Tojo running

Hideki Tojo's granddaughter is running for a diet seat. She has little support among the voters and even Abe is distancing himself from her. However, she apparently has decided that now is her time and the time for her political philosophy:

Her views are part of a resurgent right-wing fringe in Japan that espouses a hard line in territorial disputes with the country's neighbors and a rose-tinted view of its past militarism.

"Japan did not fight a war of aggression. It fought in self- defense," she said. "Our children have been wrongly taught that their ancestors did evil things, that their country is evil. We need to give these children back their pride and confidence."
Article at boston.com

The same "....give back...their pride and confidence..." by denying any wrongdoing in the past that the right is pursuing. Apparently, the recognition of errors and mistakes which, according to the right-wing nutjobs, is too prevalent in Japan and is unpatriotic and shows a lack of pride and confidence. She is even more extreme. Few supporters but a trend is clear. Who knows how long it will last or how successful it will be. I haven't taken a poll, but from the limited number of people I know and have talked to about some of these views, there is little sympathy for the extremes. Even those (again, a select few not representative of anything except my acquaintances) who are "conservative" don't believe nor support much of the Abe/Fujiwara et. al. rhetoric.

(Just to note that after reading most of Masahiko Fujiwara's book, I'd say one should not assign him too much importance. He is simply the author of a poorly reasoned, self-contradictory nihonjinron book which is so silly that the only question is, why was it so popular here? How deep is the desire to return to an imagined fantasy-world past? Lot's of Japanese think he's a goofball. The first I ever heard of him and his book was last year when a Japanese guy mentioned it to me to seemingly make fun of one of Masahiko's bizarre assertions.)