Pretty horrible. Sixty six of Japan's largest cities had been heavily bombed, destroying 40 percent of these urban zones overall and rendering 30 percent of their populations homeless. My favorite historian, John Dower, gives us some more numbers. "Rural living standards were estimated to have fallen 65% and non-rural living standards by 35%."

War widows, orphans, and failed veterans of the Imperial army had it the worst. Veterans were ostracized and victimized, whether for their inability to win the war or a general public hatred for the militarists who had overwhelmed calmer voices in the diet and even cabinet. Dower notes that a majority of Japanese were malnourished at the time of surrender. Food shortages had existed in some areas since Pearl Harbor.

Some more quotes:

"It was a rare family anywhere that regularly are white rice as a staple ... Based on a research report by local army officials, the emperor's loyal subjects were encouraged to supplement their starch intake by introducing such items as acorns, grain husks, peanut shells, and sawdust. For minerals, people were encouraged to introduce used tea leaves ... And blossoms to their diet. Protein deficiencies could be remedied by eating silkworm cocoons, worms, grasshoppers, mice, rats ... Or a powder made by drying the blood of cows."

While the Japanese military provided the fewest amount of calories for its soldiers of any combatant in World War II, elementary school children found themselves smaller on average in 1946 than they had been in 1937. 1945 saw a harvest shortfall of nearly 40% from normal estimates in Japan, complicating the ravages of war.

Hunger was both a great distress and a rallying point for grass-roots political activism. Dower offers the example of one of the most popular radio programs in postwar Japan ( gairoku or "sidewalk interview") to glimpse into hunger in popular culture. The program debuted with a special entitled "How do you manage to eat."

Mobile is to blame for poor formatting. Hope this helped - been waiting for a while to answer a question about a familiar subject! Definitely check out Dower's book for more perspective:

John Dower. Embracing Defeat (W.W. Norton, 1999).