AP News, May 15th, 2007
The granddaughter of wartime Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, who was executed for crimes against humanity, said Tuesday she will run for a parliamentary seat in July to "restore the honor" of those who gave their lives for Japan.
Yuko Tojo, 67, told The Associated Press she will run as an independent from the Tokyo constituency for the legislature's upper house.
"I want to change Japan. I want Japanese children to be able to take pride in their country again," Tojo said.
In a separate statement, Tojo called for a national debate on punitive postwar treaties imposed on Japan "to show appreciation and respect toward for those who gave their lives for Japan, and to restore their honor."
Gen. Tojo, prime minister from 1941 to 1944, unleashed a savage war of aggression on Japan's neighbors and has been widely remembered both at home and abroad as Asia's answer to Adolf Hitler.
Tojo, who is enshrined with Japan's 2.5 million war dead at Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine, also ordered the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor that plunged the United States into World War II.
Yasukuni is vilified by critics as symbolizing the country's militaristic past because it honors Class-A criminals such as Tojo. He was sentenced to death at the Tokyo war trials and executed in 1948.
Yuko Tojo has defended her grandfather's legacy, contending in a 1992 memoir that he had no choice but to take Japan to war after the country's survival was threatened by a U.S. oil embargo.
The book became the basis for a movie in 1998, "Pride," which broke old taboos by portraying Gen. Tojo as the victim of vindictive Allied judges during the Tokyo tribunals.
"Pride" became one of the top-grossing domestic films that year, demonstrating the growing popularity of revisionist views in Japan. Other nationalistic films have followed.
Tojo's candidacy comes as the Japanese government takes steps toward a vote on revising its U.S.-drafted pacifist Constitution, which prohibits the use of war in settling international disputes.
She has also rejected suggestions that Yasukuni stop honoring executed war criminals to allay views in China and South Korea that Japan has not fully atoned for its wartime atrocities there.
