Shinku Chitai is an antiwar novel by Hiroshi Noma. Set in a Japanese army barracks during the Pacific War, it follows Private First Class Kitani after he returns from two years in military prison and confronts the false accusation and institutional violence that sent him there. Through the closed space of barracks life, the novel exposes the machinery of militarism that turns people into soldiers.

Bound by regulations and fences, Kitani steps into the vacuum of the army that has taken his life from him.

"Japanese Sculpture" is an art publication that introduced Japanese sculpture from antiquity through the Kamakura period with large-format photographs and commentary. Centered on Buddhist sculpture, it brought the appeal of form to a broad readership through postwar printing technology and art-historical perspective.

This large-format series conveyed the forms of Japanese sculpture through photographs and commentary, showing the possibilities of postwar art publishing.

Genbaku no Ko: Hiroshima no Shonen Shojo no Utta e is a collection of testimonies by children and students who survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, edited by educator Arata Osada. Written several years after the bombing, the accounts describe what happened to the children and their families, the loss of ordinary life, and lasting physical and emotional wounds. Edited for peace education, it became an important testimony collection and was translated into English and other languages.

The children's testimonies convey the everyday life the bomb destroyed and the pain they still tried to put into words.

Folk Belief is Ichiro Hori's work in religious folklore, attempting a theoretical and systematic understanding of beliefs preserved among people across Japan. Through the living forms, transformations, and mixtures of belief, it clarifies the methods and scope of studying folk religion in Japanese society.

A systematic reading of the beliefs living within Japanese society through the methods of religious folklore.

Taisho Seijishi is Seizaburo Shinobu's comprehensive study of Japanese politics in the Taisho period. It examines party politics, constitutional movements, universal suffrage, social movements, and imperial policy, placing Taisho democracy within political structures and social change. Published in the early 1950s, it became one of Shinobu's representative achievements and received the Mainichi Publishing Culture Award.

From the intersection of party politics and social movements, it traces the possibilities and limits of Taisho democracy.

Nochi Kaikaku no Shomondai is a study of Japan's postwar land reform by agricultural economist Yasuo Kondo. It examines land redistribution through institutions, peasant economy, landownership, and changes in rural society. Published by Yuhikaku in 1951 as part of an economics series, it received the Mainichi Publishing Culture Award the following year.

The work asks how far land redistribution changed rural economy and society.

Nihon Minyo Taikan: Tohoku-hen is an NHK-edited survey and collection of folk songs from the Tohoku region. The original 1952 volume records lyrics, notation, and commentary by region, systematically preserving Tohoku song traditions. It was later reprinted with field-recording CDs and has served as a foundational source for folk-music and regional cultural studies.

It carries the voices of Tohoku forward through notation, lyrics, commentary, and recordings.

Seirigaku Koza is a comprehensive multi-part physiology series edited by the Physiological Society of Japan. Published from 1950 onward, it assigned specialists to explain a wide range of bodily functions, including nerves, sensation, movement, digestion, and experimental methods. It was a large-scale series that helped establish a foundation for postwar physiology education and research in Japan.

It unpacks bodily functions field by field and builds a knowledge base for postwar physiology.

Nihon no Shigen Mondai is a study of natural resources by river engineer and resource-policy scholar Koichi Aki. Against the background of postwar recovery and economic self-reliance, it treats water, land, minerals, energy, and other resources as issues of territory and society. Published in 1952, it received the Mainichi Publishing Culture Award that year.

It reconsiders resources not only as quantities but as conditions shaping the future of land and society.

Mizumi no Issho is a children's natural-science book by geologist Masao Minato. Drawing on studies of Hokkaido lakes, it explains in accessible language how lakes are born, change, and eventually turn into marshland or land over long spans of time. Published in 1951 by Fukumura Shoten in the Chikyu no Rekishi Bunko series, it received the Mainichi Publishing Culture Award the following year.

It tells how a lake, too, has a long life of birth, growth, and change.