I think you'll find in the main part, people supported the Government because it was stability, and because they were in for a world of pain if they spoke out about it, the Japanese people believed what they were told, like most countries citizens, and you can rest assured they were not told 'We are going to go out and torture, rape and kill our way across the Pacific".
Sorry Kosh, but I disagree with you here, saying that a country ruled by a Dictatorial style Emperor should be held responsible in its entirety for commited atrocities is like saying that every citizen in Iraq is guilty of gassing Kurds. Resistance in Japan was subtle, and the country had hundreds of years of inground obedience to the Government, they didn't choose their Emperor and they had no tools to resist the Emperor and were, like every populace, fed on propoganda and lies to make them believe they were in the right.
Edit: It needs to be remembered that Japan had a long history of feudal inter-clan wars that were particulary barbaric in nature, almost as barbaric as the wars that united China, doesn't make it 'right', but it doesn't make the entire populace complicit in what amounted to arguments between nobility in which they were nothing more than the tools of war.