Controversial history primer adopted again
Yomiuri Shimbun
The Tokyo Metropolitan Board of Education on Thursday adopted a controversial history textbook for use at a middle school to open in April in Taito Ward, Tokyo.
The middle school is affiliated with Hakuo High School, and the schools will be the first metropolitan government-run six-year integrated middle and high school. The textbook's adoption marks the second time for it to be chosen for a public middle school after a case in which the Ehime Prefectural Board of Education approved it for use in three middle schools affiliated with existing prefectural high schools in 2002.
The textbook was written by historians from the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform and published by Fuso Publishing Inc. Some critics say it whitewashes Japan's wartime past.
The textbook will be used by 160 first-year students of the middle school in Tokyo in the new academic year starting in April.
The society wrote a history and a civics textbook for middle school students. The textbook was adopted for use at schools for the disabled run by the Tokyo metropolitan and Ehime prefectural governments in 2001 and approved for use in the three middle schools in Ehime Prefecture in 2002.
The overwhelming majority of middle schools run by ward, city, town and village governments nationwide have not adopted the textbook. According to the society, eight privately run middle schools have adopted the textbook.
The regular meeting of the Tokyo education board opened at 10 a.m. Thursday, and members of civic groups opposing the adoption of the society's textbook for use at Tokyo public schools observed the meeting. Five out of six members of the meeting selected the history textbook written by the society out of a total of eight textbooks.
Meanwhile, a Tokyo network of 76 groups to prevent the Tokyo education board from approving the society's textbook has so far submitted to the education board about 28,000 signatures opposing its adoption.
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/newse/20040827wo35.htm
The fact that a local newspaper raise this topic and report on it seems to me to be a sign of, to say the least, a democratic society. I can't imagine PRC government's mouthpiece Xinhua would report on its government-controled textbooks which hide the invasion and forcible assimilation of Tibet and Uigur. Also, a democratic society like japan's based on free speech, more like ours than PRC, cannot ban a book with a certain bias. But as the article tells, the book has basically been ignored by the majority of the school systems there - another sign that it remains healthy. Based on my observation in the country as an English teacher for several years, I can tell schools there teach the war and guilt quite extensively. This has to do with the fact that teachers' union in Japan are staunch left including CCP supporters. Maybe this is why this fringe news became a big deal in local media. Almost all textbooks detail the war atrocities committed by the imperial army, although some of them were only claimed by CCP with no evidence and diplomatically forced into those books. In general, ordinary japanese citizens are staunch pacifist, positive or negative, and liberal-leaning.
Lastly I doubt the motive of the person who posted this topic from a Korean local news agency which is left-leaning/pro-North Korea/Communist China. I cannot help suspecting a certain political position and a motive this person has against U.S. allies.