I am curious if the Japanese ever had a person whose primary duty was essentially spying on their own people, akin to the the Soviet Union. I'd be curious how preoccupied political and military leadership were with maintaining some sort of status quo within the military. Literature I've read seems to indicate that the Japanese were particularly jingoistic during this time period and prided themselves highly in their loyalty and duty to their country.
As a larger, more general question, how did the Japanese maintain such a strict adherence to military traditions and their country? Or perhaps, were claims of how adherent they were to their Bushido culture into the 40's completely overblown?
Japanese military culture was far more ingrained than in any other contemporary society. The military took over the education system in the early 1900s and set about training all male children as warriors. The curriculum included mathematical problems couched in military terms, rounds of patriotic songs, and an ultra nationalistic view of Japanese history. It is little coincidence that the coming of age of the militarily educated cohort coincided with the rise of ultra nationalism and the eclipse of Japanese parliamentary democracy.
When a boy was called up to the army, a village elder came to collect the boy, congratulated the family on the honour, and emphasised that the village would follow the boy's progress.
All this was before the recruit even made it to military training, which was brutal and unimaginative.
In the Japanese army the military police, or Kempeitai, served the 'spy' role of the political commissars, and were widely feared. Accounts by surviving Japanese soldiers emphasised that any desire to surrender could not be expressed openly for fear of execution.
The Japanese experience has a great deal to teach us about how societies become fascist and militarised.