Hayashi Husao (1903–1975), one of the Japanese writers who converted from Marxism in the 1930s, read the complete works of Byron in 1935 while imprisoned for committing an ideological offense. Hayashi was deeply interested in understanding Byron as he wanted to write the historical novel Sōnen (I.1937, II.1940) based on him. Hayashi first clarified his understanding of Byron in Seinen (1934), the prelude to Sōnen. In Seinen, Hayashi regarded Byron as a liberalist who had a virtuous spirit contradicting his vicious appearance. According to Hayashi, Itō Hirobumi, a young loyalist of the Restoration period and the protagonist of Seinen, had a liberal ideal in common with Byron. When Hayashi decided to make Byron the core of Sōnen, he developed this idea to describe Itō, who grew into a middle-aged, liberal statesman of Meiji Period in Sōnen, as the “Japanese Byron”, by imposing a Byronic evil image on him.

　However, Hayashi's trial was unsuccessful. While it is true that at first Hayashi successfully adapted the image of Manfred, one of the Byronic heroes, to that of Itō in Sōnen, he gave up completing Sōnen. This is because while converting from Marxism into Romanticism, Hayashi lost interest in the Byronic dual image of purity and impurity. Hayashi's reception of Byron shows us how he would bear the tension, conflict, or paradox between the ideal and the real of the Japanese modernization.