Get Access A Diary Of Darkness: The Wartime Diary Of Kiyosawa Kiyoshi Crafted By Kiyoshi Kiyosawa Accessible Through Document

by Marius B, Jansen
Translator's Note
Introduction: The Liberal Cornered, by Eugene Soviak

A Diary of Darkness: The Wartime Diary of Kiyosawa Kiyoshi

Notes
Biographical Guide
Index The editors could have done a lot more to contextualize these entries.
I understand that there's probably a lot we won't know based on someone's personal diary, but it did feel like there was not enough done on the editor's part to clarify what Kiyosawa was referring to, and the full social/political climate.
This diary provides unique and important documentation on the Pacific War as well as the war in Europe, to a certain degree from a Japanese intellectual enduring it all at the moment thus is differs from any account written in retrospect.
While it is sometimes a slog and sometimes inscrutable, it offers a perspective rarely available,

Recommended only for those with proficient knowledge in Japan's role in WWII and the events leading up to it, A Diary of Darkness is one of the most important and compelling documents of wartime Japan, Betweenand, the liberal journalist Kiyosawa Kiyoshikept at great personal risk a diary of his often subversive social and political observations and his personal struggles, The diary caused a sensation when it was published in Japan inand is today regarded as a classic, This is the first time it has appeared in English,



Kiyosawa was an Americaneducated commentator on politics and foreign affairs who became increasingly isolated in Japan as militant nationalists rose to power, He began the diary as notes for a history of the war, but it soon became an "inadvertent autobiography" and a refuge for the bitter criticism of Japanese authoritarianism that he had to repress publicly.
It chronicles growing bureaucratic control over everything from the press to people's clothing, Kiyosawa pours scorn on such leaders as Premiers Tojo and Koiso, He laments the rise of hysterical propaganda and relates his own and his friends' struggles to avoid arrest, He writes in gripping detail about increasing poverty, crime, and disorder, He records the sentiments of the local barber as faithfully as those of senior politicians, And all the while he traces the gradual disintegration of Japan's war effort and the looming certainty of defeat,


A Diary of Darkness is a perceptive and courageous account of wartime Japan and a revealing record of the devastation wrought by total war.
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