BY Hitomi Tanaka

Eight junior high school history textbooks approved by the government will be used from the 2002 academic year. However, South Korea, China and North Korea demanded these books be rewritten. A book edited by a committee called "Atarashii Rekishi Kyoukasho wo Tsukuru-kai" (a comittee to make new history textbooks), was published by the Fusou company. The book is in great demand by the public and media after South Korea demanded that Japan rewrite 25 topics, China 8 topics and North Korea over 20 topics in the book. No country has ever demanded changes in Japanese textbooks before. But why did this suddenly happen about next year's textbooks? In order to understand these issues, we selected some topics which these countries demand changes in. Also, we compared Fusou's textbook to a similar textbook published by Kyouiku in the1997 academic year.

< South Korea>

Topic:「Army ( comfort ) women」

Neither Fusou nor Kyouiku discusses this problem in their textbooks. Therefore, South Korea argues that the issue of comfort women was deliberately left out and the brutality was concealed. In response, the Japanese government admitted that the Japan's army did establish places using comfort women and that the Japanese government was both directly and indirectly involved in forcing comfort women to provide sex to Japanese soldiers.

< China >

Topic:「The Nanjing Massacre」

Fusou writes that the Japanese army thought if they captured the capital of the Kuomintang Government, "Jiang Jieshi" would surrender. So, in December of 1937, they occupied Nanjing. ( At that time there were many civilians who were killed or wounded by them. This is known as the Nanjing Massacre.) Fusou also states that at the Far Eastern Tribunal of War Crimes, the Japanese Government admitted that the Japanese army murdered many Chinese people when they occupied Nanjing in the China-Japan war in 1937. (It's called the Nanjing affair). Also, the facts of this affair are still subject to debate. There is questionable evidence and there are various opinions.

However, Kyouiku has no article on the subject of The Nanjing Massacre. It was reported by Asahi Shinbun that China sent the follow message to the Japanese Government: Japan worked to plunder the northeast region of China and forced a large number of people to migrate. Also, they forcibly occupied lands that were parts of China. The Japanese army established a base to research bacteriological warfare and "Unit 731" conducted many tests using live humans and murdered Chinese people as well as prisoners of war. While the Japanese government tried to conceal these facts they beautify prosperity.

Topic:「The Great East Asia Conference」

Fusou printed that while the Japanese government requested each region of Asia to cooperate in joining the Pacific war, they held "the Great East Asia Conference" and gathered ambassadors of from those regions to show unity in November, 1943. In this meeting, they issued the Great East Asia partnership declaration which declared each country's independence, economic growth by mutual cooperation and the abolition of racial segregation. Also, they declared support for Japanese war philosophy.

Kyouiku has no article about the conference.

Asahi Shinbun also reported China's comment about this to Japanese government as follows: The attendance of the Great East Asia Conference can't represent Asia because they were puppet administrations which mainly supported the Japanese invasion army. It gives the impression it has the support of each country in attendance.

We can understand parts of the contents which differ between Fusou's and Kyouiku's textbooks. It is reasonable that these textbooks' contents are different because of different publishers. History has a lot of obscure points, but the exclusion of these incidents which are being demanded by foreign countries did happen, so we think the contents are a little different with true history. I supposed that "Atarashii Rekishi Kyokasho wo Tsukuru-Kai" mainly investigated and made the book to teach students the truth about Japanese and other foreign countries histories. However, South Korea, China, North Korea have demanded rewrites. Because the book was published anyway, other books, therefore, are criticized, too. Unfortunately, we have no chance to read history textbooks which will be used in the 2002 academic year other than Fusou's, so we have no way to know any details. However, I think the publishing of Fusou's textbook, which was mainly written by "Atarashii Rekishi Kyoukasho wo Tsukuru-Kai," has had some influence on The Ministry of Education, Sports, Science and Technology, and seven other publishers.

To avoid the recurrence of such an affair, we hope that Japan will cooperate with not only South Korea, China and North Korea, but also with other Asian countries and make facts of history clear. Also, learning about history and discussing about it with foreign people are important for children. We think the importance of learning from history is that we can learn about mistakes in the past and then apply these historical lessons to the present and future. Hopefully, this will prompt us to think about school textbooks and to view this incident as a signal for us to discuss what we ought to tell the future generations.