[1] 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.

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.

[1][3] In the immediate postwar period, Noma became a member of the Japanese Communist Party (JCP), which had achieved legal status under the U.S.-led occupation of Japan, and sought to produce literature that would support the cause of socialist revolution.

[5] Noma followed up Dark Pictures with other well-received works, including the short stories A Red Moon in Her Face (Kao no naka no akai tsuki, 1947) and Feeling of Disintegration (Hōkai kankaku, 1948), and the novel Zone of Emptiness (Shinkū chitai, 1952).

[7] 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.