I've watched a fair amount of Japanese media. Those that touch on WW2 typically neglect to mention that Japan started multiple unprovoked wars of aggression. For example, Grave of the Fireflies has no mention of why the protagonists are in the situation they are in. They're in that situation because the Empire of Japan launched wars of aggression against China, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Australia, and New Zealand. Those nations retaliated and despite it being clear Japan couldn't win they refused to surrender under bombed to the point of submission.
In addition, I've heard that Japanese textbooks neglect to address that Japan was the aggressor and ignore the war crimes they committed. Why is this? Germany is upfront about its aggression and war crimes but why isn't Japan?
John Dower's Embracing Defeat seeks to answer precisely this question in the immediate postwar context (i.e. the period of the American occupation). His answer is multifaceted, but it basically amounts to three things.
One, the average Japanese was utterly sick of the war by its end. By 1945, more or less everyone had experienced the loss of a loved one or friend; between KIAs (roughly 2 million) and civilian deaths in the homeland and colonies (another 1 million), 4% of the Japanese population was a casualty of the war. (Though know that these numbers are still debated among historians.) The civilian death totals should give some indication of the destruction wrought by the Allied (though really, the US) bombing campaigns. Everyone knows of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima/Nagasaki – and they did doubtless have a huge impact on the national psyche – but it's worth remembering that the firebombing of Tokyo (Operation Meetinghouse) was perhaps even more destructive, with 100,000 people (mostly women, children, the elderly, and the infirm) killed in a single night. Moreover, Japan had been at war for a much longer time than many realize. Japan's war didn't start with Pearl Harbor, after all; they had been at "total war" with China since 1937. And although the phrase "total war" is obviously more rhetorical than pragmatic, it still reflects the fact that Japan spent 8 years under the conditions of wartime austerity and privation – a reflection of both Japan's totalitarian ideology (e.g. citizens were meant to subsume their personal desires to the "national body" (kokutai) of the Emperor) and its very real material shortages. Food insecurity and indeed starvation were rampant in the last years of the war; crucial medicines were in short supply.
All of which is to say, your average Japanese citizen suffered during the war, and was exhausted by it.
(Sorry, gotta do child care – to be continued!)