Japan's air force chief will be dismissed for writing an essay that claims the country was not an aggressor in the Second World War.

Japan's Air Self-Defence Force chief, Gen. Toshio Tamogami, speaks to reporters outside his home in Tokyo on Friday night. (Kyodo News/Associated Press)

Gen. Toshio Tamogami wrote an essay titled "Was Japan an Aggressor Nation?" in which he argues that Japan was not an aggressor in the Second World War. The essay was entered in a contest and posted Friday to the website of the contest organizer, Japanese hotel and apartment developer Apa Group.

"I think it is improper as the air force chief of staff to publicly state a view clearly different from that of the government's," Defence Minister Yasukazu Hamada told reporters on Friday.

"Therefore, it is inappropriate for him to remain in this position and I will swiftly dismiss him."

Among Tamogami's arguments in the essay are that Japan's military occupation of China was based on treaties and that the Korean peninsula was "was prosperous and safe" under Japan's 1910-1945 colonial rule.

He further argued Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, was a result of a trap laid by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and rejected the verdicts of the Allied War Tribunal, which convicted Japanese wartime leaders as war criminals after Tokyo's defeat in 1945.

"The Tokyo trials tried to push all the responsibility for the war onto Japan and that mind control is still misleading the Japanese people 63 years after the war," he wrote.

Japan apologizes

Japan expressed remorse for its actions during the war, often referred to in Japan as the Greater East Asia War, in 1995 in a landmark apology directed at Asian countries that suffered due to Japan's military actions.

"Even now there are many people who think that our country's aggression caused unbearable suffering to the countries of Asia during the Greater East Asia War," Tamogami wrote in the essay.

"But we need to realize that many Asian countries take a positive view of the Greater East Asia War. It is certainly a false accusation to say that our country was an aggressor nation," he said.

Similar views are shared by some right-wing Japanese scholars and politicians but the publicly released comments contained in the essay were expected to rouse anger in China and South Korea, where memories of Japan's wartime acts and colonization still run deep.

Hamada said the government had to act swiftly against Tamogami so it was clear Japan does not share his views.

Prime Minister Taro Aso has also publicly stated Tamogami's written statements were inappropriate.

With files from the Associated Press and Reuters