They account for a mere fraction of 1 per cent of the 2.46 million Japanese honoured at the Yasukuni Shrine - 14 entries in the paper files that symbolically enshrine the souls of that nation's war dead.
Few outside Japan would even recognise many of their names - Kiichiro Hiranuma, Koki Hirota, Heitaro Kimura and the others. Fewer still would know details of the war crimes they were convicted of by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East in Tokyo (IMTFE) during trials held from 1946 to 1948.
Yet personal obscurity has not stopped these men - and the Yasukuni shrine where they are venerated - from being notorious as a group. They are an increasingly painful irritant between China and Japan.
Visits to Yasukuni by Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi since 2001 have resulted in angry protests, especially from China, where memories of Japan's war-time atrocities are kept strong by a government propaganda campaign. Critics such as Premier Wen Jiabao say Mr Koizumi's visits prove Japan has not atoned for its past aggression.
The complaint about Yasukuni is that 1,068 war criminals were secretly enshrined there in 1978 by the private religious foundation that has run the shrine since the Japanese government was forced to give it up after the second world war.
The group of 14 often referred to during condemnations of Mr Koizumi's visits are singled out because they were class-A war criminals. They are senior military and political leaders who conspired to wage war or permitted atrocities to take place under their command. Although these men may not have tortured, raped and murdered themselves, they allowed or encouraged others to do so.
