He wasn’t surprised when his phone rang, nor that the screen identified the caller as Prime Minister Fumio Sanetomi. He considered ignoring it, but his plans were advancing at a pace that was already at the edge of control. Keeping the country’s politicians complacent was desirable, though not absolutely critical to carrying out those plans. Sanetomi and his hangers-on continued to wrap themselves in the illusion that they were relevant, and for now that was convenient. Soon, though, the politicians would be revealed for what they were: weak and honorless men who had spent three-quarters of a century slowly bleeding their own people.

“Good afternoon, Prime Minister,” Takahashi said, putting the phone to his ear.

“And to you, General. It’s my understanding that you’re at Yasukuni.”

“You’re well informed, as it seems is everyone else. It was my hope to make this a reflective, private affair.”

“I’m certain it was,” Sanetomi replied. His voice was typically even, reverberating with a solemnity that the electorate found hypnotic but Takahashi found insufferable.

“Unfortunately, anonymity is difficult for a man of your stature and accomplishments,” the prime minister continued. “Because of this I must ask you to remain in your car and order your driver to turn around immediately.”

Takahashi’s jaw tightened at the smooth attempt to manipulate him with flattery. Prior to his career as a politician, Sanetomi had been a schoolteacher, and what he’d learned handling children had proved extremely useful in dealing with the sheep he surrounded himself with. But the general wasn’t one of them. He had been defending Japan since Sanetomi was crying at his mother’s breast.

“General? Are you still there?”

Takahashi let his silence draw out. In recent years the shrine had become one of many flashpoints in Japan’s declining relationship with China. The Chinese, instead of wielding their growing power and wealth to break free of the past, had decided to use it to reopen old wounds and humiliate their smaller neighbor to the east.

The shrine housed men who had been judged war criminals for their service to the emperor during World War II—a judgment that he found not only a disgrace, but personally offensive. The quote “History is written by the victors” had been widely attributed to Winston Churchill, and it seemed fitting in this case. While Japanese soldiers who had killed in the throes of war were labeled monsters, the Americans were held up as heroes for using nuclear weapons against Japanese civilians and the Chinese continued to worship the butcher Mao.