Emperor Hirohito’s memoir bought by Japanese surgeon criticised for praising Nazis

TOKYO: A Japanese cosmetic surgeon criticised for praising Nazis and playing down Japan’s wartime atrocities won an auction for a memoir by Emperor Hirohito that chronicles the nation’s slide into World War Two, paying US$ 275,000 for the document.

Katsuya Takasu, who often appears on TV shows in Japan, has been blasted by a Jewish human rights body, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, for violating ‘all norms of decency’ by dismissing as fabrications the Holocaust and the Nanjing massacre in China.

“I think both Nanjing and Auschwitz are fabrications,” Takasu said in a message on social network Twitter in October 2015.

“There was no doubt that the Jews were persecuted,” he has tweeted, but also praised Nazi scientists’ contributions to science, medicine and other fields.

Contacted by Reuters yesterday, Takasu said he bought the handwritten document, known as the ‘ Emperor’s Monologue’, because he thought it contained a message to royals and the Japanese people, and should be kept in Japan.

The document record events dating from the 1920s, such as Hirohito’s stated resolve not to oppose future cabinet decisions.

It caused a sensation when made public in 1990, reigniting a debate over the emperor’s responsibility for the war.

The account was dictated to one of Hirohito’s aides in 1946, when a defeated Japan was occupied by Allied forces and the emperor faced the possibility of being tried as a war criminal — a step that ultimately was not taken.

In a telephone interview, Takasu said his social media posts had been intentionally misunderstood. — Reuters