Born in Hakodate, Noda was the son of the head of the local tax bureau and younger brother to Kyūho, a Nihonga painter.

[2][3] After graduating, he worked for the city of Tokyo while also serving as a reporter for Katsudō kurabu, one of the major film magazines, using the pen name Harunosuke Midorikawa.

[2] On the recommendation of a scriptwriter friend from junior high, Takashi Oda, he joined the script department at Shōchiku after the Great Kantō earthquake.

[2][3] He soon became one of the studio's central screenwriters, penning for instance Aizen katsura (1938), one of its biggest pre-war hits.

[2] He is most known for his collaborations with Ozu, which began with Noda supplying the script for the director's first feature Sword of Penitence (1927), and led to such postwar works as Tokyo Story (1953), regarded by many critics as one of the greatest films of all time.