Tokyo dialect
Kinoshita was born in Tokyo as the son of government official Kinoshita Yahachiro and his wife, Sassa Mie. Kinoshita attended school in Tokyo until 1925 when his parents moved back to his father's hometown of Kumamoto to retire. Kinoshita was in fourth grade at the time. Although Kinoshita was teased very much by other students because of his Tokyo dialect at his new school, this experience in his childhood made him think deeply about the Japanese language and become more aware of the complexities of spoken language. He attended Kumamoto Prefectural Middle School and later went on to Kumamoto Fifth High School, where he received a degree equivalent to that of a western university.