Spotlight: Japan's far-right kindergarten in escalating controversy over sowing seeds of hatred, murky land deal ,

On 21 Oct., 1944, a Japanese suicide bomber deliberately crashed into the foremast of the heavy cruiser HMAS Australia in the battle of Leyte Gulf, killing 30 and injuring 64 others.

That was the beginning of Japan's cold-blooded Kamikaze suicide attack campaign, and the end of the road for the Japanese military aggression in the Second World War.

Yet, more than seven decades later, "Cherry Blossoms of the Same Year," the song adored by Kamikaze pilots and an incarnation of Japan' s imperialist ambitions, is still performed by kindergartners in the Japanese city of Osaka.

PATRIOTISM OR MILITARISM?

Osaka's Trukamoto Kindergarten aims to instill in its students a sense of so-called patriotism. It imposes a curriculum intended to promote a militaristic education from World War II.

In an online-video, uniformed kids of the kindergarten were singing the Kamikaze song at the Osaka gokoku Shrine, a local branch of the Yasukuni Shrine that honors Japan's 14 class-A war criminals.

The three- to five year olds were also reciting in stilted Japanese the prewar Imperial Rescript on Education, an 1890 edict meant for nurturing "ideal" citizens that would sacrifice for the emperor and the country.

"Should emergencies arise, offer yourself to the state," they chanted.

What's more worrisome is that Japan's senior leadership believes that such pre-war style education is what the country needs.

Yasunori Kagoike, kindergarten chief, also heads the Osaka branch of Nippon Kaigi, or Japan Conference, a nationalist lobby group with close ties to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his cabinet.

During her visit to the nursery school in April, 2014, Akie Abe, wife of Shinzo Abe, said her husband highly approved what the kids were learning there.

"My husband also thinks that the education policy here is excellent," she told the students' parents.

She also expressed her worry that the efforts to raise a new generation of Japanese nationalists could be dampened once these kids finish kindergarten and go on to other public schools that offer no such right-wing education.

In that case, Moritomo Gakuen, an Osaka school company that also owns the Trukamoto kindergarten, is going to open a primary school this April to continue its ultra-nationalistic brainwashing.

LAND SCANDAL

While endorsing the school, Akie Abe also served as the "honorary principal" of the private elementary school though she resigned Friday amid an escalating controversy over the low price the school paid for government land.

Moritomo Gakuen has recently come under public scrutiny over the purchase of a plot of land owned by the government in Toyonaka, Osaka, at a price significantly lower than the appraised amount.

The entity bought the 8,770-square-meter plot for 134 million yen (1.18 million U.S. dollars) last June, about one tenth the cost of land the same size in the same area.

Notably, the organization had spent 132 million yen (1.16 million U.S. dollars) to clean up waste on the land, which means it spent little for the land itself.

Michael Cucek, an adjunct professor at Temple University's Tokyo campus, said Abe's wife is often seen as a proxy for the prime minister, who during his first term in 2006-2007 oversaw the revision of education laws to put patriotism back in school curricula.

Abe denied any involvement in the land purchase, yet at Friday's parliamentary questioning session, opposition lawmakers summoned finance and education ministry officials to clarify how the school obtained such a massive discount.

SEEDS OF HATRED

The kindergarten is also known to inspire hatred of Koreans and Chinese among its students.

During a field day in 2015, the school allegedly made students take an oath blaming Korea and China for making Japan a malevolent nation.

The school eventually sparked widespread controversy when it sent out fliers in December 2016, criticizing Korean residents in Japan.

"Korean residents in Japan and Chinese people are devious," read the flier, which also called Chinese people "shinajin," a derogatory term.

"The problem is that people, who are Korean at heart, reside in Japan as Japanese," read the flier.

The school, though warned by the local government as having violated the "Anti-hate Speech Bill" passed in June 2016 and later apologized, did not show real remorse, with the principal's wife writing an explanation to parents saying, "it's not discrimination. I just hate Koreans and Chinese."

In fact, criticizing Korean and Chinese residents is a tactic used by right-wing conservatives for whom maintaining ethnic homogeneity is a source of pride.

FURIOUS PARENTS

Many parents have long been furious about the kindergarten, not only for its militaristic orientation but also for its unbecoming staff.

"The teacher is not even willing to take time to know a child's disposition but was quick to criticize a mere four-year-old," said a mother who asked not to be named.

She recalled how one day when she picked up her daughter from school, the teacher asked, "Did your daughter even have breakfast in the morning? Why does she speak so softly?"

She was embarrassed and angry all at once, saying the little girl was just very shy and it would take time to adapt.

A few more days past and her girl took home a letter written by the vice principal, saying she developed a "nasty" habit of looking askance at people.

"My daughter never exhibited anything like that at home. She must have been terrified at school," she said.

Another parent had a similar experience with school officials. "The deputy principal called and lashed out at me, saying my son wouldn't stop crying and I should be responsible," said another mother on condition of anonymity.

Within the next week, the deputy chief called a few times complaining about her son. "She even said 'He smelled as stinky as a dog.'" She was forced to withdraw her son from the kindergarten a few days later.

Another parent received a handwritten letter from the deputy principal in February last year that bluntly said, "I hate Koreans and Chinese." The woman, who is ethnically Korean but a naturalized Japanese, pulled her child out of the kindergarten soon after. Enditem

(Xinhua reporters Lan Jianzhong in Tokyo, Zhong Ya in Beijing contributed to the report