Japan History

Shiro Azuma and Yoshio Shinozuka, two aging Japanese veterans who repeatedly have admitted participating in World War II-era atrocities, wanted to bring their quest for redemption to the United States. The Justice Department, however, is blocking them from entering the country.

In a historic decision ending an ideologically charged 32-year legal battle, the Japanese Supreme Court on Friday ruled that it was illegal for the government to censor from textbooks unsavory facts about Japan's wartime past.

Name: Nobukatsu Fujioka. Age: 53. Occupation: Professor of education, Tokyo University. Appearance: Unimposing, wears dark suits and forgettable ties. Manner: Quietly deliberate. Rhetoric: Incendiary. Meet the leader of Japan's neoconservative backlash.

In the shadow of majestic Mt. Fuji, the tallest, most revered peak in Japan, Shinto priest Yasuhiko Kanemori ponders the plethora of religious groups that have sprouted around the mountain's base like mushrooms. It was bad enough that the fiery Nichiren Buddhist sect and its Soka Gakkai lay followers became embroiled in a veritable religious war here, spewing charges and countercharges of harassment, blasphemy and violence.

He is regarded by many as the perfect leader for Japan's confusing times of economic retrenchment, political chaos and social malaise: a man of bold action and inspired leadership capable of unifying this dispirited nation. Trouble is, he's been dead for nearly 400 years.

Touring Los Angeles' Little Tokyo for the first time this week, Japanese attorney Takashi Niimi paused in front of the eye-catching "Friendship Knot" monument. What an unusual work of art, he was thinking, when his eye caught the bronze inscription at the foot of the sculpture.

Ask sixth-graders here about Japanese comic books, and their eyes light up. Slam Dunk, a macho basketball player, is hot, says one boy. So are Dragon Ball, a futuristic space warrior, and Dr. Slump, a mad scientist who designed the perfect robot girl. Japanese comics deliver the ultimate in thrills, chills and "interesting stuff with girls, like nakedness," he said. "We all like Japanese comics better, because Korean comics are too sissy."

In a policy speech, and in unusual messages to Asian leaders, Prime Minister Tsutomu Hata on Tuesday renewed "the recognition that Japan's past actions, including acts of aggression and colonialism, caused unbearable suffering and sorrow for many people." Hata made the declaration in the aftermath of statements by his ousted justice minister, Shigeto Nagano, who denied past Japanese aggression and described a major atrocity Japanese soldiers committed in 1937 in China as a "fabrication."

Japan's continuing failure to come to terms with its past is worrying its Asian neighbors and disappointing its allies everywhere. What Tokyo has achieved economically is undercut by its traditional reluctance to accept responsibility publicly for Japanese aggression and atrocities during the 1930s and 1940s. Tokyo only recently acknowledged the forced wartime enlistment of thousands of women--many of them Korean--as "comfort women" in Japanese army brothels.

Japan's Supreme Court upheld government censorship of schoolbooks Tuesday, rejecting a landmark lawsuit by a textbook crusader who has waged a 30-year battle against whitewashing of wartime history. The Supreme Court backed a Tokyo High Court decision seven years ago that defended the Education Ministry's constitutional right to dictate the contents of schoolbooks.