In the book "Mushanokōji Saneatsu, Author's Autobiography" there is this fascinating passage:
Regarding the book that was the cause of my being exiled after the war, I didn't write it after Japan had begun to fare poorly, but when things still seemed good. I thought that presenting my own thoughts in a book would be a way to cooperate with the national polity more befitting a literary man than going around to give addresses, being made to imitate reporters or being made into a war correspondent. I wrote it on nobody's request or recommendation, and I spoke to the publisher myself in order to get it published. Therefore I'm the one who bears sole responsibility for that book, but at the time there wasn't any problem with what I wrote, and among my books that's not one that didn't sell. I thought one shouldn't do work one is not suited to. After the war when everyone's views were different and only that book was left behind to get noticed, it was only natural that what hadn't stood out before should have begun to stand out.
But it's not as if I changed my views; while the war was going on I didn't stop my work at Atarashiki Mura [a commune he founded in 1918] for even a moment, and I continued giving speeches at monthly meetings. Never for a moment did I stop wishing for a world in which all people could live out their lives and realize their individuality. It's just that as a Japanese I didn't want to lose. Accordingly, the fact is that I didn't want to lower the Japanese fighting spirit.
Part confession, part defense, part reaffirmation of ideals, I think it really captures the deep confliction of Japan's wartime intellectuals.
