Hirotsu Kazuo

Hirotsu Kazuo (広津和郎) was a novelist and literary critic active in the Showa period Japan.

Early life
Hirotsu was born in Tokyo as the second son of the novelist Hirotsu Ryuro. He had problems completing middle school due to his complete incompetence in mathematics. At the time he was also working part-time delivering newspapers, and his inability to add often meant that his parents had to make up for the short-fall in his accounts.

Literary career
However, Hirotsu did show a talent for literature from an early age. While attending Waseda University he started submitting articles to various literary journals. In 1912, he joined Kasai Zenzo in establishing his own literary magazine, Kiseki ("Miracle"), to which he contributed short stories and translated works of foreign authors. In 1913, Hirotsu published a translation of Guy de Maupassant's Une Vie, which marked the beginning of a career of literary criticism and translation of various European writers.

Hirotsu relocated from Tokyo in Kamakura, Kanagawa prefecture from 1916. He moved further down the coast to Atami, Shizuoka, Shizuoka prefecture during the Pacific War, where he had close friends with fellow writer Shiga Naoya, who was also staying in Atami.

His literary career began with a short story published in 1917: Shinkeibyo Jidai ("The Neurotic Age"), in which he attacked the nihilism and moral decadence of contemporary intellectuals. A supporter of leftist politics, he was initially attracted to the Proletarian Literature Movement in the 1930s. During the 1930s he published Futari no Fukomono ("Two Unfortunate People") and Shiji o Daite ("Embracing a Dead Child"), both objective stories, and Yamori ("Gecko") and Nami no Ue ("On the Waves"), which belonged to the I novel genre.

After World War II he wrote a number of biographical and autobiographical works, Ano Jidai ("Those Times"), and Nengetsu no Ashiato ("The Footsteps of Time", 1961-1963), which won the 1963 Nomu Prize; however, he devoted 10 years from 1953-1963 writing an obsessively detailed defense of the alleged saboteurs in the controversial Matsukawa incident. This work was published under Izumi e no michi ("The Road to Spring", 1953-1954) and Matsukawa Saiban ("The Matsukawa Trial", 1954-1958).

He died in 1968 at the age of 76. His grave is at the Yanaka Cemetery, Tokyo.

His daughter Hirotsu Momoko was also a novelist.