Japan`s former air force chief has likened his country`s level of democracy to communist North Korea after he was fired for denying Japan was the aggressor in World War II.

`If you are not allowed to say even a word that counters the government`s statements, you cannot possibly call the country democratic,` former general Toshio Tamogami told a press conference late Monday.

`It`s just like North Korea,` he said.

Tamogami retired from the defence ministry on Monday, two years early, after he wrote in an essay that Japan was falsely accused of being the aggressor and called for the nation to shed elements of its post-World War II pacifism.

He stepped down in preference to serving in a lesser role.

Tamogami said many Asian nations `take a positive view` of Japan`s past military actions.

`We need to realise that many Asian countries take a positive view of the Greater East Asia War,` he said, using Japan`s former name for the conflict.

Tamogami said US president Franklin Roosevelt set up `a trap` that forced Japan to attack Pearl Harbor, but that the United States later tried to pin all war responsibility on Japan.

His thesis runs counter to a 1995 statement issued by then prime minister Tomiichi Murayama and endorsed by his successors which apologised for Japan`s past aggression and colonial rule in Asia.

Tamogami refused to back down.

`I don`t believe I am wrong,` he told reporters. `I didn`t expect (the essay) would result in such a big thing.`

`I had thought it`s about time for Japan to accept` such views, he said. `But I might have judged wrong.`

China, the two Koreas and other Asian nations, which still have painful memories of Japan`s aggression, strongly denounced Tamogami`s remarks.