YASUDA YOJURO

(1910–1981)

   Yasuda Yojuro, pen name of Yuhara Toshimi, was a literary critic who graduated in art history from Tokyo University. After gaining exposure to European thought via Karl Marx, Friedrich Holderlin, and Friedrich Schlegel, he made his critical debut with Nihon no hashi (Bridge to Japan, 1936), which was an immediate success, garnering the Iketani Shinzaburo Prize and establishing him as a literary critic. Thereafter, he became a central figure in the Japan Romantic school. During World War II, he justified Japan’s aggression in the Pacific and was pro-expansion, for which he was ostracized by other critics when the war ended. His reputation recovered, however, when later he published a pacifist manifesto under a pseudonym.

   See also PATRIOTIC ASSOCIATION FOR JAPANESE LITERATURE; WAR LITERATURE.