So Lovely a Country Will Never Perish: Wartime Diaries of Japanese Writers - Donald Keene

The attack on Pearl Harbor, which precipitated the Greater East Asia War and its initial triumphs, aroused pride and a host of other emotions among the Japanese people. Yet the single year in which Japanese forces occupied territory from Alaska to Indonesia was followed by three years of terrible defeat. Nevertheless, until the shattering end of the war, many Japanese continued to believe in the invincibility of their country. But in the diaries of well-known writers—including Nagai Kafu, Takami Jun, Yamada Futaru, and Hirabayashi Taiko—and the scholar Watanabe Kazuo, varying doubts were vividly, though privately, expressed.