Although there exists a fair amount of literature, both memoirs and literary accounts, of the Sino-Japanese War in Japan, a good deal of it is untranslated. Junpei Gomikawa, for example, wrote a large six-volume novel series, The Human Condition, extrapolated from his own experiences, much like Remarque did. But despite its importance in Japan, the series is to the best of my knowledge untranslated. Fortunately, Masaki Kobayashi made an epic film cycle out of the novels, and Criterion has done an excellent job of packaging them. Although it is not about the China War, Michio Takeyama's Burmese Harp (also adapted into a film released under the Criterion label ), explores the interaction between Japanese troops and civilians. In a similar vein, Fires on the Plain by Shohei Ooka recounts the torturous hell of being a soldier in the Philippines during the Allied invasion. Kon Ichikawa's adaptation is another harrowing postwar film exploring the darker side of losing a war. Soldiers Alive by Ishikawa Tatsuzo is a novel recently translated by the University of Hawaii Press and is a fictionalized account of his embedding with an IJA unit during the war.

There are also some good oral histories that touch on the Sino-Japanese War. Japan at War: An Oral History by Haruko and Theodore Cook has some accounts of the China. Senso: The Japanese Remember the Pacific War: Letters to the Editor of "Asahi Shimbun" has some interesting bits about postwar memory and recollections of events of Japan's war. Although it mostly focuses on events in the Home Islands, Leaves from an Autumn of Emergencies: Selections from the Wartime Diaries of Ordinary Japanese edited by Samuel Yamashita is a good window into the daily thoughts of Japanese during the war.