At his trial Aizawa was treated gingerly by the five judges and was allowed to use the witness stand to attack statesmen, politicians and the zaibatsu (family business combines such as Mitsui and Mitsubishi) for corruption. Pleading guilty to the charge of murder, he claimed he had only done his duty as an honorable soldier of the Emperor. “The country was in a deplorable state: the farmers were impoverished, officials were involved in scandals, diplomacy was weak, and the prerogative of the Supreme Command had been violated by the naval-limitation agreements,” he declared in the stilted prose
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