The first inkling Yuko Tojo had of what really happened to her grandfather was when she was in fifth grade at school. Gripping her small white hands around her neck, the 65-year-old re-enacts the classroom scene of more than half a century ago when a boy stood on a chair before leaping to the ground with the cry: "Tojo hanged."

The young girl looked up the strange word, kohshukei, in the dictionary and found a description next to the picture of a hooded man with a rope around his neck. "Then I knew the meaning," she nods, releasing her grip to continue the dissection of her lamb fillet.