Tsuneo Watanabe

from New York Times
Shadow Shogun Steps Into Light, to Change Japan
Published: February 11, 2006

Mr. Koizumi worships at a shrine that glorifies militarism, said Mr. Watanabe, who equates Tojo with Hitler. He added, "This person Koizumi doesn't know history or philosophy, doesn't study, doesn't have any culture. That's why he says stupid things, like, 'What's wrong about worshiping at Yasukuni?' Or, 'China and Korea are the only countries that criticize Yasukuni.' This stems from his ignorance." Like many of postwar Japan's leaders with wartime experience, Mr. Watanabe is suspicious of the emotional appeals to nationalism used increasingly by those who never saw war. In his high school in Tokyo, he said, military officials visited regularly to instill militarism in the young. "I once instigated my classmates to boycott the class and shut ourselves in a classroom," he recalled. "We were punished later."

When he entered the army as a second-class private, the war was in its last stages. The military began dispatching kamikaze pilots, whom the Japanese right wing now glorifies as willing martyrs for the emperor. "It's all a lie that they left filled with braveness and joy, crying, 'Long live the emperor!' " he said, angrily. "They were sheep at a slaughterhouse. Everybody was looking down and tottering. Some were unable to stand up and were carried and pushed into the plane by maintenance soldiers."