Japan, who is the real devil?

A recent AFP report had Prince Naruhito chastising Shinzo Abe for trying to whitewash Japan’s crimes against humanity in the Second World War. Today, former PM Maruyama warned Abe for trying to undo all the works of previous PM and discredit them with his revisionist policies and turn them into liars.
 
‘Japan's crown prince has warned of the need to remember World War II "correctly", in a rare foray into an ideological debate as nationalist politicians seek to downplay the country's historic crimes.
 
In an unusual intervention in the discussion, Naruhito's mild-mannered broadside was being interpreted in some circles as a rebuke to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, a key figure in the right-wing drive to minimise the institutionalised system of wartime sex slavery. They even insulted the Koreans by saying the Korean women were willing to serve the Japanese armies as prostitutes, hundreds of thousands of them.
 
"Today when memories of war are set to fade, I reckon it is important to look back our past with modesty and pass down correctly the miserable experience and the historic path Japan took from the generation who know the war to the generation who don't,"
 
During the war crime trial against Japan after WW2, the Emperor Hirohito, as the Sun God, was shielded from all the blame for Japanese aggression and atrocities against the people and countries they invaded. But everyone was quite sure that the Emperor was the one that gave the order, and the guilty one. The Japanese Imperial Army and the Japanese soldiers were merely soldiers obeying the Emperor’s orders. If any one was to be blamed it must be the Emperor. But due to some horse tradings, the Japanese Emperor was spared the embarrassment and punishment. Not guilty but guilty.
 
Today, we are seeing the Prince, a member of the Imperial Household, feeling remorseful at what Abe was trying to do to rewrite history, to change historical facts and to remilitarise Japan into another military power like its infamous past. And the Imperial Household is the one that is distancing itself from the civilian power that wanted otherwise. Is this the same as during WW2 when the Emperor was not for war but dragged into a war by those holding the real power, PM HidekiTojo and his rightist cabinet and those in the Imperial Army? If what we are seeing is the truth and should Japan ended up in a Third World War, the people to be blamed must be Abe and his right wing govt and not the Imperial Household.
 
What actually happened that led Japan to its aggression against its neighbours? Was the Imperial Household wrongly blamed for the war and the criminals were really the non royalties and rightly executed for war crimes? Is Prince Naruhito trying to say something to redress the wrongs done to his grandfather as the one that issued the order for war when it was the civilians that dragged Japan into WW2 like what Abe is doing today, dragging Japan into a WW3?