Japan wasn't an "unprovoked aggressor" in the 1930s. China and the United States were to a considerable extent responsible for a sequence of events that led to Japan's actions in Manchuria and, to a lesser degree, in China.
Is this the statement of a Japanese rightwinger -- someone who refuses to "come to terms with" his country's atrocities in Asia in the first half of the 20th century?
No, it is what a senior U.S. diplomat said in a "strictly confidential" memorandum submitted to the U.S. State Department in November 1935. The diplomat was John Van Antwerp MacMurray, who had served as first secretary of the Peking Legation from 1913 to 1917, then as minister (today's equivalent of ambassador) to China from 1925 to 1929.