Akira Amari thinks the world has the Japanese pegged all wrong. The country really isn't trying to metamorphose into some refurbished Godzilla military monster, claims Japan's new minister of economy, trade and industry. But he accepts the fact that memories die hard and older generations, especially, find it hard to forget the enormous pain and suffering Japan inflicted on the Asian neighbourhood.
But Mr Amari begs you to look at Japan in a straightforward way, too. He begs you, in fact, to look at the Japanese the way Hollywood's Clint Eastwood has done in his film Letters from Iwo Jima.
That film, he insists, gives the true picture of the Japanese. They are not warmongers, sadists or imperialists, but are nothing more, nor nothing less, than messed-up human beings like the rest of us - and more or less as miserable as everyone else caught up in the all-encompassing misery of the second world war.
'This movie left a deep impression in Japan,' he said. 'It reminded everyone that in the history of our two great countries, there have been times of great conflict.' This, he says, must never happen again: 'The Japan-US relationship is more important than ever.'
This moving Eastwood film, already nominated as one of last year's best pictures, caught the Japanese eye and moved the Japanese soul.
Mr Amari said: 'We were very much touched. What it shows is that, be they the enemy or the ally, soldiers are all the same. It really caught the feeling of the average soldier on the ground.'
Why did Japan fight so hard, so long and so obviously in such a disastrously losing cause? The Japanese soldier, Mr Amari explains, was terrified of what the Americans would do to their families and loved ones if they ever got to Japan.