Tojo & Hirohito
Japan's peaceful commercial relations were successively obstructed, primarily by the American rupture of commercial relations, and this was a grave threat to the survival of Japan. [...] If one were to consider that there was virtually no possibility of success through the US-Japan negotiations, the military and economic pressures would only force Japan into further crisis if time were allowed to pass in vain.
— Hideki Tojo
Hideki Tojo (1884-1948) was the general for the Japanese army and Prime Minister during World War II. In a book he wrote in 1934, he argued that for Japan to survive, it must became a totalitarian "national defense state" that fully harnessed Japan's supposedly superior willpower to fight wars on a massive scale. Tojo, much like Hitler and Mussolini, was a radical imperialist who wanted to build a Japanese empire that could "spread its own moral principles to the world."
After Nazi Germany invaded France, Japan started moving troops into French Indochina. In retaliation, the United States imposed sanctions and embargoes on Japan. These hurt Japan's economy and escalated tensions between Japan and the US, as most goods, like oil, were imported into the country. After attempting negotiations concerning the embargoes and sanctions with no success, Tojo and his military began planning the attack on Pearl Harbor.
After Japan's unconditional surrender to the Allied powers, Hideki Tojo was put on trial for war crimes and executed by hanging on December 23, 1948.
Hirohito (1901-1989), posthumously named Shōwa, was the Emperor of Japan from 1926 until his death. Although the extent he played in World War II is debated, Tojo and the Japanese people exalted him as a sort of living god to fight for in honor of the Japanese Empire.
As emperor, Hirohito saw the rapid industrialization and militarization of Japan following the end of World War I and sakoku (the isolationist policy that barred all foreigners entry and made free trade outside the country impossible), and the transformation of Japan into a world power with the ninth-largest world economy and third-largest navy. During World War II, he saw his empire destroyed with atomic weapons, and, following the end of the war, he became an icon for Japanese recovery and constitutionalism, under which Japan modernized and became the world's second largest economy.