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The Abe Government and the 2014 Screening of Japanese Junior High School History Textbooks

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Tawara Yoshifumi  and
Sven Saaler
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School textbooks constitute one significant arena in which dominant, oppositional, and alternative forces in society contest the past to shape the future. Textbook controversies can be a sign of democracy—or they can indicate efforts to suppress democracy. As Tawara Yoshifumi meticulously documents, recently announced results of the Japanese government's school textbook screening show clearly the Abe administration's success in imposing its views of such controversial issues as the forced prostitution of the wartime Japanese military (the ianfu or ‘comfort women‘) and the Nanjing Massacre, as well as territorial disputes with China and Korea, nations that Japan colonized or invaded in the first half of the twentieth century.

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 13 , Issue 17 , April 2015 , e2
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Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2015

References

Notes

1 Publisher of a strongly revisionist textbook edited by the neo-nationalist organization Tsukuru-kai. On Tsukurukai (Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform) see Koide Reiko, Critical New Stage in Japan's Textbook Controversy; Yoshiko Nozaki and Mark Selden, Japanese Textbook Controversies, Nationalism, and Historical Memory: Intra- and International Conflicts.

2 In 1993, Japanese Cabinet Secretary Kōno Yōhei issued a statement regarding forced prostitution during the war (the so-called ‘comfort women‘) acknowledging that the “Japanese military was, directly or indirectly, involved in the establishment and management of the comfort stations.” The full text is accessible online here.

3 Radhika Coomaraswamy, a Sri Lankan legal export issued a 1996 report on the ‘comfort women’ as a UN special rapporteur for the United Nations Committee on Human Rights criticizing Japan's handling of the ‘comfort women’ issues. In October 2014, the Japanese government formally requested amendment of the report. Coomaraswamy refused the request. The Asahi Shimbun October 14, 2014. See here.

4 On the Takeshima/Dokdo islands, which are currently controlled by Korea, but claimed by Japan as national territory, see Mark Selden, Small Islets, Enduring Conflict: Dokdo, Korea-Japan Colonial Legacy and the United States.

5 On the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands, which are controlled by Japan but disputed among that country, China and Taiwan, see Reinhard Drifte, The Japan-China Confrontation Over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands – Between “shelving” and “dispute escalation,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 12, Issue 30, No. 3, July 28, 2014, and Gavan McCormack, Much Ado over Small Islands: The Sino-Japanese Confrontation over Senkaku/Diaoyu, The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol 11, Issue 21, No. 3, May 27, 2013.

6 Publisher of a textbook edited by the revisionist organization Committee to Improve Textbooks (Kyokasho Kaizen no Kai), an organization that split from the Tsukuru-kai in April 2012.

7 In the 2006 revised version of the Fundamental Law of Education, Art. 16 Paragraph 1 reads as follows: “Education shall not be subject to improper control and shall be carried out in accordance with this and other acts; education administration shall be carried out in a fair and proper manner through appropriate role sharing and cooperation between the national and local governments”.

8 Regarding the Asahikawa Scholastic Achievement Test case, see the website of the Japan Federation of Bar Associations.

9 The neighboring nations clause introduced in 1982 requires that textbooks give “necessary consideration, in the interest of international friendship and cooperation,” to the modern and contemporary history of relations between Japan and its Asian neighbors.

10 Ultraconservative organization founded in 1997 to advocate “patriotic education,” Constitutional revision and prime ministerial visits to the Yasukuni Shrine. The organization demands the restoration of a more monarchical system and the restoration of State Shinto.