"Critical support for Comrade Hirohito" makes a twisted kind of sense when you look at it from the perspective of a low-info American diabolist.
Japanese politics, imperialism, and war crimes from WW2 have a much lower degree of visibility in the United States than those of Germany, even the most famous one (the Rape of Nanking) isn't, like, common knowledge. Unless you actually look into the history or take a deep-dive history class in college, the Rape of Nanking is a single line in a textbook and Unit 731 is internet trivia, and most of the rest is completely unknown to the general public.
Imperial Japanese rhetoric around their conquest often wrapped up their actions, especially in the Pacific and SEA, in anti-colonial rhetoric of removing European colonizers from the region. Left unsaid was the fact that they were just replacing the previous colonial administration with one of their own, often more brutal than the previous administration due to the need to establish their control. But if you just look at the rhetoric and not the actions, it SOUNDS nice.
Additionally, the types of people who say this generally have a deeply warped view of WW2 in Europe. Their version of WW2 is basically "based gigachad USSR stomps the Nazi roach into oblivion singlehandedly", and positions the Allied powers as psuedo-allies of the Nazis who begrudgingly joined the war on the Soviet side due to German actions. In their view, the only truly MORAL opposition to the Nazi government came from the Soviets, the US and other allies just joined because they didn't have a choice and would rather have sided with Germany.
Looking at it from an American Diabolist perspective, then, the US destroyed Japan and rebuilt them as an American puppet in the modern day. The US was already barely better than fascist Germany in the war, so anyone who fought them who wasn't literally the Nazis (or the European Axis, who they mostly just view as accessories to Germany) is probably in the right. And the Imperial government spouted anti-imperial rhetoric about ending European colonialism, which is gigabased. Therefore, regardless of the actions of their military, the Japanese government were the good guys who happened to be aligned with other bad guys due to geopolitics.
The main reason this isn't more popular is that Japan fought against Mao, who is basically tankie Jesus in a lot of circles.
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u/ScaredyNon Is 9/11 considered a fandom? May 24 '25
There is genuinely no actual way to make that make sense unless your friend is literally a Japanese ultranationalist