Seventy-five years ago today ¡ª Aug. 16, 1945, was a Thursday ¡ª Japan was as near dead as a living nation has ever been.
The war was over. Now what?
Chaos, ruin, numbness, despair. The facts are familiar. Descriptions abound. Here¡¯s one, chosen more or less at random. It¡¯s from a short story titled ¡°The Idiot¡± (1946) by Ango Sakaguchi (1906-55). It describes the last days of the war:
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