Some WWII Revisionism From Japan

The timing of the release of this historical tidbit is doubtlessly related to current domestic Japanese political considerations, particularly the tendency of recent PM's (especially the new one) to refuse to embrace the expected guilt trip for their WWII-era belligerence.

Somebody must have figured that the hawkishness isn't playing too well with the neighbors.

Emperor Hirohito, in whose name Japanese soldiers fought in World War Two, was reluctant to start a war with China in 1937 and had believed in stopping it earlier, media reported on Friday, citing a diary by his former chamberlain.

The revelation comes after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe angered Asian neighbors with controversial remarks about Japan's wartime actions, and as Tokyo and Beijing prepare for an expected April visit to Japan by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao.

According to the diary by Kuraji Ogura, the late Hirohito also said Japan had underestimated China's military strength, adding that experts in the Imperial Army had failed to correctly forecast the war in China.

"Japan underestimated China. It is most wise to end the war quickly and seek to build up our national strength for the next ten years," the diary quotes Hirohito as saying in January 1941, according to the Asahi Shimbun newspaper.

Japan and China entered full-scale war following the Marco Polo Bridge incident in 1937.

In December 1942, a year after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, Hirohito is quoted as saying that the timing for ending a war is important and that war should be fought to the best of one's ability.

"Once you start (a war), it cannot easily be stopped in the middle ... What's important is when to end the war," the diary quotes him as saying.

"One should be cautious in starting a war, but once begun, it should be carried out thoroughly."

Hirohito's remarks may provide insight into the monarch's war responsibility, which academics say has never been fully pursued in Japan largely due to a decision by U.S. Occupation authorities to keep him on the throne and turn the emperor into a symbol of a newly democratic Japan.