Japan’s textbook controversies, humiliating diplomacy toward China and Korea, and the government’s panic over the Tamogami essay all trace back to the War Guilt Information Program imposed during the occupation, later crystallized in the Murayama Statement.

2017-06-17.
This follows the previous chapter.
Jun Eto also pointed out in his aforementioned work how deeply the War Guilt Information Program—that is, a policy of brainwashing the Japanese people—had penetrated Japanese society.
“Textbook controversies, the humiliating kowtowing diplomacy of the Suzuki Cabinet toward China and South Korea in the summer of 1982, and even Katsuichi Honda’s abnormal obsession with the ‘Nanjing Massacre’—all of these, it must be said, stem from the commotion triggered by the propaganda document produced by CIE entitled History of the Pacific War, which newspapers were ordered to serialize starting December 8, 1945.”
Why did the government panic so excessively over the Tamogami issue?
It was panic of a level that can almost only be described as inexplicable.
If the Self-Defense Forces had been preparing to rise in revolt, such panic would have been understandable.
But all that happened was that the Air Staff Chief published an essay on historical views—entirely unrelated to his official duties—in a civilian essay contest.
I believe the government panicked because addressing Tamogami’s question, “Was Japan an aggressor nation?”, would inevitably bring the Murayama Statement into the open.
The Murayama Statement symbolizes the moment when the Liberal Democratic Party abandoned its founding principles and effectively ceased to be the LDP.
In other words, discussing the Tamogami essay would inevitably reveal that the LDP had, in effect, declared itself to have become the Socialist Party.
And the Socialist Party’s view, symbolized by the Murayama Statement, is nothing other than the direct product of the War Guilt Information Program.
To be continued.