The granddaughter of Japan’s most notorious war criminal is running for election in an attempt to realise his last wish – the establishment of an official memorial day for the country’s war dead.

Yuko Tojo’s campaign comes amid a shift to the right in Japanese politics and a belief that Japan should take increasing pride in its national identity and assert itself more forcefully on the international stage.

At 68 the softly spoken, fiercely nationalist granddaughter of Hideki Tojo, a figure reviled throughout Asia and by veterans of the Pacific war as the architect of Japanese imperialist atrocities, is making what she sees as a last-chance grab for political power.

She told The Times that, if voted into the Upper House in next month’s elections, she will push for much more than the memorial ceremony described in her grandfather’s will. Japan, she said, must rediscover its independence and stop thinking of patriotism as the sole preserve of the right wing.

“Patriotism should not have to be taught. It should be rooted in all our DNAs from birth,” she said. “Schoolteachers who refuse to stand for the playing of the national anthem or the raising of the flag are not even fit to be teachers.”

Reform of Japan’s pacifist Constitution, a document drawn up hastily by the country’s American occupiers after the Second World War, is also set to be a big election issue.

Ms Tojo, an independent candidate, is among a number of Japanese who regard the Constitution as invalid. Her candidacy is seen as a sign of the growing acceptability of nationalist sentiments that would have been anathema a decade ago.

“We have not fought any other country in the last 62 years but during that time [the Constitution] has forced Japan to lose its spirit as an independent country. We have lost pride and confidence and it must now be revived,” she said.

Hideki Tojo’s dream of a ceremony for the war dead was described in a will written before he was hanged for war crimes in 1948. If the plan is realised it could reignite bitter antiJapanese feelings in Asia, particularly China and South Korea.

It is the presence of Hideki Tojo – along with ten other Class A war criminals – on the list of those honoured at the Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo that made the visits of the former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi there a source of furious protests in China.

Ms Tojo said that prime ministerial visits to the shrine were “obviously fitting conduct”, and that their impact on other nations should not stop them.

Shinzo Abe, the current Prime Minister, should “go as a matter of duty”. As she spoke, an elderly man – a veteran of the Imperial Army – approached in tears and bowed deeply to announce himself as a humble visitor to Yasukuni and a staunch supporter of her campaign. “That has started happening a lot,” Ms Tojo said.

Her confidence in her project – and in being elected on July 29 – lies not with the veteran’s generation, but with the youth. “I have high hopes for the young of Japan,” she said. “They are awakening to the realities of foreign interference in Japan’s affairs and are just beginning to rebel against it. They are questioning the direction the country has taken.”

Hideki Tojo

1940 Advocate of Japan’s Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy

1941 Ordered attack on Pearl Harbor, which killed 2,388 Americans

1942 70,000 surrendered American and Filipino soldiers in Philippines forced on “Bataan Death March”

1943 16,000 PoWs died constructing Thai-Burma railway

1946 Sentenced to death for war crimes

(Sources:www.bataandeathmarch.com;www. britannica.com, Times archives)

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