Due to his father's job transfers and career changes, they moved to Narayama Honshinmachi Kamicho 35, Akita City in 1908 when he was two years old, then to Ōimachi, Ebara District, Tokyo Prefecture (now Shinagawa Ward, Tokyo) when he was seven years old in 1912, and later that September to Takahashi Town, Kamibō District, Okayama Prefecture (now Takahashi City).

During the one-year period he spent preparing for exams, he read works by Shimazaki Tōson, Émile Zola, Anatole France, and others[1].

After landing in Shanghai, he arrived in Nanjing in January 1938, weeks after the fall of the city to the Imperial Japanese Army.

Embedded within an army unit later connected to the Nanking Massacre, Ishikawa wrote a fictional account (Ikite iru Heitai 生きている兵隊) of the atrocities suffered by Chinese civilians as well as the widespread pessimism of the Japanese soldiers.

Due to its controversial subject matter, nearly one-fourth of its contents was censored even before it was scheduled to be serialized in Chūō Kōron.