Was it historically valid to equate Imperial Japan with Nazi Germany and portray Emperor Showa as Japan’s equivalent of Hitler?
Drawing on an essay by Sukehiro Hirakawa, this article questions the postwar framework of “democracy versus fascism,” the contradiction of placing liberal democracy and communist “people’s democracy” in the same category, and the qualitative differences between Nazi Germany and Japan.
At the same time, it also challenges the claim that the Greater East Asia War was entirely a righteous war of Asian liberation.

June 22, 2020
If Nazi Germany is regarded as an evil empire and Hitler as the chief embodiment of that evil, should we simply permit an interpretation in which militarist Japan is likewise treated as an evil empire and Emperor Showa as the chief embodiment of its evil?
The following is a continuation of the preceding chapter.
Was Japan the Asian Version of Nazi Germany?
Here, however, I wish to ask a question.
Should we continue indefinitely to accept without challenge the framework according to which that war was a conflict between democracy and fascism, and the victorious Allied powers represented justice?
Is it right to place liberal democracy and “people’s democracy” in the same category and judge history on that basis?
Should we be unconcerned if our children are told, “You must share the same view of history advocated by President Xi Jinping”?
If Nazi Germany is regarded as an evil empire and Hitler as the chief embodiment of that evil, should we simply permit an interpretation in which militarist Japan is likewise treated as an evil empire and Emperor Showa as the chief embodiment of its evil?
What, in that case, were the qualitative differences between Nazi Germany and the Japanese Empire?
As already stated, the Allied powers during the war generally had little knowledge of Japanese affairs and therefore attempted to understand the Japanese Empire by analogy with Nazi Germany.
The view of Emperor Showa as Japan’s Hitler arose from precisely that analogy.
However, while raising such questions, I also wish to reverse the standpoint and pose another question.
Even if there are grounds for doubting the historical interpretation of the victors that has conventionally been called the “Tokyo Trial view of history,” does it therefore follow that the war can be described without qualification as a righteous war for the liberation of Greater East Asia?
Can history be revised in that manner?
What, fundamentally, was “that war”?
To be continued.