Japan hits back at 'extreme' mainland (China) textbooks

South China Morning Post ^ | April 25, 2005

[IntlObserver]

Chinese textbooks are extreme in their interpretation of history, Japan's foreign minister said yesterday, a day after President Hu Jintao demanded Tokyo do more to improve relations damaged by its approval of new Japanese school textbooks that allegedly whitewash wartime atrocities.

But despite the criticism, Nobutaka Machimura hailed the meeting between Mr Hu and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi in Indonesia on Saturday, saying it paved the way for the two Asian powers to start repairing battered ties that had led to violent anti-Japan protests across China.

"From the perspective of a Japanese person, Chinese textbooks appear to teach that everything the Chinese government has done has been correct," Mr Machimura said on a TV Asahi talk show. "There is a tendency towards this in any country, but the Chinese textbooks are extreme in the way they uniformly convey the `our country is correct' perspective."

Mr Machimura defended Japan's textbooks, saying they didn't gloss over Japan's invasion of other Asian countries, and he expressed dismay with the lopsided view of history taught in Chinese schools.

He said Tokyo would officially inform Beijing what it thought of China's textbooks after a full review of them. State Councillor Tang Jiaxuan had invited him to do so during a recent discussion about teaching history, he added.

He criticised Beijing's handling of the anti-Japan protests, saying the Chinese government had not done enough to control them.

"The Chinese government took only a halfway measure as it restricted such demonstrations to a certain point but left them to take their own course beyond that."

But the Japanese foreign minister said he was confident the neighbours' disputes could be resolved.

"They're next door. We can't move. They're important and we're important to each other," he said of China.

[muawiyah]

Whatever it is the Japanese neglected to put in their textbooks (and it's probably an awful lot of stuff, much of it nasty), there can be no doubt that the Chinese forgot to tell the kiddies that the Chicoms are actually today's closest thing to the scum of the Earth!

I don't even have to know how to read Chinese to figure that one out.

[D-fendr]

I'm guessing the textbooks don't note that China's government has killed more Chinese than Japan did.

[Mongeaux]

Yeah but CHinese food still tastes better than Japanese. THEY call it SUSHI - WE call it BAIT!

[ThermoNuclearWarrior]

The Chinese need to be teaching the horrible consequences of a Communist Dictatorship in their text books. Then they can start whining about the text books of a nation that has completely changed and treats it's people far better than they treat their own people.

[sushiman]

" Yeah but CHinese food still tastes better than Japanese. THEY call it SUSHI - WE call it BAIT!"

It is true that Japanese food is generally milder tasting , and fish is eaten more than in China , but let me assure you that there is a wide variety of Japanese dishes that are not only absolutely delicious , but also healthy . Unfortunately most Americans are unaware of their existence .

[muawiyah]

A true story ~ went fishing with some Japanese-Americans. Great effort was put into selecting the bait ~ frozen calimari from the grocery store this time just in case we didn't catch anything.

BTW, you are thinking of sashimi, not sushi.