Japan’s enduring fascination with kamikaze pilots

Former Japanese kamikaze pilot Hichiro Naemura wears his old uniform at London’s Imperial War Museum in 2002. Reuters

Alexander Wooley

Jan 13, 2025 – 12.34pm

Email LinkedIn Twitter Facebook

Subscribe to gift this article

Gift 5 articles to anyone you choose each month when you subscribe.

Subscribe now

Already a subscriber?

One Saturday afternoon in October, families, schoolkids and the elderly milled about the Chiran Peace Museum, near Kagoshima in south-west Japan. In this country, many things branded “peace” are likely to be about war. Chiran is no exception: it is a museum dedicated to kamikaze pilots.

Momoka Takashima wanted to come with her parents to Chiran, a former army airfield, after her school trip to the cinema last year to see Till We Meet Again on the Lily Hill – a film about an unhappy young woman from the present day who goes back in time and falls in love with a kamikaze pilot.

Foreign Policy