Parallels with wartime general
Re: "The world according to Toru Hashimoto" by Eric Johnston (Light Gist, Oct. 30): Only one kana syllable (or one letter in romaji) separates (Nippon Ishin no Kai leader Shintaro) Ishihara from (Imperial Japanese Army) Gen. (Kanji) Ishiwara, but there's more to the similarity between the two men than their names.
Ishiwara in 1931 was the man behind the Manchurian Incident, which would open the curtain on Japan's aggression towards China in the 1930s and 40s and set a pattern for militarist Japan's "might is right" policies of that era.