Japan still haunted by idea of militarism

A new day is dawning in Japanese politics, or so its next prime minister, the nationalist Shinzo Abe, whose grandfather-in-law served in the Hideki Tojo war cabinet, would have us believe.

The trouble is that a new day for Abe will break with a rising sun. The timing is profound, as if history was mocking us. As China marked the 75th anniversary of the Nanjing Massacre, Japan re-elected as its prime minister the grandson of an official at the heart of the war machine.

Abe's grandfather-in-law, Nobusuke Kishi, was jailed after the war as a suspected war criminal but went on to become prime minister - as if Albert Speer had become a postwar West German chancellor. For all but less than four years of the last 60 years Japan has been governed by the Liberal Democratic Party.