General Toshio Tamogami, 61, was the chief of staff of Japan's Air Self-Defense Force between March 2007 and November 2008 despite having a history of lobbing verbal missiles at "leftists," China and Japan's so-called war-renouncing Constitution. In 2008, he pulled these and other themes together in an essay on "true modern history" that made him one of the most famous names in the country.

In that essay he argued that Japan was not an aggressor (during its militarist period prior to 1945), and was not given sufficient credit for ending white European colonialism in Asia, or for the benefits that its rule brought to Korea, Taiwan and Manchuria.

The nation's enemies, he claimed, continue to spread lies about Japanese war crimes for their own political ends. He also said that Japan had been sucked into World War II by the United States, which he maintained knew in advance of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.