[1] Nosaka is part of the "Generation of the Ashes" (Yakeato Sedai), which includes other writers like Kenzaburō Ōe and Makoto Oda.

[1] In March 1941 his foster parents adopted a baby girl named Kikuko, who died of illness before the end of the year.

[4] Aiko was afflicted with severe burns across her body and had to be taken by rickshaw to a nearby hospital, leaving Keiko and Nosaka in the care of a widow in Manchidanicho, a resort area in Nishinomiya.

[6] When they moved in they brought a large pack of provisions buried at their destroyed home that their adoptive father had stored for emergencies.

However, it ran out quickly, and they began having to survive on rice and stolen vegetables and other foodstuffs Nosaka could forage, like snails.

When I found myself in the hell of starvation, I ate her share of food..."[7]Traumatized by the attack he had already survived, Nosaka would immediately flee with Keiko to a nearby bomb shelter whenever he heard air raid sirens.

In July 1945 she was mobilized to work at a nearby factory; her absence encouraged Nosaka to take Keiko to live permanently at the bomb shelter, combined with the negative attention from the neighbors and an incident between their host and their grandmother.

[8] He moved to Tokyo a few months later where Aiko had extended family, but was caught stealing from two elderly women he was living with.

Many of his cellmates grew ill and died, and realizing that his own health was declining Nosaka informed the authorities of his biological father.

[9] Writing in 1992, Nosaka stated that after being rescued from the cells by his biological father in 1947 he proceeded to 'forget' all about his traumas following the bombing.

Nosaka has conversely been noted, in his other works, for his preference for sexually explicit material and distinctive writing style, which has been likened to the comic-prose of the seventeenth-century Japanese writer Ihara Saikaku.

[12] In "A Playboy's Nursery Songs", Nosaka wrote: "Mao is now about the same age my unfortunate sisters were when they died, and their images overlap.

The story is a semi-autobiographical retelling of his experiences with the firebombs and Keiko, told through the lens of older brother Seita and younger sister Setsuko.

In July 1972, as a magazine editor, he published Kafū Nagai's Taishō era (1912–26) erotic short story "Yojōhan fusuma no shitabari".

The 1988 anime film Grave of the Fireflies, directed by Isao Takahata, was based on Nosaka's short story of the same name.