Table of Contents

Introduction: Wartime Diaries 1. The Day the War Began 2. The Birth of "Greater East Asia" 3. False Victories and Real Defeats 4. A Dismal New Year 5. On the Eve 6. The Jade Voice 7. The Days After 8. The Revival of Literature 9. Rejection of the War 10. Under the Occupation Notes Bibliography Index

Promotional Information

These diaries give illuminating personal accounts by gifted writers of what conditions were like in wartime and immediate postwar Japan. The book's organization is clear and logical, and the prose is brisk and smooth. It makes an enormous contribution to the field of Japanese studies. -- Steve Rabson, Brown University

About the Author

Donald Keene is Shincho Professor of Japanese Literature and University Professor Emeritus at Columbia University. He is the author of more than thirty books, including Chronicles of My Life: An American in the Heart of Japan; Frog in the Well: Portraits of Japan by Watanabe Kazan, 1793-1841; and Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World, as well as a definitive multivolume history of Japanese literature.

Reviews

Keene shows the complicated and varied reactions to the war. -- Lorien Kaye The Age Keene has scoured the wartime diaries of numerous Japanese writers and judiciously woven excerpts into an elegant narrative that provides some acute insights into the mentality of the Japanese during the years of their greatest crisis. -- Anthony Head Times Literary Supplement [A] superb little book. -- Ian Buruma New York Review of Books