Imagine a place where you get beat up every day for minor and no reason, where on a good day you are fed, where you live in a sweaty humid area full of diseases that you are only vaguely aware of, where you haven't had anti-malarial drugs for weeks if not months, where any disagreement is immediately punished, If this sounds like a Japanese POW camp to you, it's also what a Japanese soldier on the front lines would typically face as well. Just add lack of any real heavy equipment, a struggle against an enemy with far more resources than you, bombers and ships and guns constantly bombarding your position, and, if you happened to be one of the Korean and/or Taiwanese soldiers in the Japanese army, your entire command structure being biased and discriminatory against you as well.

Being a Japanese soldier was terrible. Absolutely terrible. Physical violence was seen as a useful tool for maintaining discipline in the army. A Japanese destroyer captain remembered his first day as an officer cadet was him showing up and proceeding to get the shit kicked out of him by an older cadet because he failed to salute him promptly.

Food supplies were also questionable. Here's a bulletin on Japanese food rations during the war.. If one was in an established garrison that was being adequately supplied, they would be fed relatively decently (though still less on the caloric side than say a US soldier). However, most garrisons simply weren't adequately supplied. It got to the point that the Japanese used destroyers in what were known as "Tokyo Express" or "Rat Transport" night supply runs to attempt to supply outlaying garrisons, most famously at Guadalcanal. These runs essentially involved shoving supply barrels into the sea and hoping that the current would carry them near enough to the short for them to be retrieved by the Japanese troops. In actual effectiveness, something like 10% of the barrels were actually retrieved by the Japanese, and a fair amount ended up in the hands of the Allied troops.

It also puts into perspective the condition of Allied POWs in Japanese hands. Simply put, Japanese troops were not being fed that much better than the POWs they were guarding, and often times would mistreat the prisoners accordingly.

If you happened to be a Japanese soldier in China it was pretty terrible as well. The fighting was extremely brutal, akin to the Eastern Front in Europe, except with less tanks and more men. The logistics in China were far worse as well, which significantly hindered any Japanese attack deep into China. This also hindered lines of communication and Japanese government oversight of Japanese troops, which led to mass atrocities committed against Chinese troops and civilians, most infamously the Rape of Nanking.

The way that the Japanese Army worked in China was to say it didn't. Specifically, thanks to certain political policies and decisions, the Japanese military had free reign to do what it wanted in China from a field officer level (think Lieutenants, Captains, Majors...) Essentially these officers, who were often highly radicalized militarists and Japanese supremacists, had control of the on-the-ground situation. This led to things where the Japanese troops were desensitized to the wanton taking of human life and an environment of "doing anything one wanted." For instance, Japanese recruits were often given "bayonet practice" on live civilians, and even hesitant troops would be peer pressured into participating in rapes. Several former soldiers described it as an infectious madness that seemed to be contagious after a year or more of service in an extremely tough theater.

As a Japanese soldier, even prior to enlistment you were subjected to a propaganda bombardment that definitely shaped your view of battle and especially of the enemy. You were told that the enemy would mutilate, torture, and kill you if you surrendered, so that it was better to die for the Emperor. (This did, unfortunately, have some elements of reality, as Allied troops did semi-frequently take "war trophies" like skulls and fingers from dead Japanese soldiers). There was also a good amount of Japanese supremacy built into the education system. Even young children were indoctrinated into the idea that other Asian races were lower than the Japanese, and before the war there were incidents where Chinese exchange students would be assaulted for being "inferior yet arrogant." This resulted in a highly warped worldview, one that was further enhanced by the report of nearly every Japanese engagement being a victory of some kind (yes, even Midway), cultivating an aura of invulnerability that simply did not even closely reflect reality.

There doesn't seem to be that much info about it out there.

… in English. I suppose someone in Japan might be thinking the same thing about information on what life was like for American soldiers.

/u/ParkSungJun provided an excellent answer as always. The violence and harshness is an important point. I'd like to offer a different sort of answer.

There's a book you might want to take a look at is Kamikaze Diaries: Reflections of Japanese Student Soldiers by Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, and while I haven't yet finished it in its entirety, I've read enough that I can recommend it if you want to read about what it was like to be a soldier in their own words. The book is a collection of excerpts from the diaries of young soldiers.

Quoting a few passages to give you an idea of the content:

Last night I went out to a field of Chinese milk vetch (rengesō) and lay down, thinking about home. My friends told me that I smell of you, Mother. They think that they felt the mother-son bond in me. I have been fortunate. People have been so good to me.

Cherry blossoms of the Yoshino variety have fallen, but double-petaled cherry blossoms are blooming. Yellow rose (Kerria japonica) blooming on the fence is wet from rain. Every morning, as I wash my face in a brook, I think of our house in the country with blooming Hibiscus mutabilis and the little brook where daffodils bloom.

Tomorrow, I shall plunge onto a group of enemy aircraft carriers. If you perform a memorial service, the date should be April 10.

Thinking “today is it,” eleven days have passed. The commander-in-chief of our combined squadron came to tell us to do our best. Mother, I have written all I wanted to say. Today, I went with my friends to a nearby school and sang hymns accompanied by an organ.

That's from a letter by a soldier named Hayashi Ichizō to his mother.

It's an incredibly humanising look at a group of people that aren't usually given much consideration in the West (outside Letters from Iwo Jima perhaps). The author gives a good amount of context and background on the soldiers whose accounts you're reading. Some of them are really quite heartbreaking.

I highly recommend it.

To add on to what everyone else is saying, methamphetamine use was rampant among Japanese soldiers and air men. While all the armies in the Second World War provided amphetamines to their units to keep them at peak performance for longer, Japan lead the pack in how much it distributed, in part to suppress the effect hunger had on their workers and soldiers. In fact, it was the only army to actually have a meth ration, rather than distributing it to its troops on an ad-hoc basis when needed. This rampant overuse lasted until the 1950's to keep factory workers going and meth remains a large problem in Japan to this day. While it's unclear how large of an impact it had on the Japanese army's actions, it can be reasonably supposed that it contributed to the brutal treatment of Chinese civilians .

Now that other's have gotten you a bit about how their life was during the end stages of the war.

Here's how a normal day would go on a Japanese warship.

At 5:00 am sharp the wake up call will sound, pack up hammocks and change into working clothes. After that, you start cleaning duties, sailors jobs would be the scrub the deck, other specialty sailors would start cleaning their machinery too. 6:15 am you start eating your breakfast, breakfast would be served on squad basis, each squad would get their own table and eat together. The rice is first washed with sea water and then cooked with water, so it would have some salt in them. Once you are done with your breakfast you and your squad needs to pack up the table and tie it on the ceiling.

The cooking is handled by specially trained sailors, and they would need to wake up earlier than the rest of the ship. The food is cooked in incredibly large batches. And cleaning up is handled by a cleaning duty person assigned by each squad themselves. (Usually, the new guy)

During the clean up there usually would be some free time, and you'd have people gathering up in the designated smoking bowls on the deck. These smoking bowls are usually large bowls that has a slow burning rope on top of them to light the cigarette, and to gather the ashes. These designated smoking bowls would only be out when it is the designated smoking time.

At 7:00 am, cleaning duties start again. Now everyone needs to polish up the brass parts around the ship, scrubbing off rust, weapon maintenance, sweeping the deck.

At 8:00 am, flag ceremony start, the warship flag now needs to get raised and the whole ship stands at attention towards the flag and listen to the national anthem, Kimi ga Yo.

Once the ceremony ends, cleaning duty starts again. Now maintenance is on to the larger guns, the main battery and the AA guns now need to be maintained and cleaned. Once that is done, training starts on gunnery. Other duties on other ships now starts their shifts and either maintaining the ship or training.

At 11:30 am morning duty ends, and lunch time starts, after lunch ends you'd get a bit of resting time.

At 1:15 afternoon duty starts, more cleaning, scrubbing and maintenance. At 3:45 afternoon duty ends, those that are not on active shift will start doing martial arts training. Examples including sumo, kendo, jyukendou (Bayonet), Jyudo. If the ship is in harbor, those that get shore leave can don their uniform and go on their shore leave.

At sun set, the flag lowering ceremony will start, and the national anthem will be played again, and everyone must stand at attention again.

In the night, spotting light training and light communications training will start. Ship PX will also open, and they will sell simple supplies.

At 8:00 pm, another deck sweep.

At 8:30 pm, lights off and roll call.

Of course, this is just a typical day. Slightly different routines and schedule will change base on season and location. For example, big holidays or laundry day. Or even total detail cleaning of the whole ship on certain days.

That's it for sailors.

As for your gear, as a sailor you'd have overalls on the ship and during combat or near area with smoke like the boiler room you'd need to carry a gas mask bag and a filter slinged on your back. You also wear rubber soled shoes on the ship if you are working duty.

The ship has a bell to announce different time through out the day so you'd know what time it is without relying on a clock. The ship also would have voice tubes so different decks are able to communicate with each other.

Sailors are classified into different categories based on what specialty training they received.

And it goes without saying, during a combat mission this would all be different.

To "build" on (and partially clarify) what others have said here, I've understood that much of a soldier's ration was based on how much they could loot. When the US joined the war, expansion naturally slowed down, leading to food supplies shrinking even further, even so much that more soldiers would often die of hunger than combat.

Note: I'm new to posting on this sub, and am deliberately phrasing my comment to also mean "how right am I with my assumptions?".