Hiroshi Noma

was a Japanese poet, novelist and essayist. According to literary scholar Doug Slaymaker, Noma is widely credited with having discovered or invented the style of writing called by the term "postwar literature" (sengo bungaku) in Japan.

Early life and wartime service Hiroshi Noma was born in Kōbe on February 23, 1915. While attending university, he became active in Marxist student and labour movements, and later turned his attention also to the situation of the Burakumin. He was drafted into the Pacific War, stationed in the Philippines and northern China, and later spent time on charges of subversive thought in a military prison in Ōsaka. while Zone of Emptiness was Noma's attempt to "provide the reader with a true picture of what my country was like when it was under the yoke of this dominating force [of militarism]" (Noma). Thanks to the prominence of these works, Noma has been canonized as one of the "first generation" of postwar writers in Japan, alongside the likes of Rinzō Shiina, Yutaka Haniya, Haruo Umezaki, and Taijun Takeda. Among other later works, Shinran (1973) expounded Noma's thoughts on religion, and Sayama saiban (1976) considered discrimination against Burakumin as exemplified in the Sayama incident of 1963.

Selected works 1946: Dark Pictures (Kurai e) 1947: A Red Moon in Her Face (Kao no naka no akai tsuki) 1948: Feeling of Disintegration (Hōkai kankaku) 1952: Zone of Emptiness (Shinkū chitai) 1961: Waga tō wa soko ni tatsu 1971: Seinen no wa 1973: Shinran 1976: Sayama saiban

Translations (selected)

Adaptations Zone of Emptiness was adapted into a film in 1952, directed by Satsuo Yamamoto.