You have to read between the lines in the Japanese articles. While the article exhorts the Japanese to do their utmost and say the Japanese people realize what is at stake, there is also the short blurb that the officials have encountered a certain amount of “laziness” among the population. In reality, Japanese domestic morale is plummeting. Homeless, starving and unemployed, they are ready to quit the war. Some of the more rational leaders like Prince Konoye know it. The blurb about laziness might be construed to mean the leadership has to keep pushing their people, but it also means the people need to be pushed because they are ready to quit.
This skill of “reading between the lines” was well honed by citizens of the USSR. They knew that a very careful, critical reading of Pravda was necessary to get some element of truth in a story. It’s about time the American people developed this skill, too.
Sometimes I think there was more truth in Pravda than in today’s New York Times.