Born in Fukuoka, Kyushu, Umezaki studied at the 5th High School of Kumamoto University, later at the Tokyo Imperial University where he majored in Japanese literature.[1] He then worked at the same Tokyo University in the Faculty of Education Sciences (kyōiku). In 1944, he was drafted as a crypto specialist for the Imperial Japanese Navy and stationed in Kagoshima Prefecture, Kyushu, an experience which he later dramatised in his famous novella Sakurajima, published in 1946.[2] He came back on this experience in his latest book, Genka (Illusions) published in 1965, the year of his death.
After the war, he worked for the Sunao (素直) magazine, led by poet and social activist Shin'ichi Eguchi (1914–1979),[3] in which Sakurajima and some of his short stories were published. Sakurajima established Umezaki as a representative of Japanese postwar literature along writers like Hiroshi Noma and Rinzō Shiina.[1][4] The war theme later gave way to satirical stories like Boroya no shunjū,[5][6] and still later to the examination of human anxiety in modern society.[6]
Erik R. Lofgren: Democratizing Illnesses: Umezaki Haruo, Censorship, and Subversion. In: Comparative Literature. 52, no 2, 2000, p. 157–178
Scott J. Miller: Historical Dictionary of Modern Japanese Literature and Theater. In: Historical Dictionaries of Literature and the arts. Bd. 33, Scarecrow Press, Maryland 2009
Kyle Grossman, Pomona College: Authors and Soldiers: Reconstructing History in Postwar Japan, 2012. At Claremont.edu.
