On the eve of “the date that will live in infamy” – as President Franklin D. Roosevelt described the surprise bombing of Pearl Harbour on December 7, 1941 – avoid Tokyo’s Yushukan War Museum if you’re angered by fake history.

The battleship USS California, struck by bombs and aerial torpedoes, settles into the muck of Pearl Harbour during the December 7, 1941 Japanese attack. Credit:AP

Next door, the Imperial Shrine is no stranger to controversy, attracting vehement condemnation from China, Taiwan and both Koreas whenever visited by a Japanese politician. Of the 2.5 million people commemorated in the shrine, 1068 are World War II war criminals, including seven who were hanged after Tokyo's postwar equivalent of the Nuremberg trials.

The shrine’s adjoining war museum has largely escaped scrutiny. Yet its unapologetic approach to the abominable atrocities committed by Imperial Japan are self-evident before you even buy a ticket. The lobby is dominated by a steam engine, Locomotive 31, built in Japan in 1936. But its place here is because it was “commandeered to the south for the Greater East Asian War” where “it took part in the opening ceremony of the Thai-Burma railway”.

That’s the infamous Thai-Burma railway where 12,000 Allied prisoners of war and 90,000 Asian captives died during its terrible construction. As for the Greater East Asian War, most of us call that World War II – while “the south” refers to countries the Imperial forces invaded: Korea, southern China, Thailand, modern day Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, New Guinea.