Donald Keene, the foremost scholar of Japanese literature, mines the wartime diaries kept by some of the most prominent writers and intellectuals of the day in a book brimming with insights. Readers discover a gold mine of personal observations that deepen our understanding of what life was like when the militarists were running the show.
The author's deft commentary provides a context that illuminates and enhances the importance of the diaries. He notes that after Japan's surrender in 1945, some writers had the difficult task of reinventing themselves and coming to terms with their wartime collaboration and enthusiastic cheerleading. For anyone interested in Japan's wartime patriotism and how leading intellectuals responded, this superb book is essential reading.
Knowing some of the diarists, Keene shares his mixed feelings about discovering someone quite different in the diary from the person he thought he knew. Interested in much of the same literature as the writer Futaro Yamada, and believing that people are what they read, Keene is at a loss to explain Yamada's patriotic fulminations, unwavering faith in victory and subsequent thirst for revenge.