Interesting, I think that while the Japanse had a fairly modern military, their mindset was still stuck in the medieval era. However I would have thought their naval and airforce contained senior personnel who were more forward thinking.
During WWII other nations, such as Germany and particularly the Soviet Union, also pressured large number of their men into actions that were totally equivalent to suicide attacks. In fact, the total number of Soviet fighting men that died as result of being given no alternatives but carry out missions with zero chance of survival likely exceeded total Japanese military casaulties during the war from all causes by a big margin. But the Soviet Union was more dishonest about it.
If Soviet Soliders commanded to carry out suicide missions nevertheless manage to survive by being captured, Soviet Union would brutally punish these POWs after they were repatrioted after the war, should they be so unlucky to also fail to die in the brutal conditions of German POW camps and slave factories. The Japanese kamikazi mentioned above was only punished after failing to die as expected 9 times. (I guess he really had 9 lives and used up every one of them). Punishment descends upon Soviet Kamikazis if they fail to die as expected just once.
Japan never underwent an equivalent of Bolshivization or Stalinazation, which made it acceptable through widespread practice to do to death vast numbers of own citizens in the name of greater good. Therefore it was necessary for Japan to build a mythology of glorious sacrafice to justify suicide attacks during the war. Soviet Union had become accustomed to large number of its citizens accommodatingly dying when the government wants them dead in the name of some greater good, so the Soviet Union didn't have the need to glorify suicide attackers the same way Japanese did. A few selected heros good for PR and home front morale are glorified, but most of the Soviet kamikazis died without ceremony because dying when the state needs them to is expected. It is telling that 70% of Soviet military dead in WWII have no known grave or burial site.
I leave you to judge which is more repulsive or medieval by your standards.
As to midset, the Nazi regime made a strenuous and unapologetic effort to glorify what they conceive to have been the medieval mindset and ethics as distinct, and and worthy improvement to, modern mindset and ethics. Nazis even made it a mere manslaughter for German man to kill a German woman, but murder for German woman to kill a German man, on the principle that man, being the stronger sex, is acting less against nature, and therefore less criminally, in killing a woman, where as woman, being the weaker sex, is acting more strongly against nature, and therefore more criminally, to kill a man.
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