because they do not seem to care to visit the Yasykuni shrine to honor her grandfather, but strangely, she doesn't either. She is also fighting an uphill battle "not to apologise for her grandfather" as he told her not to.

The woman who will never contemplate surrender
Quote Originally Posted by The Age, Aug. 13, 2005
Incredibly, she says that when she visits she prays for everyone else memorialised there but not her grandfather, whose spirit she honours at the family plot elsewhere.

She does not trust recent public opinion surveys showing that most people no longer support the Yasukuni Shrine visits by Japan's prime minister. She puts the results down to "survey magic", as though they are somehow rigged.

Nonetheless, she knows first hand how hard it is to motivate ordinary people. It is, after all, 60 years after the end of an inglorious war defeat and the great mass of people are now more interested in economic recovery than upsetting China, a crucial trading partner.

She takes a sidelong glance at the young people around her, eating extravagant pieces of cream cake with strawberries and listening to the jazz soundtrack that is playing. "No, they are not really interested," she says with a crusading "not yet anyway" look on her face.