1899 – 1958

Born in Kumamoto Prefecture, Naoki Tokunaga moved to Tokyo in 1922. After joining Hakubunkan-insatsusho (the Hakubunkan Press/later Kyōdō Press), he participated in the Kyodo Printing labor dispute and was subsequently dismissed. Drawing from this experience, he published Taiyō no nai Machi (“The Street without Sunlight”) in 1929, establishing himself as a leading writer of the Japanese Proletarian Writers’ League. In 1933, he criticized the league in Sosaku Hoho Jo no Shin Tenkan (A New Change in the Way You Create Stories) and withdrew, later turning to conversion literature with Fuyugare (Withered in Winter). His works, including Hataraku Ikka (The Working Family), Hachinensei (Eight-year System) , and Hikari o kakaguru Hitobito (Who bring the light),vividly depicted the lives of ordinary people. After World War II, he co-founded the New Japanese Literary Association and, as a writer affiliated with the Japanese Communist Party, published works such as Tsuma yo Nemure (It’s Time to Sleep, My Dear Wife) and Shizuka naru yamayama (Quiet mountains).