Since 9/11, American politicians and pundits have frequently cited modern Japanese history to legitimate whatever position they are advocating.  The post-invasion reconstruction of Iraq, for example, would be just like the post-1945 American Occupation of Japan, we were told (an analogy that most responsible Japan historians shot down immediately:  as some noted, if we were really going to repeat the Japan model, we would need to start by retaining Sadaam Hussein as president). 

   Lately, another less celebrated Japanese precedent has been cited.  Is waterboarding torture?  As Eric Holder noted in his confirmation hearings earlier this month (video here), we had no problem recognizing it as a war crime when the Japanese practiced it against Allied prisoners during WWII.  There is a useful new article by Kinue Tokudome on the Japan Focus website tracing through both the history of waterboarding by Japanese forces and the recently revived memory of that past in the U.S.  The memory has been recovered and recounted here, she notes, but the Japanese state remains awfully quiet on the subject.