act, considering the mythical structure of Orphean as a point where mourning and literature unite.