This socialisation for war made it only natural for Hirohito to accept (some would say welcome) the undermining of Japanese diplomacy by the army and later the navy that set Japan on its fateful course to launching co-ordinated attacks in 1941: the airborne assault on the American fleet in Pearl Harbour and the ground landing on Kota Bharu in British Malaya.

ECONOMIST: A god dethroned

The second had a different result after the Soviet Union sent the Red Army into Manchuria to claim territorial spoils from a fatally crippled Imperial Japan at the conclusion of World War II.

FORBES: Japan, Russia Should Look To Each Other

There is no question that, even after the incineration of its cities, Japan still had the capacity to inflict unacceptable losses upon an invading army.

ECONOMIST: Japanese history

During the Japanese colonial rule over Korea (1910-45), many Koreans were conscripted into the Japanese army and munitions factories in Japan, and a considerable number of them remained there after liberation.

NPR: Literature and Lullabies from the 'Axis of Evil'

Although unemployment is low, rapid job losses among Japan's army of temporary workers are exposing the unfairness of a two-tier labour market and straining an egalitarian society.

ECONOMIST: World economy: The jobs crisis | The

The USA joined the Allies, Britain and France, in 1941 after Japan attacked one of their army bases called Pearl Harbor.

BBC: CBBC - Newsround - World War II quiz

One of Japan's richest men, with the potential to call on an army of lawyers to defend what he claims is his invention, we probably ought to.

ENGADGET

Although Japan certainly has a great deal to apologise for over the conduct of its imperial army in China in the 1930s and 1940s, its prime ministers and the emperor have made official apologies on 17 occasions since diplomatic relations with China were resumed in 1972.

ECONOMIST: China and Japan

North Korea remains on the State Department's list of State Sponsors of Terrorism for its harboring of several Japanese Red Army members wanted in Japan.

CNN: State Department lists terrorist groups