On December 17, 1940, Japanese children celebrate the recent signing of the Tripartite Pact earlier in the year. Image recolorized, courtesy Hidenori Watanave. In April, the Ukrainian government issued a deletion, correction, and apology after sharing an image displaying a former Japanese emperor side by side with Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini as part of an official video entitled “Fascism and Nazism were defeated in 1945.” The incident showed how some people in Japan continue to be sensitive to the country's history as a wartime aggressor, and the determination of the Japanese government to wield its powerful position over Ukraine to impose a sanitized version of the past. On April 1, about five weeks after being invaded by Russia, the Ukrainian government shared the video on its official Twitter account and condemned “contemporary ruscism,” (combining the words “Russia” and ‘racism”). The video included images of Germany's Adolf Hitler, Italy's Benito Mussolini, and Japan's Emperor Hirohito. The three countries are widely regarded as aggressor nations that started the Second World War. Japan had already launched a war with China in 1937, and would trigger a global war by attacking the United States, the United Kingdom, and other countries in December 1941. Several weeks went by until Japanese netizens noticed the video, causing an uproar that led to condemnations by various far-right politicians in Japan, and then the Japanese government itself. The Ukrainian government deleted the original tweet, issued a Twitter retraction that included the offending image, and then reshared the same video to Twitter, minus Emperor Hirohito. Ukraine's ambassador to Japan, Sergiy Korsunsky, apologized on Twitter: На цьому кадрі використана фотографія імператора Японії, який не мав відношення до розв'язування війни і фашистської ідеології.Японці дуже ображені, оскільки це не справедливо і не відповідає історичним фактам. Наполегливо просимо виправити.🇯🇵є одним з найбільших наших союзників. pic.twitter.com/7F1sMN4aD1 — セルギー・コルスンスキー駐日ウクライナ特命全権大使 (@KorsunskySergiy) April 24, 2022 The [now deleted] image included a photograph of the [former] Emperor of Japan, who had nothing to do with the outbreak of war, and with Fascist ideology. The Japanese are [rightfully] very offended because it is not a fair [comparison], and does not correspond to historical facts. We urge [the creator of the video] to correct this. Japan is one of our greatest allies. The criticism of the tweet was led by prominent politicians, such as Sato Masahisa, who chairs the foreign relations committee of Japan's governing Liberal Democratic Party. In an April 24 tweet, Sato said: この問題動画について、外交部会長の佐藤からも、外務省欧州局等に、早急に対応を取るよう申し入れております。 As chair of the party's foreign affairs committee, I have requested that the European section of Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs immediately look into this issue. The Japanese government, which has provided aid that includes “non-lethal military equipment” to Ukraine since the start of the Russian invasion, officially requested that the reference to Emperor Hirohito be removed from the video. The government of Ukraine quickly complied and posted an official apology on Twitter. The Ukrainian government did not stop there, and went on to share a poem explicitly connected with Japanese nationalism and militarism: Oh dear. The official acc't of the Ukrainian Embassy in Japan actually tweeted a poem that was famously read by Emp. Meiji shortly before the start of the Russo-Japanese War and later read by Emp. Showa in the lead-up to the Asia-Pacific War (apparently as part of their apology?) https://t.co/io1T2IT8UT — Keishi Kumashiro 神代啓史 (@kumashirokeishi) April 25, 2022 However, the Japanese government was not finished considering the issue. In response to a question posed by Sankei, a business daily with an ultraconservative editorial stance, one prominent official mused that “there is a deeply rooted misconception among the international community that [Imperial] Japan was a Nazi or totalitarian state.” Reporter from @Sankei_news prefaces a leading question to Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Isozaki: “In light of this incident, I think we can say that there is a deeply rooted misconception among the international community that [Imperial] Japan was a Nazi or totalitarian state.” https://t.co/gwqNitpCMn — Keishi Kumashiro 神代啓史 (@kumashirokeishi) April 25, 2022 The Japanese government's protest is based on the historical belief that Emperor Hirohito, Japan's head of state at the start of World War II, should not be compared with totalitarian dictators such as Hitler and Mussolini. There are a variety of popular historical narratives that either downplay or excuse Emperor Hirohito's culpability for the war.