According to one of Japan’s leading newspaper, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe spent part of New Year's eve watching a movie that celebrates the life of a pilot from the kamikaze team. The film tells the story of a Japanese pilot who launched a suicide attack on the US military during the Second World War. Abe told the newspaper he was "moved" by the drama.

"Eien no zero" tells the story of Kyuzo Miyabe, a young Kamikaze pilot who is obsessed with life and terrified of death. He is repeatedly scolded by his superior officers for being reluctant to participate in the war in the pacific. |In the end Miyabe follows orders and carries out a suicide attack against a US aircraft carrier.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said he was moved by the story.. a comment that has attracted critics who believe the film casts the country’s militarist past in a positive light.

The so-called "Kamikaze team" was a suicide squad made up of Japanese youth who were mainly sixteen and seventeen year olds. Most of the members had been indoctrinated in a fanatical militaristic ideology. The squad was established in 1944, when the Japanese army suffered crushing defeats in the Asia-Pacific during World War Two. The Kamikaze pilots were ordered to launch suicide attacks by flying their planes directly into US ships.

The film, and Abe’s comments, appear to encourage the glorification and distortion of history that includes brutal atrocities for which no atonement has been made. The Kamikaze team is described as heroes who sacrificed their lives for their country. The British newspaper the Guardian has reported that survivors of the team said many of them were forced into wars.

The Japanese media have also reported that for many Japanese, it is a shame that the fervant ideology led many young kamikaze pilots to their needless deaths.

In 2012, the US Wall Street Journal published an editorial headlined "Japan marches into a military revival." It warned of Japan’s military expansion and expanding nationalism. On the day the editorial was published, the Associated Press reported that an increase in Japanese nationalism would likely exacerbate Japan’s already tense ties with China and South Korea, which in turn has many worrisome implications for the US.

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