[1][2] Another novel by Gomikawa, the eighteen-volume Men and War (Senso to ningen), formed the basis for Satsuo Yamamoto's 1970–1973 film trilogy of the same name.

San’ichi Shobō was the most active member of the Mokuyōkai in the late 1950s but struggled financially until the commercial success of The Human Condition.

Both had been stationed in Manchukuo, served in the Kwantung Army, and both were taken prisoner at the end of the war (Gomikawa by the Soviets, whereas Kobayashi was held in an American POW camp in Okinawa).

In James Orr's book on postwar Japan, Gomikawa received hundreds of letters from women asking if his writings reflected experiences their husbands and sons had lived through.

[5] After the publication of the final volume of The Human Condition, Gomikawa published and serialized The Historical Experiment (歴史の実験) in the monthly magazine Chūōkōron about a soldier in a defense unit on the Soviet-Manchuria border who barely survived a scene of carnage.

[12] Following the publication of The Human Condition, Gomikawa continued writing about the events of the war, including a widely read book on the history of the Nomonhan Incident following the lifting of the ban on its reportage.