It was in “On Decadence” that Sakaguchi observed how former kamikaze pilots who had intended to die like scattered cherry blossoms were now working the black market, while wives who heroically saw their husbands off to battle and then knelt in prayer before their memorial tablets had already begun casting around for other men. “The look of the nation since defeat is one of pure and simple decadence,” he declared—and in this lay the beginning of truth, of the return to a genuine humanity:
