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Japanese History Textbooks

In both Japan and the United States textbooks are regarded as one of the primary tools for classroom instruction. The curricula for elementary and secondary education is the responsibility of each of the 50 states in the United States. In Japan, the Ministry of Education determines the course of study, and curriculum for elementary and secondary schools is based on the regulations of the School Education Law.

US textbooks emphasize the significant and pre-eminent role that the United States played in crushing the Axis forces in Europe and the Pacific. In contrast, English textbooks view the Allied war effort as a joint venture involving the British Empire, the U.S.S.R., and the United States as equal partners. Authors of Japanese textbooks afford the war in Europe extraordinarily limited attention and focus primarily on events in the Pacific. Significantly, Japanese textbooks emphasize the context leading up to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and how U.S.-Japanese antagonism before events in December 1941 made war almost inevitable.

The issues of Japan's wartime treatment of Comfort Women, the atrocities of the Rape of Nanking and Japanese chemical and biological testing on humans, remain contentious with the governments and the people of China and the Republic of Korea, who feel that Japan has never fully apologized for its actions during World War II. They assert that Japan feels no remorse, as evidenced by treatment of World War II in Japanese school textbooks and by government officials visiting Yasukuni Shrine, where Japan's war dead are commemorated. The Japanese counter that they have offered sincere apologies. Consequently, this lingering animosity still affects Tokyo's efforts to achieve its foreign policy goals and expand its international influence.

Japanese histories published in the first few years after 1945 clearly accepted Japan's culpability for the war. But in the early 1950s, thanks mainly to American efforts to recast Japan as a Western ally against Asian communism, a new tone crept into Japanese accounts. The war was depicted as a noble and honorable, if ultimately hopeless, struggle against overwhelming odds -- a struggle which was forced on Japan by circumstances.

In striking contrast to the situation in North America and Europe, historical revisionism enjoys widespread support and even official sanction in Japan. Public School textbook's are controversial because some view the 1941-45 Pacific War as the War for Asian Liberation from Western rule by the United States, the United Kingdom and others. For this reason, the textbooks use the word Daitoa Senso, "The Greater East Asian War", instead of "Pacific War", since they claim the Japanese military government at the time named the war Daitoa Senso.

The Society for History Textbook Reform, a group of mainly academics and social critics, offers a distinctive historical counter-narrative: Japan was not the aggressor in World War II but the liberator, fighting to defend itself from the U.S. and European powers and free Asia from the yoke of white colonialism; Imperial troops were not guilty, as most historians suggest, of some of the worst war crimes of the 20th century but the "normal excesses" of armies everywhere; Japan's "masochistic" emphasis on atonement is leading to the "moral decline" of its young. This group intends to make a textbook which makes young Japanese confident and proud of their country. It claims that some of the current history textbooks contain propaganda from Japan's former enemies and treat Japan's young generation as if they were 'destined to become criminals.'

The following paragraph has been translated from a Japanese history textbook of the late 1960s: In April 1941, Japan agreed to a Japan-USSR Neutrality Treaty in order to lessen the military threat to the north. This was followed by the occupation of the southern half of Indo-China by Japanese military forces. In consequence, the American attitude towards Japan hardened, and diplomatic relations between the two countries came to a dead end. The Tojo Cabinet conducted its business in extreme secrecy, and in the pre-dawn hours of December 8, 1941 [December 7, Honolulu time], Pearl Harbor in Hawaii was attacked and war was simultaneously declared against the United States and England. The Pacific War was thus begun. (Donald W. Robinson, Editor, As Others See Us, International Views of American History. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1969.)

Ian Buruma's the Wages of Guilt (1994) compares responses to war crimes in postwar Germany and Japan. According to Buruma, Germany publicly accepted responsibility for the evils perpetrated by the Nazi regime and educated future generations by discussing its sordid Nazi history in school textbooks and classes. Germany apologized to various European nations and Israel. Conversely, Japan rejected responsibility, downplayed the historical evidence of aggression and atrocity in its schools with sophistry and euphemism, and apologized to no one. Worse yet, ultra-conservative Japanese commentators insisted the war crimes, if they happened at all, were exaggerated to embarrass the Japanese people.

Japanese ultranationalists have attempted to whitewash World War II history and justify Japan's conduct in part as an act of self-defense and in part as a pattern of large-power behavior no different from what other nations had done. The Japanese Government has approved textbooks which deny the Rape of Nanking, and imply that Japan was simply trying to protect other Asian nations from imperialism by launching World War II. The overwhelming majority of the Japanese schools are using textbooks that faithfully address Japanese criminal past with regards to its wars against other nations in Asia.

In 1982, Japanese newspapers reported government attempts to tone down descriptions of Japanese aggression in junior high school textbooks. Although the allegation was not entirely accurate, it escalated to a diplomatic incident between Japan and China (and a few other Asian governments). Of the eight history textbooks approved by the Japanese government in 2001 for local schools to choose, less than one percent of the Japanese schools chose the distorted history textbook. But the fact that the Japanese Government approved them for use speaks loudly to the countries of Northeast Asia, who fear that those who deny history are bound to repeat it. The large majority of Japanese high school and even middle school textbooks, carry references to the history of Japanese atrocities and aggression in Asia. So the notion that Japan suffers from sort of "historical amnesia" is a myth.

In the early months of 2005, much of the world celebrated the 60th anniversary of the World War II Allied victory over Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Around the same time, protests erupted in Asia against a revised Japanese history textbook, "The New History Textbook," which critics said covered up Japanese World War II atrocities.

In April 2006, the textbooks approved by the Japanese government for local school districts to choose among included one written and published by a group that minimizes Japan's conduct between 1900 and 1945. Although this was not the first such approval of a controversial textbook, it triggered strong criticism both from Beijing and Seoul, leading to large-scale anti-Japan protests in China and South Korea. Japanese politicians and textbook regulators have repeatedly aggravated war memories through words and actions that have convinced Asian neighbors that the Japanese have not fully owned up to what they did.