PARIS -- Recently in Japan, traveling to and fro around Tokyo, I was surprised by the sight -- through a train window -- of the Japanese "rising sun" flag, or hinomaru. The moment was remarkable because, all that day, it was the only flag I saw. If I had covered as much ground in the U.S.A., in an area as densely settled as greater Tokyo, I probably would have spotted the Stars and Stripes displayed in hundreds of places -- over post offices, on car antennas, lapels, policemen’s sleeves, on warehouses, bridges, front-lawn flagpoles, t-shirts, halter tops and Coca-Cola cups.

The difference lies in history. But a parallel looms, perhaps, in the future.

In Japan, the end of World War II marked the eclipse of a period of ultra-nationalist militarism that dated to the 1880's -- when a demimonde of violent right-wing "societies"{ began to quietly, ruthlessly subvert Japanese government and culture. Even in the Empire's death throes in 1945, Japan’s militarists -- defeated everywhere but on the home front -- dug in their heels and forestalled surrender, contributing to the national horror that took place in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Today these discredited elements linger stubbornly in Japan's body politic, preventing the ruling Liberal Democratic Party from becoming either liberal or democratic, and poisoning foreign relations with China, Korea and Taiwan, among others.

One lamentable legacy of Japan’s imperial militarists is that they brought shame onto the national flag. Today, flying the hinomaru is a bitter provocation, suggesting fierce xenophobia and racist aggression. To be caught in Japan with your flag open is mildly embarrassing, and totally uncool.

In America today, waving the flag is also devolving into an act of provocation. Old Glory now -- like the hinomaru during those 65 dark years in Japan -- has been taken captive by rightist advocates of military supremacy. This flag demands ritual and submission. This flag requires a "patriotism" divorced from discourse, diplomacy and dissent. Any hesitation to pledge absolute allegiance, any reluctance to virtually worship the Stars and Stripes as a sort of graven idol, is deemed tantamount to treason.

The far right -- supported apparently by popular opinion -- seeks to amend the Constitution, so we can imprison people for burning the flag symbolically. This notion prevails despite the reality that flag-burning has become so unfashionable among protesters that it's a sort of quaint relic of bygone days. Besides, according to proper flag etiquette, the only reverent way to dispose of a worn-out flag is to, well... burn it.

Obsessive flag-worship is common to both the former Japanese Empire and an increasingly imperial America. It's appropriate to wonder where the U.S. stands today, compared to that 65-year arc that brought so much suffering to the people of Japan. If Japan's Age of Militarist Insanity began in 1880, the comparable U.S. period might properly date to 1961. That's when America’s wisest general, Dwight D. Eisenhower, issued his prescient warning against the rise of a "military-industrial complex" that -- ironically -- has flourished all the more luxuriantly since Eisenhower condemned it.

It's been 45 years. The Pentagon today is joined at the teat to a cartel of huge, greedy and swinishly wasteful defense contractors, whose campaign bribes bloat the war chests of supine presidents and guarantee jingoist majorities in Congress. Today's U.S. military-industrial complex looks more and more like its Japanese forebear.

For instance, the cost of the military in Japan exploded in the 1930's and '40’s, impoverishing civil society while stifling any voice that dared challenge the generals, the admirals, their zaibatsu cronies and -- especially -- the bellicose politicians in Nagatacho who had never fired a shot nor shed a drop of blood for their country. Today in America, Pentagon spending exceeds $500 billion a year. The most profligate spenders and rabid supporters of "preemptive war," "regime change," "shock and awe" -- and other martial fantasies -- are not the veterans of human carnage, but a coterie of draftdodging theorists (Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld) who prudently turned to war-mongering only after they were too old to serve.

The fears of General Zinni echo the lamentations of Admiral Yamamoto.

Japan's militarists also fought "culture wars," demanding religious piety of every last soul, intimidating media, censoring books, banning "indecent" music, eavesdropping on conversations to detect glimmers of sedition, and recruiting informants to root out liberals, agnostics, artists, iconoclasts, foreigners and other unsavories.

In the 1930'’s, Japan’s unilateralist saber-rattlers used an entirely mythical union of nations -- called the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere -- to justify their various invasions. Today's cynical White House formulation for a similar fanciful phantom is "the Coalition of the Willing."

As Japan's era of militarism reached its climax, the national treasure was exhausted and the lifeblood of millions of idealistic and loyal soldiers, sailors and airmen -- the flower of Japanese youth -- was being squandered under thousands of proudly flapping flags, in a war of choice that had been lost already before it began.

Plus, they killed a lot of people elsewhere! The Japanese became famous for bombing civilians and torturing prisoners. Today in America... well, is any of this ringing a bell?

Right now, America's military-industrial complex is wallowing in wealth, calling the shots, nourished by secrecy and wrapped in the flag. The question is: Are we really willing to put up with these armed sociopaths for 20 more lost, bloodsoaked years before reclaiming our republic?

Must we, like Japan, end up embarrassed by the sight of our flag?

David Benjamin is a novelist and journalist who splits time between Madison, Wisconsin and Paris. His latest book is The Life and Times of the Last Kid Picked.

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