Before and just after the Second World War, he wrote critiques of the works of Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Isota Kamura, and other modern Japanese writers.

In 1947, Fukuda's article Ippiki to kyūjūhiki to (一匹と九十九匹), published in the Shisaku magazine, stirred up controversy about the dividing line between literature and politics, and later came to be seen as one of his representative works.

From 1950 onward, Fukuda's interest shifted away from general literary criticism and critiques of individual writers.

What made Fukuda famous, however, was his status as a lone conservative voice amidst a flourishing of progressive thought in post-Second World War Japan.

His representative works as a literary translator include Shakespeare's Macbeth, Hamlet, Richard III and A Midsummer Night's Dream, Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, and Oscar Wilde's Salome and The Picture of Dorian Gray.

In the 1950s, Fukuda also wrote and produced plays, including Kitty Typhoon and also The Man Who Stroked a Dragon.

[5] He died at the age of 82 from complications related to pneumonia at Tōkai University Ōiso Hospital on 20 November 1994.