Of the membership of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s new cabinet more than three-quarters want to honour convicted war criminals like General Hideki Tojo, and one minister wants to rescind a 1995 apology for Japanese war crimes. Some even deny that any atrocities took place and want history textbooks changed to reflect that. Can’t they see how outrageous all this is to their Asian neighbours, who suffered terribly under Japanese occupation? It’s also a slap in the face to Japan’s friends abroad, who have laboured tirelessly to foster reconciliation, not to mention the families of the PoWs who suffered in the Bataan Death March, the building of the Burma railway and other atrocities. The nationalists even cast Japan as the victim, arguing that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki “atoned” for any aggression on its part. This is pernicious nonsense. There’s nothing wrong with fostering patriotic pride, but it should be for the wonders of Japanese art and literature, its pre-modern civilisation, not for its 20th century militarism. Politicians should take a wide view, but like “horses in blinkers”, this lot can’t “see beyond their noses”

. (The Japan Times, Tokyo).

Some people cannot distinguish between patriotism, which is harmless social glue, and nationalism, which is one of the roots of both World Wars and a menace to peace and human contentment.  The Japanese are particularly bad (some of them), but the poison of nationalism thrives all over the world (e.g the gents who want Britain to leave the EU because they want to get rid of the Poles, and those who are never happier than when they are bashing in the heads of some hapless Moslem somewhere).

I would like to think that Epicurus, were he alive today, would be advocating counseling for all these rah! rah! loudmouths, and if that failed, strong doses of sedative.