In the entrance hall of Tokyo’s Yushukan war museum, a temple to Japanese revisionism, the first thing you notice is the dark green livery of the legendary Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter aircraft, in its day the world’s most advanced carrier-based fighter. More manoeuvrable than the British Spitfire and with an astonishingly long range, it greatly aided Japan’s war effort before the Allies developed the technology and tactics to beat it. Deployed in the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, three years later, when Japan’s defeat had become inevitable, the Zero was being sent out on desperate kamikaze missions.

东京靖国神社内的战争博物馆——游就馆(Yushukan)是日本修正主义的神社。走进游就馆的大门，你首先注意到的就是具有传奇色彩的零式战斗机——这种暗绿色涂装的战斗机当年是世界上最先进的舰载战斗机。零式战斗机比英国喷火战斗机(Spitfire)操纵性能更好，而且作战半径长得惊人，在盟军发展出相应的技术和战术之前，它极大地帮助了日本的战争努力。1941年，零式战斗机投入日本对珍珠港的突袭，三年后日本战败已成定局时，这种战机被用于“神风”自杀式攻击。

The aircraft has become an icon for Japan’s small – but vocal – ultra-rightwingers, the scowling types who man the sinister black vans that circle Japanese cities barking xenophobic slogans and harking back to the imperial “glory days”. For these men, who bemoan Japan’s postwar loss of dignity as a US “client state”, the aircraft is an exquisite evocation of engineering prowess and fighting spirit in an era before the Americans had stripped the emperor of his divine status.

零式战斗机已成为日本为数不多但声势浩大的极右翼分子的偶像。这些右翼分子往往面色阴沉，开着预示不祥的黑色面包车在日本各地巡游，高呼仇外口号，缅怀帝国的“辉煌时代”。这些人抱怨日本在二战后成为美国的“附庸国”而丧失尊严。对他们来说，零式战斗机完美象征着美国剥夺天皇神圣地位之前那个时代的工程实力和奋斗精神。

It is something of a surprise, then, that Hayao Miyazaki, the world-renowned director of children’s animated films with pacifist, even socialist, leanings, should have chosen to make his latest film about the Zero. Mr Miyazaki’s films, including the delicately beautiful My Neighbour Totoro and the Oscar-winning Spirited Away, enthral with their depiction of wide-eyed childhood and the hidden Shinto world of wood spirits and river gods. Flight and machinery – in all its Heath Robinson-hissing wonder – figure prominently, and The Wind Rises , which came out in Japan last month, is a tribute to what Mr Miyazaki calls “the extraordinary genius” of the Zero’s designer Jiro Horikoshi.

因此，世界知名的儿童动画电影导演、带有和平主义甚至社会主义倾向的宫崎骏(Hayao Miyazaki)以零式战斗机为素材制作其最新的电影，多少有些令人意外。宫崎骏的电影，包括制作精美的《龙猫》(My Neighbour Totoro)和奥斯卡获奖影片《千与千寻》(Spirited Away)，通过描述天真的童年以及其中有着木灵和水神的隐形神道世界而令观众们着迷。上月在日本上映的影片《起风了》(The Wind Rises)，是对零式战斗机设计者堀越二郎(Jiro Horikoshi)的纪念——宫崎骏将其称为“非凡的天才”。片中飞行和机械的画面很多，都以神奇的动画形式呈现。

Though the fighter was the same size as contemporary models, it could fly faster and farther. “Why?” Mr Miyazaki asks in an interview with the newspaper Asahi Shimbun. “Because Horikoshi intuitively understood the mystery of aerodynamics that nobody could explain in words.” For him, the Zero represents “one of the few things that we Japanese could be proud of” in our “humiliating history”.

尽管零式战斗机与同时代战机一样大小，但它却能飞得更快、更远。宫崎骏在接受《朝日新闻》(Asahi Shimbun)采访时表示：“原因何在？这是因为堀越二郎在直觉上明白没有人可以用语言解释的空气动力学的奥秘。”对他来说，零式战斗机代表着在日本“屈辱的历史中，我们日本人可以感到自豪的为数不多的东西之一”。

You might have thought Japanese conservatives would be delighted. In fact, Mr Miyazaki has received an outpouring of hatred, and been labelled as “anti-Japanese” and a “traitor” on rightwing chat sites. The cause of such ire, in addition to the pacifist tone of The Wind Rises, which portrays the war as a pitiful waste of human life, is an essay he published at the time of the film’s launch in July. There, in an eccentric and somewhat rambling style, he strongly opposes revision of the pacifist constitution, which forbids Japan from waging war, and chides politicians such as Shinzo Abe, the hawkish prime minister, for airbrushing history. Mr Miyazaki urges proper compensation for the “comfort women”, young women from Korea, China, Japan and elsewhere who were often tricked or forced into working in military brothels. (Japan’s rightwing insists they were all volunteers.) More controversially, he suggests dividing or sharing with China the Japanese-administered islands that are the subject of a nasty stand-off between Tokyo and Beijing. In the Asahi interview, he said the ultraright had adopted the genius of Horikoshi, the Zero’s creator, as an “outlet for their patriotism and inferiority complex”. In making the film, he said: “I hope to have snatched Horikoshi back from those people.”

你或许认为日本保守派将会感到高兴。实际上，宫崎骏受到了许多保守派人士的憎恨，在右翼的聊天网站上他还被贴上了“反日”和“叛国者”的标签。《起风了》将战争描述为对人类生命的令人惋惜的摧残，表达出和平主义倾向。除此之外，宫崎骏招致如此嫉恨的原因，还在于他在今年7月该片上映之时发表的一篇文章。他在文中以一种另类且有些随意的笔触，强烈反对修订禁止日本发动战争的和平主义宪法，并对鹰派首相安倍晋三(Shinzo Abe)等政客粉饰历史的做法提出批评。宫崎骏敦促对“慰安妇”进行妥善的赔偿。“慰安妇”是指来自韩国、中国以及其他地区的年轻妇女，往往被欺骗或者被以暴力方式胁迫做随军妓女（日本的右翼分子坚称她们全都是自愿者）。更有争议的是，他提议日本与中国分割或共享目前处于日本控制下的岛屿——中日两国政府正因这些岛屿陷入紧张的对峙。他在接受《朝日新闻》采访时表示，极右翼分子把零式战斗机发明者堀越二郎的天赋作为“宣泄他们爱国热情和自卑情结的出口”。他在谈及制作这部影片的目的时表示：“我希望将堀越二郎与那些人区分开。”

The argument over The Wind Rises matches shifting domestic opinions about Japan’s obligations to the past and its relations with its neighbours, particularly towards a more assertive and militarily powerful China. According to a recent Pew poll, 63 per cent of Japanese think Japan has apologised enough for the war, a figure that rises to 73 per cent of those aged 18-29. How, say defenders of Japanese youth, can they be expected to feel guilty about events that happened more than half a century before they were born? (David Cameron, the UK prime minister, said something similar when he issued a non-apology about the British massacre of Indian civilians in Amritsar in 1919.)

与《起风了》引起争论相呼应的是，日本国内关于本国对过去的责任以及与邻国（尤其是与更强硬、军事实力强大的中国）关系的观点正逐渐发生变化。最近的皮尤民调(Pew)显示，63%的日本人认为日本已为战争罪行做出足够道歉——在那些年龄在18-29岁的年轻人当中，持这一观点的比例升至73%。为日本年轻人辩护的人表示，他们凭什么要对自己出生之前逾半个世纪发生的事件感到内疚？英国首相戴维·卡梅伦(David Cameron)拒绝对1919年英国人在阿姆利屠杀印度平民的事件作出诚恳道歉时，也说了类似的话。

Japanese attitudes have shifted from the 1990s, when polls suggested the majority thought Japan had not apologised or atoned enough. Mr Abe, for one, has rejected the so-called “apology diplomacy”; successive leaders have issued variants of the famous Murayama apology – named after former prime minister Tomiichi Murayama – in which he expressed “his profound remorse for these acts of aggression, colonial rule, and the like [which] caused such unbearable suffering and sorrow for so many people”. Such statements have been routinely dismissed as insincere by neighbours, particularly in northeast Asia. The Pew survey found that only 2 per cent of Koreans and 6 per cent of Chinese accepted Japan’s apology, compared with 48 per cent and 35 per cent respectively in the Philippines and Indonesia, countries that also suffered the brutality of Japanese invasion.

日本人的态度与上世纪90年代相比已经有所转变，当时民调显示绝大多数日本人认为日本没有做出足够道歉或补偿。例如，安倍晋三拒绝所谓的“道歉外交”；日本历任领导人都发表过与著名的“村山道歉”类似的道歉声明——前首相村山富市(Tomiichi Murayama)曾表示，针对“日本的侵略和殖民统治行为对这么多人造成的巨大痛苦和不幸表示深切的愧疚”。此类声明经常被日本邻国认为是不真诚的，尤其是在东北亚。皮尤调查发现，只有2%的韩国人和6%的中国人接受日本的道歉，而在同样曾遭受日本野蛮侵略的菲律宾和印尼，这一比例分别为48%和35%。

Mr Abe this week sent an offering to the Yasukuni shrine, where the “souls” of 2.5m war dead, including 14 convicted class-A war criminals, are enshrined. He refrained from visiting himself to limit the diplomatic fallout. He said the Japanese would “deeply engrave the lessons of the war in our hearts”, but skipped the usual references to Japan’s invasion and its pledge never to wage war again.

安倍晋三上周向靖国神社献上祭祀费——靖国神社供奉着250万名日本军人的“亡灵”，其中包括14名被判有罪的甲级战犯。他没有亲自去参拜靖国神社，以降低外交冲击波。安倍晋三表示，日本人将“牢记战争的教训”，但他没有循例提及日本的侵略，也没有重复日本永不再发动战争的誓言。

These days, the Japanese left is being shouted down more regularly, yet the views of people such as Mr Miyazaki are more common than is immediately apparent. According to Pew, 56 per cent of Japanese still oppose constitutional revision. True, that is down from 67 per cent in 2006. Yet when Toru Hashimoto, mayor of Osaka, sought to justify the use of “comfort women”, three-quarters of Japanese rejected his stance, destroying his political career.

如今，日本左派的声音更频繁地遭到压制，但与表面印象相比，宫崎骏等人的观点更为普遍。皮尤调查显示，56%的日本人仍反对修改宪法。没错，这一比例较2006年的67%有所下降。然而，当大阪市长桥下彻(Toru Hashimoto)寻求为使用“慰安妇”辩护时，四分之三的日本人不接受他的立场，这葬送了他的政治前途。

There is still a fairly strong bulwark against constitutional change, which requires not only a two-thirds majority in parliament but ratification in a public referendum. Even Mr Abe admitted last month that he did not have the numbers. And despite the rightwing attacks on Mr Miyazaki, much of the public is backing him in the only way it can: since its release four weeks ago, The Wind Rises has consistently been number one at the box office.

日本阻止修宪的屏障仍然相当坚实——它不仅需要议会三分之二的多数通过，而且还要获得全民公投的批准。即便是安倍晋三也在上月承认，他要修宪的话，还没有足够民意支持。尽管右翼分子对宫崎骏进行攻击，但大部分公众仍以最好的方式支持他：自四周前上映以来，《起风了》一直稳居票房首位。