Mr. Lea-Henry mentioned Kuniaki Koiso who replaced Tojo as Prime Minister. That is right. Tojo did not resign voluntarily; he was not able to hold on to premiership because of mounting oppositions. When did Hitler resign because of oppositions? ”General　Koiso had no public stature to rely upon. Unlike Tojo, he had not arrived at the premiership from an important cabinet post, and being on the reserve list he could not function as an army leader. Yet dissatisfaction with Tojo was so strong that anyone who had not been associated with the outgoing cabinet would have been welcom (Ben-Ami Shillony, Politics and Culture In Wartime Japan, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1981, p68.)" Tojo was simply put on the retired generals
list. When was the German dictator put on the retired lunatics list?
Mr. Lea-Henry did not refer to Admiral Kantaro Suzuki's cabinet, which came into being in April 1945. From the line-up of the ministers like Shigenori Togo (not Tojo) as Foreign Minister and Mitsumasa Yonai as Navy Minister, those in the know about Japan and Japanese politics like Joseph Grew knew at once that the new cabinet was the one to lead Japan to surrender. Mr. and Mr. Suzuki were very intimate with Mr. and Mrs. Grew while the Grews were in Tokyo. And the Suzukis were very intimate with Hirohito. Suzuki's life was attempted in the famous 2・２６　failed coup d'eta; radical right-wing young officers attempted his life for their presumed reason that he gave wrong advice to Hirohito.

Shigenori Togo was Foreign Minister of the Tojo cabinet. Tojo wanted to eschew war with the United States, and solicited Togo, a noted dove, for the post of Foreign Minister, and go on with the negotiations with the United States. Since there was a slim possibility of arriving at understanding with the United States, Togo, a patriot, accepted the post. But he was sentenced to twenty years' imprisonment at the Tokyo International Tribunal; the reason was that he was Foreign Minister in the Tojo cabinet.

At Yalta it was President Roosevelt who asked Stalin to start war on Japan within three months after Germany's defeat on condition that Russia would take over Japan's concessions in Manchuria, this without
asking Chiang Kaishek; the two leaders also promised that the decision would not be conveyed to China for the moment. The President also agreed that Stalin would take Japan's northern islands.
Japan had asked the Soviet Union to work as an intermediary with the Allied Powers for surrender. At Potsdam Stalin said to President Truman that it would be the best poolicy to keep Japan believing that its request for Russian intermediation, and the President concurred.

Visit Hiroshima or Nagasaki. You'll find that the cities are full of desires and prayers for the nuclear bombs being used never again anywhere in the world. There is none of vindictiveness.

US ambassadors Roos and Sweet Caroline visited the Peace ceremonies in Hiroshima on August 6 and in Nagasaki on August 9. No Japanese yelled at them, and no Japanese threw eggs or tomatoes at them.

No country is so much exposed to so big misunderstandings as Japan concerning at least its modern history. I won't tell anybody any more because no one will pay me a shilling and because it's past midnight in Japan.

Yes Michi

Certainly World War Two began and ended in 1945. It was all American and Australian aggression without context.

The Japanese military overlords were true patriots and a credit to the Emperor and the people of Manchuria. Only Russia ended the War of Aggression Against Japan.

This is humbly dedicated to Japan's now aging, but attractively mystical, neo-fascists who never took, or take, responsibility https://youtu.be/vmXXB2eMNN8

Joseph Grew was the last US ambassador to pre-war Japan.

People of the West were led into delusion about China and Japan, perhaps owing to at least two conspicuous facts;China was a gigantic empire while Japan was an invisibly tiny country and Japan was invading China. For instance, the West thought in the nineteenth century that China had a rationally developed, centrarized bureaucracy extending all over the the country while Japan was divided into over one hundred feudal domains. It also thought that the Chinese literati class would be far more pliable, amenable and positively sensitive to Western modern values while the Japanese samurai class would be insensitive.
The historical outcomes were contrary. The fact, which was missed, was that the Chinese literati class had been throughout history rigorously authoritarian, treating the ruled as if slaves (read, for instance, Ralph Diamond/Ways That Are Dark), and the samurai class had been far more sympathtic with the plight of peasants; Another missed fact was that Confucianist China was essentially a male culture that dominated the country while, as is observed by literature critics and anthropologists of Japanese literature and society, Japan, though not a matriarchal society, was full of female ideas and feelings.

If still interested in a little more tidbits, I will appreciate very much if any one reads my (Yoshimichi Moriyama's) five comments on Bill Emmott/Shinzo Abe's Pivot to Asia and my two comments on Joseph Nye/The Limits of Chinese Soft Power.

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/japan-history-regional-stability-by-bill-emmott-2015-06

http://www.project-syndicat.org/commentary/china-civil-society-nationalism-soft-power-by-joseph-s-nye-2015-07.

Yes Michi

China's invasion and occupation of Japan from 1931 to 1945 is something all Chinese are rightly ashamed of.

The Manchurian Crisis had a significant negative impact on the moral strength and influence of the League of Nations. As critics had predicted, the League was powerless if a strong nation decided to pursue an aggressive policy against other countries, allowing a country such as Japan to commit blatant aggression without serious consequences.

Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini were also aware of this, and within three years would both follow Japan's example in aggrandisation against their neighbors, in the case of Italy, against Abyssinia, and Hitler, against Czechoslovakia and Poland.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_invasion_of_Manchuria#External_impact

Keep dreamin Shinto Sunshine! :)

Poyda