Jumpei Gomikawa

Junpei Gomikawa (March 15, 1916 – March 8, 1995; Japanese: 五味川純平) was the pen name of Japanese novelist Kurita Shigeru. He is best known for his 1958 World War II novel The Human Condition (Ningen no joken), which became a best seller. Gomikawa's novel became the basis for Masaki Kobayashi's film trilogy The Human Condition as well as a radio drama. 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. Gomikawa was born and raised in Dalian in colonial Manchuria, referring to himself as a "second generation Manchurian-Japanese". He enrolled in the Tokyo College of Commerce (today Hitotsubashi University) in 1933 but dropped out and entered the Tokyo University of Foreign Languages in 1936. In 1940, Gomikawa was arrested under suspicion of violating the Peace Preservation Law but nevertheless graduated and returned to Manchuria to take a job at the Anshan Ironworks Company, where he noted that the economic conditions were attractive for Japanese living in Manchuria, compared to Koreans, Chinese, and recent graduates living in Japan. He was eventually drafted in 1942. Gomikawa was a soldier in the Kwantung Army, a unit of the Imperial Japanese Army, stationed on the border of the Soviet Union and Manchukuo. Holding a below-officer rank, he survived a Soviet tank attack in which 154 men of his 158-person unit died. According to Kobayashi, Gomihawa had worked as a labor supervisor in a mine where he witnessed executions. After surviving the Soviet offensive in August 1945, he returned to Japan in October 1947.