ABSTRACT
Widely credited with having introduced or discovered the style now associated with "postwar writing," Noma Hiroshi's work was grouped with the "flesh school" (nikutaiha of nikutai bungaku in the earliest years of his career, the late 1940s and early 1950s. When one considers his entire oeuvre, his differences from writers such as Tamura and Ango may be more striking than his similarities, for his writing exhibits a committed Marxism, and it never attracted the popular, general readership that Tamura or Ango could claim. In the early years, however, the years immediately following surrender, he was treated as one of the writers related to them because of his focus on the carnal individual who was facing oppressive structures and was also the source of individual liberation and identity.
