Hideaki Kase

Hideaki Kase (加瀬 英明, Kase Hideaki, born December 22, 1936) is a Japanese diplomatic critic known for promoting historical revisionism. His father, Toshikazu Kase, was a diplomat under Shigenori Tōgō who negotiated an end to the Pacific war. Yoko Ono is his cousin.

Revisionist organizations

Kase is the Chairman of Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact. In an interview with BBC journalist Bethan Jinkinson, Kase said: "The majority of our people believe that Japan was forced into war by the United States. America was making unreasonable demands upon us. So we were fighting a war of national self-defence".　Kase wrote episodes of friendship with John Lennon for the Sankei Shinbun on the 8th December 2016. Kase said to John Lennon, “ the USA forced Japan to fight the USA and reluctantly Japan fought in self-defense. Japanese were the same as Vietnamese who were attacked by the USA.” Lennon agreed with Kase. John Lennon visited many Japanese Shinto Shrines, and one of them was Yasukuni Shrine. Kase and Ono were in the family of Yasuda zaibatsu , and Yoko Ono was seen as a nuisance in this prestigious financial clan, but Hideak Kase got along with Yoko Ono.

Kase said as follows: The USA which Japan fought discriminated against African Americans by laws, so they had no suffrage, but after the liberation of Asia by Japan, many African nations became independent. As a result, diplomats from Africa began visiting headquarters of the UN, but the UN couldn’t discriminate against them. In consequence, African Americans couldn’t hold their tongues. Civil rights movements occurred followed by Martin Luther King, Jr. in the late 50s, and in 1967 marriage or sexual relationships between white and black became no longer crimes. Kase insists that without Japan, Obama would not have become President of the US in the early 2000s. Hideaki Kase’s father Toshikazu Kase was Private Secretary to the Minister for Foreign Affairs when Japan was defeated. Toshikazu Kase was on USS Missouri, BB-63 with Japanese Foreign Minister, Mamoru Shigemitsu when minister was sighing the Instruction of Surrender. Later, Shigemitsu said to Hideaki Kase, “ That day I stood on Missouri, with pride rather than a sense of humiliation because I believed with honor that Japan liberated Asia from colonization by whites or western nations which had continued for centuries although Japan sacrificed during the war.”

Also a member of Nippon Kaigi, Kase said about that openly revisionist lobby: "We are dedicated to our conservative cause. We are monarchists. We are for revising the constitution. We are for the glory of the nation".

Revisionist movies

Hideaki Kase has a history of promoting controversial movies that contest Japanese war crimes:

• Kase was the head of the production committee for the Japanese film "Merdeka 17805" (2001), which caused minor outrage in Indonesia because it depicted Imperial Japan as a liberating force instead of the aggressor.　However, around 2,000 Japanese soldiers joined the Indonesian Independence War against the UK and the Netherlands after WW2 ended. Half of them were killed, and those Japanese war dead are enshrined in heloes cemeteries such as Kalibata Heroes Cemetery,or Taman Makam Pahlawan Kalibata. Therefore, many Indonesians believe that Indonesia achieved its independence thanks to Japan.
• Merdeka 17805 was produced in partnership with Katsuaki Asano, the president of Tokyo Film Production, also his partner in the movie "Pride, the Fateful Moment" (1998), that stirred debate by the way it depicted the Tokyo war crimes tribunal and General Hideki Tojo.
• Kase was also among the main advocates of the movie The Truth about Nanjing (2007), that negates Japan's responsibility in the Nanjing massacre.

See also

• Japanese nationalism
• Nippon Kaigi
• Nanking Massacre denial
• Historical revisionism (negationism)

External links

• Official Web Site (In Japanese)
• "World View: Hideaki Kase", Newsweek 24 March 2007. Retrieved 31 March 2007