Tojo V3 Make Japan Great Again

Family Ties: The Tojo Legacy

By David McNeill

The granddaughter of Japan'south wartime leader Tojo Hideki has become one of his staunchest public defenders since emerging from obscurity a decade ago. But exactly who is she and why has she come up in from the political cold?

There is no mistaking the touch on of the family unit genes on Tojo Yuko: she has the same myopic, almond-shaped eyes, sparse mouth and wide cheekbones every bit her grandfather, General Tojo Hideki, who led Nihon to disastrous defeat in Globe War two. She even affects his rigid military bearing.

Ms. Tojo clearly idolizes her gramps, who was executed as Japan's top war criminal in 1948: she ofttimes comes to interviews with foreign journalists carrying a box of mementos that include boom clippings, a lock of hair, and the barrel of the last cigarette the full general smoked while pending the hangman'southward noose in Sugamo Prison.

Opposite to those who put Tojo in the small guild of World War two monsters along with Hitler and Mussolini, she says the man who ordered the Pearl Harbor set on led a "war of freedom" in Asia. "Essentially he was a kind homo who loved peace," she says. "He was defending his country against foreign aggressors. His greatest crime was that he loved his country."

In another time or place, Ms. Tojo might be considered a harmless relic, or have opted to remain living anonymously nether her existent name, Iwanami Toshie. Just 60 years after the end of Earth War II, this tiny adult female with impeccable manners and the air of a retired school teacher is i of the most toxic figures in a growing historical revisionist movement that is over again pulling Asia apart.

The revisionists have already sparked a storm of protestation by publishing schoolhouse textbooks that gloss over Regal Nihon'southward worst state of war crimes. Now they risk further confrontation with an increasingly powerful and assertive China by pushing for annual prime ministerial visits to Yasukuni Shrine, which many consider a memorial to unrepentant militarism.

In the months leading up to the 60 th ceremony of Nippon'south surrender in Baronial 2005, Ms. Tojo was exceptionally decorated, giving long interviews to members of the Japanese and foreign press, including the Arab satellite news aqueduct Al Jazeera, the British Financial Times and several South Korean media outlets. On August xv th, she was widely photographed at Yasukuni Shrine, grim faced, alone, and holding a large portrait of her executed grandfather.

The Yasukuni photograph, taken on a day when the shrine hosted 200,000 people including Tokyo Gov. Ishihara Shintaro, then LDP acting General Secretary Abe Shinzo and heroes of the right such every bit Onoda Hiroo,[one]captured Ms. Tojo in her favorite pose: the stubborn patriot, sotto voce, battling confronting Nippon'southward political establishment to rescue her grandfather, and, by implication, the millions of soldiers he led, from the dustbin of history. She reinforced this position after that solar day when she publicly berated Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro for breaking a promise to visit the memorial.[2]

On inspection, however, Tojo is very much a child of the establishment, albeit a wing banished to the political margins during Japan's U.s.a.-sponsored Common cold War heyday. Her reemergence afterward over quarter of a century of quiet domestic life is evidence that her brand of recidivist ultra-nationalist politics has been re-embraced by elements of the Liberal Democratic Party and the diverse fringe political, religious and cultural satellites that hover around information technology.

The project that unites them is straightforward, if unsettling: reverse the decisions of the Tokyo Tribunal; annul the current constitution, especially the hated Article 9; radically revise the educational curriculum and reposition Yasukuni as a core element of country ideology. If successful, information technology amounts to nothing less than a conservative revolution -- an endeavour to roll back much of the last one-half-century of liberal gains in Nippon.

Tojo was built-in in 1939 in Japanese-occupied Seoul to Tojo Hidetaka, the general's eldest son. She remembers little of her granddad, who became prime number minister in October 1941, except that he was "kind but stern" and had piffling time to spend with his family. After the war ended, the family moved to remote Ito in Shizuoka Prefecture nether the protection of sympathizers, where she and her brothers were bullied; an unhappy period that profoundly shaped the psychology of a young girl not yet in her teens. She later wrote of hearing adults whisper the discussion koshukei [expiry past hanging], and of watching in horror as other children mimicked her gramps's death.

Tojo claims that her family name " was untouchable for l years," but the family appears to have prospered and wielded power in corporate, war machine and public affairs realms. The general's second son, Tojo Teruo, is a sometime vice president of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and chairman of Mitsubishi Motors who designed aircraft during and afterwards the state of war. Youngest son Toshio was a major general in the Air Cocky-Defense Forces. Daughter Mitsue married Sugiyama Shigeru, who became caput of Japan'southward Ground Self-Defense Force. Tojo says her husband was a TV producer at state broadcaster NHK for over thirty years earlier becoming a university instructor, and her younger brother, Takayuki, is a former president of Nihon Victor in Germany.[3]

Tojo quit Meiji Gakuin University in her twenties to marry, and had four children. One of her daughters today lives in the Usa and is married to an American who works for Boeing Corp. Tojo harbors little of the obvious anti-American sentiment of some on the right in Japan: when told recently by her distraught daughter that her son-in-law would soon exist going to Iraq to work, Tojo told her it couldn't be helped considering "i had to defend 1's land." During the Tokyo trials, her granddaddy was "very impressed" with his American lawyers. "Those people treated him with great respect and he respected them, fifty-fifty as enemies," she says.

When her children were older, she enrolled in Kokushikan University to take a degree in pedagogy, where some speculate she was courted by right-fly lobby groups such as the Nihon Kaigi (The Japan Conference). After graduation in 1988 she came out of the political closet and began speaking on platforms for popular nationalist causes, among them the retrieval of fallen Japanese soldiers abroad, the reinstatement of a national vacation for the Showa emperor and official state visits to Yasukuni.

She also formed an NPO called the Environmental Solution Constitute (http://www.epo.or.jp ) and began researching a book most her granddaddy. There is some uncertainty almost what ESI actually does – in an interview with this author Tojo claimed it markets products and fights for environmental protection laws. Its homepage lists Tojo (under her real proper noun, Iwanami Toshie) as president and various family members and known right-wing figures as directors.

These include Kamiya Kotoku, who is besides chairperson of a support organization for Seicho no Ie, [Truth of Life]; a Shinto cult established in 1930 and reformed in 1949, information technology campaigns to replace Japan'south postwar constitution. Boasting 5 million members worldwide, its supporters include ultra-right writer Suzuki Kunio and other members of the revisionist right in Japan.

Some other member of Tojo's NPO, Kai Isamu, is managing director of a memorial to General Tojo and six other A-class war criminals equally well as over 1,000 B&C-class criminals called Koa Kannon in Shizuoka Prefecture. Tojo is also listed as a supporter of several right-wing organizations, including the Club for History Textbook Reform and the Showa Day Promotion Network, a entrance hall group that long campaigned to have the Light-green Day national holiday on April 29 th declared Showa 24-hour interval in honor of Emperor Hirohito. In May 2005, the Diet approved the pecker making Showa 24-hour interval a national vacation.

Other groups that form role of the matrix of support for Tojo include ultra-conservative antechamber grouping Nippon wo mamoru kokumin kaigi (The National Association for the Protection of Nippon), now merged with the Nihon Conference, the Association for the victims of Northward Korean Abductions (Rachi higaisha no kai) and the Japanese State of war Bereaved Clan (Nippon izoku kai) an organization claiming one meg members that has been widely credited with being the almost important political force behind Koizumi'southward Yasukuni visits. Such connections put her in the political orbit of many senior LDP figures, including Foreign Minister Aso Taro, Chief Cabinet Secretarial assistant Abe Shinzo and former trade government minister Hiranuma Takao.

In 1992 Tojo published a book, Issai kataru nakare – sofu Tojo Hideki ichizoku no sengo [lit. Never Talk: The Postwar Life of Tojo Hideki's Family]. In 1995 she wrote a fawning memoir, My Grandfather Tojo Hideki. The book upset some of her family who disliked existence dragged back into the political spotlight, just it sold over 120,000 copies and became the basis of the landmark revisionist project Pride, ane of the highest grossing Japanese movies of 1998 [4] She published a 2d book of family memoirs chosen Tojoke no hahakogusa [The Tojo Family's Hahakogusa] in 2003.

Tojo'southward decision to get public coincided with a period of profound transition in Nihon as the giddy economic achievements and hubris of the 1980s gave mode to decline, political stagnation and national soul-searching of the 1990s. The proper name Tojo was a rallying point for some on the right who looked for answers to these problems in a semi-mythologized past, when Nihon was stiff, independent and answered to nobody. Equally Japan's crunch deepened, the issues buried below the expedient postwar political settlement bubbled dorsum to the surface like untreated sewage, and she gave them a voice.

All this is non to pigment a picture of a united or even cohesive correct-fly projection to drag Nippon dorsum to the past. Many in the LDP notice Tojo's pronouncements irritating; given the number of times she has called Koizumi 'gutless' she is unlikely to be invited to the prime minister's residence whatever time soon. Few establishment politicians publicly share her opinion that the emperor is "the essence of Japan" (see interview below) and some are likely to be unsympathetic, to put it at its mildest, to her staunch defense of Imperial dominion during the slaughter of the 1930s and 40s. Even among the ultra-right she has inherited the fractious politics of the past forth with her family unit proper noun: Her granddad uneasily straddled the political and armed services worlds (every bit prime number minister and caput of the military machine) and he eventually purged the virtually extremist elements of Kodo-ha (The Royal Way Faction), earning him the lasting animosity of its modern followers.

Still, she articulates a fix of views that resonate in a country floundering since the finish of the Cold War and spooked past the ascension of Communist china: resentment at the outcome of the Tokyo trials and the legacy of victor'due south justice; disdain for the nihilism of contemporary Japanese life; distrust and dislike of Beijing and of the bureaucratic parlor games of diplomacy; a preference for a more muscular, independent strange policy backed past a potent armed services. This environment helps explain why a woman who might ii decades agone have been an occasional afternoon wide-evidence marvel has emerged as an influential commentator on contemporary Japanese affairs.

Interview begins

Practise you think your grandfather?

My memories of him are slight. My granddad became prime minister when I was just 2 years onetime. He was abroad most of the fourth dimension during the post-obit iii years and eight months. And at the end of the war, my family hid in Ito for 5 years and my grandfather was detained at Sugamo Prison house. There were lots of people in the house: the driver and and so on, so we seldom got fourth dimension alone. During the war my female parent used to bring me and my older brother Hidekatsu to the Prime number Minister'southward Residence every day where we were left to ourselves. Once in a while, we were able to eat with our granddad in the residence, with an official melt and staff, but I tin can't really remember his confront. My brother remembers him. He used to sit down on his knee. My granddad used to feed him fruit. My brother said he was a really gentle person. He felt sorry for the children of the drivers and police because their fathers were so busy. He used to play with the children in the garden and bring them toys. When grandfather was in Sugamo my brother went to meet him often. Grandfather worried terribly well-nigh my brother'southward hereafter, how he was going to suffer with that name. Nosotros suffered awful bigotry with our name. We weren't immune to sit in class. Fifty-fifty when we changed schools we weren't allowed into the classroom. My little sister was beaten and came habitation covered in blood. My blood brother couldn't become to school so he was taught by individual tutors. That was what it was similar at the end of the war in Japan. Iwanami was my real name. I didn't start to use Tojo until quite recently. The name Tojo was untouchable for 50 years. What inverse it was the motion picture Pride.

Exercise you lot think Japanese schools should teach more nearly your grandfather?

I don't think there is any item need to teach almost him as an private. The Meiji Era was the beginning time that a small-scale Asian country had made an impression on the Westward. Information technology was a source of pride that in Scotland and Turkey and elsewhere they named streets and buildings after us. Japan should have pride in these things and they should exist taught. We should properly explain the international situation at the time, and what the Tokyo Trials were all about. How terrible the state of affairs was. Nosotros were surrounded and facing attack. We had no oil, or steel and all our assets away were seized. How were nosotros to protect all those millions of Japanese except by standing up for ourselves? The media – the Asahi, Yomiuri, all of them were fanning the flames, saying "What is Tojo up to? Why doesn't he fight back?" The media can't say it was non involved. The people were also involved. Even fifth-grade elementary students were asking: what volition nosotros do without steel or oil? And now they talk about the Emperor'southward responsibleness. It is terribly saddening. The Japanese authorities is concealing all this. Information technology's not a question of respecting my grandfather. It's almost learning to respect someone who loved and fought for his country. Not simply Tojo, but likewise the ii.6 million soldiers who died. We should respect those who fought for their country and that's what should exist taught in schools.

Some describe him every bit "an extreme nationalist and a fascist who hated the very notion of compromise with Britain and the U.S."

People say lots of things. He loved his state.

Y'all could make the same arguments for Hitler, though, couldn't you? He loved his country too.

That's different. He killed his own people – Jews.

Well, he did. Merely those who support him would say the same as y'all – that he loved Federal republic of germany in a higher place all else. And in whatever case, 'Jews were non real Germans.'

My grandpa didn't kill his ain people. A lot of people died as a outcome of a state of war that could not accept been avoided. You take to properly empathise the stance of each country. And therefore you demand to teach why the countries went to war. Nosotros shouldn't keep repeating that Nihon was bad. That destroys pride in our country. I hateful, if y'all join a company and are told that the boss is a bad guy and the company is evil you'll cease wanting to work for that company. It's the same.

Japan might not take killed Jews, but it is accused of massacring millions of Chinese.

That was in battle. Please don't confuse the two. Exercise you lot know what benhei (soldiers masquerading as civilians) ways? They are soldiers who hibernate amongst civilians and attack the Japanese army from backside. Y'all tin can only tell once you lot capture them. Australians, British and Americans probably don't know, but in what is referred to as the Nanjing Massacre in that location were many such people. Western journalists all believe this Nanjing Massacre. The Chinese say 300,000 were killed. At that place were media representatives from 150 countries. And equally the army entered (she uses the word nyujyo here, which means to enter a city triumphantly) Nanjing and began their assault on the city'southward castle these reporters were running aslope them. That's how important the Japanese side thought this was. A safety area was set with 200,000 nether John Rabe and the International Committee for the Nanjing Safety Zone. So how could 300,000 people have been killed?

I've heard that argument many times earlier. The truth is nobody knows exactly how many people were there, but certainly the numbers were swelled by refugees from outside the city. We don't take to get bogged down in figures to know that the regular army behaved brutally. There were many witnesses, including Rabe, who fifty-fifty as a Nazi was shocked at the behavior of the troops.

In that location was just ane witness at the Tokyo trials who said he really saw what had happened. The remainder was complete rumor and hearsay (denbun bakkari).

Rabe was not the merely witness. At that place were reporters there, including one from the New York Times, another from the Manchester Guardian, not to mention thousands of Chinese civilians.

The truth is coming out now. Fujioka-san (of the Society for History Textbook Reform) has researched this and shown 1-by-ane how the photographs of the incident were faked by the Chinese side.

I'm certain there is probably some faked evidence, but how can yous only focus on the molehill of evidence that supports your claim and ignore the mountain that refutes it?

[Impatiently] Anyway, the truth doesn't just come from one side. You accept to expect at what really happened from all sides because at that place is so much hearsay.

And then do you think that Prc and Japan should cooperate to create history textbooks?

No, mutual understanding is impossible because each country's stance (tachiba) is dissimilar. Even when the truth is the same, the interpretation by Communist china and Japan is often completely the opposite. For case, for Koreans the man who assassinated Ito Hirobumi [1841-1909 - first Prime Minister and drafter of Meiji Constitution] An Chung-gun is a hero, but to us he is a criminal. That's the kind of thing I hateful. It's completely impossible.

I'd like to ask yous nigh Unit 731

[Tojo was commander of the Kempeitai of the Kwantung Army in Manchuria when Unit 731, charged with developing chemic and biological weapons, began experimenting with alive victims. Tojo was allegedly a supporter of biological warfare and the work of Ishii Shiro, the principal medical scientist at 731] I know zippo about that or what went on in Manchuria. I'chiliad not a historian. If you desire to talk about Yasukuni or something like that, ask me. For anything else, inquire a historian.

But y'all've heard of information technology?

I've seen the photos by China which look at ways of disinfecting against pests. I don't know most it.

Why didn't your grandfather kill himself past committing seppuku like other leaders?

You know how Mussolini died: being lynched and hung upside down in the streets? And Hitler's death was tragic too. He wanted to avoid those kinds of deaths. And of course my grandfather knew his decease would be circulate all over the world. He didn't want to shoot himself in the head considering he didn't want his face to exist destroyed and sent all over the world. He would take died from the shooting wound to his heart, from haemorrhage, simply he was saved by the Americans who wanted to put him on trial.

Do yous resent America?

Not fifty-fifty a little. If I resented America I wouldn't be happy that my daughter was married to a citizen of that country, would I? My grandfather admired America and said nosotros could learn from it. And his American lawyers defended him and said the most amazing things. Other lawyers strongly criticize the actions of the Centrolineal Forces. Those people treated my grandfather with great respect and he respected them, fifty-fifty as enemies.

Can I ask you nearly the Emperor? How do you feel most millions of people existence trained to believe that it was noble and cute to die for the Emperor?

It wasn't beautiful to die for the Emperor. People were trained from birth as Samurai, equally soldiers. It was considered natural for millions of people to work and ensure that the emperor was not dishonored. This wasn't for the Emperor; information technology was for the state -- to protect the country. That was the conventionalities: it was absolutely natural for people to take responsibleness for protecting the country.

Y'all don't desire to go back to that?

That was then, for amend or worse, no matter how nosotros look at it now. This is now. Japan has been at peace for 60 years.

Couldn't state of war happen again, perhaps with Communist china?

Of course not! The world wouldn't accept this. If China tried to exercise something, Taiwan, America and other countries would become involved. The world would be looking on. There is no way Nippon will get involved in a war with Mainland china. We are told we are not a armed forces power even though we are an economic power, correct? Nosotros don't have an ground forces, only defence force forces, right? Nosotros have no nuclear weapons. The countries that have these things are America and People's republic of china. We are non an ambitious (kogekiteki) state. When nosotros did go to war, it was considering information technology couldn't have been avoided.

How nearly an attack past North Korea?

That is not a normal country. Who knows what it will exercise.

You don't think in that location are a lot of similarities between Northward. Korea today and wartime Nippon?

Admittedly not; delight don't make that comparison. That is an insult to those who died in the state of war.

Practise y'all recollect the Emperor bore any responsibility for what happened?

None at all; his majesty wanted peace above all. （Heika wa akumademo heiwa wo motometeita ） . The emperor is a special existence (tokubetsu na sonzai). He is non petty normal people. The Japanese Imperial Family unit is not similar the English royal family. He was respected deeply by Japanese people who happily gave upwards their lives for him. People died saying: Long Live the Emperor! They didn't shout: Long Alive General Tojo! ii.half-dozen 1000000 of these people are in Yasukuni and that'due south why we should go in that location to pay our respects. I really desire that with all my middle.

Your grandfather had no resentment against the emperor? He lived while many others were executed.

If there was no emperor in that location would be no Nippon. My granddad and others died to protect the Emperor, to protect Japan. That was perfectly natural. We can't even talk about those beliefs today. The idea that he is a symbol of Japan as nosotros have been taught in the postwar period is insulting to the emperor. He is the essence of Japan (kokka genshi). He is nothing at all similar a US president. He is Nippon.

But the Emperor himself admits he is Korean.

I know null about his roots, but I was astonished that he said such a affair. His majesty (information technology is clear here that heika refers throughout to the Showa Emperor, not the current occupier of the Chrysanthemum Throne) would never have said such a thing. He knew the limits of what to say. The electric current Crown Prince (Naruhito) chatters away nearly everything. Every bit the national essence (kokka genshi) he has to know what to say. He has to maintain the nobility [igen] of the Imperial Family.

The emperor likewise seems ambiguous about the flag and anthem issue.

What land doesn't take a flag and anthem? Why does but Japan take to suffer this stupid criticism?

What are your feelings virtually Yasukuni? About your granddad'due south secret enshrinement at that place?

The prime minister promised to visit on Aug. 15 and he should. He should ignore pressure level from China and other countries. This is a domestic affair.

Prc has the right to protest though doesn't it? Japan invaded their country and killed millions.

Red china played no part in the San Francisco Treaty. Countries that were non involved in the treaty or the Tokyo Trials have no right to talk about state of war criminals at present. And so why is China complaining now? The Japanese fought the Nationalists (KMT) not the Communists. It is at present a completely different state. Red china and Nihon later on signed a treaty and war criminals and prisoners were released. The word state of war criminal (senpan) does non exist in that treaty. They should abide by that treaty. It is unforgivable (zettai yurusanai) that they continue to interfere in our domestic diplomacy.

Practice you feel that Japan should not recognize the results of the Tokyo Trials?

On May 3, 1952, MacArthur said Nihon fought a state of war of defense. Japan had no choice. Information technology had no resources, he said. My grandfather said the same. Despite this, our own government tin can't say the same. It is very odd. MacArthur said it wasn't a war of assailment but now Chinese people who weren't even there can call it a state of war of aggression.

So it was a state of war for resources?

No. Nosotros were standing upwards for ourselves. Every country accepts the notion of self-defense.

Is this why your grandpa referred to himself as a "war responsible person" but not a "war criminal"?

Yes. He behaved similar a samurai, and took responsibility for his failures equally a good soldier. Only by what definition was he a criminal?

Notes

[ane] Onoda returned to Nippon in 1974 after 29 years on the Philippine island of Lubang, where he fought as an regular army lieutenant. He was apparently unaware that Earth War Two had ended. He was afterwards pardoned past the Philippine government for killing at least thirty Filipinos and wounding about 100 others during peacetime.

[two] Tojo as well criticized Ishihara Shintaro in a September interview on the right-wing Sakura Television channel after the Tokyo governor said that Tojo was non worthy to be worshipped as a god at Yasukuni because he had only used a 22-caliber weapon in his attempted suicide. See: http://www.ch-sakura.jp/onlinetv_sakura.php

[3] Of Full general Tojo's children, daughter Makie (nee Tamura) seems to have lived the virtually bearding life. Her late husband, Major Koga, was one of the conspirators who tried to finish the Showa Emperor's surrender on Aug. 15, 1945. She remarried and became a instance worker in the National Mental Health Research Constitute.

[four] In an interview with Fuji Television on June 5, 2005, Tojo said her family reacted 'coldly' to the publication of the books. "I explained that I was not speaking as a member of the Tojo family but equally an individual," she said. The decision ended her relationship with her uncle Tojo Teruo.

Many thank you to Amakasu Tomoko for her assistance in researching this article.

David McNeill is a Tokyo-based journalist who teaches at Sophia University. A Japan Focus coordinator, he is a regular contributor to the London Independent and a columnist for OhMy News. He wrote this commodity for Japan Focus. Posted November 10, 2005.

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Source: https://apjjf.org/-David-McNeill/2151/article.html

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