I’ve written here before about the Yomiuri Newspaper’s long history of trying to popularize a rewriting of the Japanese Constitution to allow Japan to reclaim war powers. So this news story about the Yomiuri news baron Tsuneo Watanabe caught me a bit off guard:

Mr. Watanabe, now nearly 80 years old, has stepped into the light. He has recently granted long, soul-baring interviews in which he has questioned the rising nationalism he has cultivated so assiduously in the pages of his newspaper, the conservative Yomiuri — the world’s largest, with a circulation of 14 million. Now, he talks about the need to acknowledge Japan’s violent wartime history and reflects on his wife’s illness and his own, as well as the joys of playing with his new hamsters.

Now, the idea that this guy would question Japan’s rising nationalism was quite a shocker. But the revelation about hamsters is… well, stunning, I suppose. Almost jarring in juxtaposition to the serious issues at hand. You’ve got to admit, when you reach that last word, you kind of look at it again in a mental double-take, and wonder if you read it right. Could the turn against nationalism and the hamsters be somehow related? Did the hamsters speak to him and convince him to change his mind? Or is he just becoming kind of soft and fuzzy in his old age?

It’s kind of difficult to reconcile this man’s long effort to revise the Constitution to allow for wartime powers with his present turn to blunt Japanese nationalism. Watanabe is now openly criticizing Prime Minister Koizumi for not understanding the controversy over his official visits to the nationalist Yasukuni Shrine:

“This person Koizumi doesn’t know history or philosophy, doesn’t study, doesn’t have any culture. That’s why he says stupid things, like, ‘What’s wrong about worshiping at Yasukuni?’ Or, ‘China and Korea are the only countries that criticize Yasukuni.’ This stems from his ignorance.”

Watanabe also criticized the romanticization of kamikaze pilots and other young Japanese men sent out to war:

“It’s all a lie that they left filled with braveness and joy, crying, ‘Long live the emperor!’ ” he said, angrily. “They were sheep at a slaughterhouse. Everybody was looking down and tottering. Some were unable to stand up and were carried and pushed into the plane by maintenance soldiers.”

So Mr. Watanabe is going to have his newspaper publish a yearlong series of articles on the events of World War II. Which should be quite something, considering the Yomiuri’s history.

Let’s hope that those hamsters keep on encouraging him in this new direction.