Japan's defence minister said today he will sack the air force chief of staff for saying Japan was ensnared into the second World War by the United States and was not an aggressor in Asia.
Gen Toshio Tamogami's essay, posted on the website of a Japanese hotel and apartment developer, is expected to rouse anger in China and South Korea, where memories of Japan's wartime acts and colonisation run deep.
"I think it is improper as the air force chief of staff to publicly state a view clearly different from that of the government's," Defence Minister Yasukazu Hamada said.
"Therefore, it is inappropriate for him to remain in this position and I will swiftly dismiss him."
Japan expressed remorse for its war-time actions in 1995, following it up with another apology a decade later.
Kyodo News Agency quoted Prime Minister Taro Aso as also saying that the essay, in which the air force general denied Japan was ever the aggressor in China, was inappropriate.
"Even now there are many people who think that our country's aggression caused unbearable suffering to the countries of Asia during the Greater East Asia War," Gen Tamogami wrote in the essay.
"But we need to realise that many Asian countries take a positive view of the Greater East Asia War. It is certainly a false accusation to say that our country was an aggressor nation," he said.
Disputes over wartime history often fray ties with Beijing and Seoul, although relations with China especially have warmed in the past two years as both sides seek to put priority on deepening trade and investment.
Gen Tamogami also rejected the verdicts of an Allied tribunal which convicted Japanese wartime leaders as war criminals after Tokyo's defeat in 1945.
Similar views are shared by some right-wing Japanese scholars and politicians. But successive Japanese governments, including Mr Aso's, have backed a landmark government apology to people in countries, particularly in Asia, that suffered under Japan's colonial rule and aggression.
Reuters