Japan’s Textbooks Reflect Revised History

[Feraud]

From today's NYT-
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/01/world/asia/01japan.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

TOKYO, March 31 — In another sign that Japan is pressing ahead in revising its history of World War II, new high school textbooks will no longer acknowledge that the Imperial Army was responsible for a major atrocity in Okinawa, the government announced late Friday.

The Ministry of Education ordered publishers to delete passages stating that the Imperial Army ordered civilians to commit mass suicide during the Battle of Okinawa, as the island was about to fall to American troops in the final months of the war.

The decision was announced as part of the ministry’s annual screening of textbooks used in all public schools. The ministry also ordered changes to other delicate issues to dovetail with government assertions, though the screening is supposed to be free of political interference.

“I believe the screening system has been followed appropriately,” said Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who has long campaigned to soften the treatment in textbooks of Japan’s wartime conduct.

The decision on the Battle of Okinawa, which came as a surprise because the ministry had never objected to the description in the past, followed recent denials by Mr. Abe that the military had coerced women into sexual slavery during the war.

The results of the annual textbook screening are closely watched in China, South Korea and other Asian countries. So the fresh denial of the military’s responsibility in the Battle of Okinawa and in sexual slavery — long accepted as historical facts — is likely to deepen suspicions in Asia that Tokyo is trying to whitewash its militarist past even as it tries to raise the profile of its current forces.

Shortly after assuming office last fall, Mr. Abe transformed the Defense Agency into a full ministry. He has said that his most important goal is to revise the American-imposed, pacifist Constitution that forbids Japan from having a full-fledged military with offensive abilities.

Some 200,000 Americans and Japanese died during the Battle of Okinawa, one of the most brutal clashes of the war. It was the only battle on Japanese soil involving civilians, but Okinawa was not just any part of Japan.

It was only in the late 19th century that Japan officially annexed Okinawa, a kingdom that, to this day, has retained some of its own culture. During World War II, when many Okinawans still spoke a different dialect, Japanese troops treated the locals brutally. In its history of the war, the Okinawa Prefectural Peace Memorial Museum presents Okinawa as being caught in the fighting between America and Japan — a starkly different view from the Yasukuni Shrine war museum, which presents Japan as a liberator of Asia from Western powers.

During the 1945 battle, during which one quarter of the civilian population was killed, the Japanese Army showed indifference to Okinawa’s defense and safety. Japanese soldiers used civilians as shields against the Americans, and persuaded locals that victorious American soldiers would go on a rampage of killing and raping. With the impending victory of American troops, civilians committed mass suicide, urged on by fanatical Japanese soldiers.

“There were some people who were forced to commit suicide by the Japanese Army,” one old textbook explained. But in the revision ordered by the ministry, it now reads, “There were some people who were driven to mass suicide.”

Other changes are similar — the change to a passive verb, the disappearance of a subject — and combine to erase the responsibility of the Japanese military. In explaining its policy change, the ministry said that it “is not clear that the Japanese Army coerced or ordered the mass suicides.”

As with Mr. Abe’s denial regarding sexual slavery, the ministry’s new position appeared to discount overwhelming evidence of coercion, particularly the testimony of victims and survivors themselves.

“There are many Okinawans who have testified that the Japanese Army directed them to commit suicide,” Ryukyu Shimpo, one of the two major Okinawan newspapers, said in an angry editorial. “There are also people who have testified that they were handed grenades by Japanese soldiers” to blow themselves up.

The editorial described the change as a politically influenced decision that “went along with the government view.”

Mr. Abe, after helping to found the Group of Young Parliamentarians Concerned About Japan’s Future and History Education in 1997, long led a campaign to reject what nationalists call a masochistic view of history that has robbed postwar Japanese of their pride.

Yasuhiro Nakasone, a former prime minister who is a staunch ally of Mr. Abe, recently denied what he wrote in 1978. In a memoir about his Imperial Navy experiences in Indonesia, titled “Commander of 3,000 Men at Age 23,” he wrote that some of his men “started attacking local women or became addicted to gambling.

“For them, I went to great pains, and had a comfort station built,” Mr. Nakasone wrote, using the euphemism for a military brothel.

But in a meeting with foreign journalists a week ago, Mr. Nakasone, now 88, issued a flat denial. He said he had actually set up a “recreation center,” where his men played Japanese board games like go and shogi.

In a meeting on Saturday with Foreign Minister Taro Aso of Japan, South Korea’s foreign minister, Song Min-soon, criticized Mr. Abe’s recent comments on sexual slaves.

“The problems over perceptions of history are making it difficult to move South Korean-Japanese relations forward,” Mr. Song said.

Mr. Aso said Japan stuck by a 1993 statement acknowledging responsibility for past sexual slavery, but said nothing about Mr. Abe’s denial that the military had coerced women, many of them Korean, into sexual slavery.

 

[Sefton]

Prime Minister Abe is in most ways just as conservative as most of the other recent PMs. He is taking things a bit farther than the previous PM Koizumi, who is of a similar bent. Rather disturbing events...

Thanks for sharing the information.

 

[Lincsong]

I'm not the least bit surprised. I really am only concerned over American textbooks and that they don't get whitewashed.

 

[Elaina]

I think whitewashing any history is a travesty.

 

[CanadaDoll]

This is very sad, and with our WWII survivors dying, we will quickly have no one to tell the real stories.
I also think that history is written by the winners, so it's probably all a little skewed

 

[Baron Kurtz]

They will of course argue that the history "imposed upon them" up till now is the biased, untrue history and that they are simply correcting errors.

bk

 

[Chanfan]

Yikes. "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it." Looks like they are setting up for repetition.

 

[LaMedicine]

Well, I can say something.
I am glad my kids were taught in school before these textbook revisions.
Yuck. I sure hope our younger generation will be able to see through all the smoke screen, but I am not sure.
There are two types to my generation, I think. (And PM Abe is a few years younger than me, so I guess I can include him in the generational group.) What we have in common is that we were taught by teachers who were at very tender young ages during WW II. The generation that had drilled into their heads at a very early age the military propaganda that the military and politicians dispersed. These people, after WW II became two type of people. Those who were very distrubed by the deeds of the Japanese military and occupational forces abroad, and apologetic of our country's actions, and those who resented the image and the system "imposed" on Japan by the Allies. So, we had a mixed batch with our teachers who each in theri own way have influenced us post-war-but-close-to-the-war generaton, but basically, when I speak with my friends, they dislike the "right wing activist" turn that politics is taking. Okay, I know no politics, but anyway. I was aghast when PM Abe chose Taro Aso for his Foreign minister. He's known here as a hawk among hawks, very outspoken, so where is his diplomacy going to lead us???
Now, this about the text books. Really!! Don't these guys at the Educational Ministry have any sense of right and wrong!!
Hmmm, actually, although my late father was a government official, and he, and we all as family had great pride in it, I just can't see in the present generation of "kanryo", high class government officials the kind of dedication and a good balanced view of the world that my father and his friends had....

End of rant.

 

[MudInYerEye]

Thank you for yet another well-worded, sensible post LaMedicine. We've had our own problems with various hawks here in the States recently so I can relate, big time.

 

[Jay]

Funny, I just finished Fahrenheit 451 last week.

 

[Rosie]

Not to start a big "to do" but American history books have revised or omitted history for years. This isn't that huge a deal.

 

[Baron Kurtz]

but, but . . . they're (were) evil doers. We're (collective "us") good guys.

bk

 

[Feraud]

I agree American texts have whitewashed history for years.
Americans today have more than ample opportunity to read opposing points of historical view. Some complain that college courses are too "Liberal". There are also libraries and bookstores that have dissenting points of view for all to accept or deny as they see fit. Do we even need to discuss the Internet as an avenue of accessing information?

What I wonder is, will the Japanese have the option?

P.S. Thanks LaMedicine for your comments. I was hoping you would add to the discussion.

 

[LaMedicine]

but, but . . . they're (were) evil doers. We're (collective "us") good guys.

bk

I am trying to figure out what you mean....[huh]

Feraud, we do have the option. Whatever colors American media may paint us in, we have as much freedom of speech and the right to know, and the availability of information as the Americans have. Censorship is non-existent, with the exception of porn, and even that is laughable. Oh, yes, we do have PCs so far as media is concerened, but these are limited to derogatry and discriminative terms. The present governor of Tokyo has gotten into hot water a number of times by using no-no words, but somehow, it wasn't enough for him to get kicked out of his job. Our government doesn't regulate Google the way it is regulated elsewhere. We can go to our libraries, or online, we can travel to any country so long as that country gives us their visa, without any limitation from the authorities--unless, of course, you are in jail or in detention, which, I imagine, is the same in the US and elsewhere. Of course, where travel is concerned, people are adviced to stay out of some areas, but these are conflict areas where one may be find themselves in danger of their lives so ours wouldn't be the only government that does so, either. Our elections are not rigged, either, and we are not the kind of "totaliatarian" society that, say, North Korea is.

Whatever front we seem to put up towards others, we are about as diverse and about as loud in just about everything among ourselves. It's just that there are a lot of people, even in the highest positions, who are not really world media savvy, in the sense that they know how to get the right kind of attention, and put across their points in a way that can be easily understood and related to, by those from different backgrounds and different traditions and society. In that sense, I find the doings and sayings of even our most "experienced" politicians actually very naive.

Also, Japanese as a language can be very tongue in cheek even with the most popular phrases, which can be difficult to translate in full, or take a heck of a lot of words to put across what was actually meant--so the most important meaning, which is carried in nuances rather than exact words, never gets translated, and gets lost. There's even a saying that goes, "If you have the heart, it will get across." meaning, you don't have to say all out loud to get your point across--that the other party should easliy be able to figure out what was actually meant. Though, of course, in this diverse, multicultural and fast moving world, it is rather unrealistic to hold on to that. If you mean to be sincere, then you have to choose words that others can understand and relate to.

Our political scene is poor in that the only realistically doable party is the present one, and the opposition is not strong enough for many of ust to trust them enough to hand them the majority because they are well grounded and can be trusted in making things work. When you listen to them, they all sound big talk, little substance.
We have quite a number of political debate/commentary progarms, which, if you chose to flip the channel to, bring in a lot of people and conscientiously try to build a good argument on both sides. Granted, these kinds of programs may not rate high, but there are a couple that are aired on what we call the golden hours. These ones feature actors and comedians as well as politicians and academics, and it is very interesting to see these who on most occasions are thought of as "flighty creatures" very seriously get into the heat of the debate with honest and down to earth opinions that we can relate to. If noone was interested in how to better our society, and how to be a resposible citizen both of our country and of Planet Earth, then I don't think these programs would survive, but they are into their third or forth year now.

I think the average Japanese has a healthy distrust of the "system", we are no meek sheeps as some may want to draw us, and as far as the military goes, I am sure it is unimaginable to Americans how openly with distrust our own SDF(Self Defense Force) are often are regarded, unless you were/are stationed in Japan as a member of the US military. I don't know how much of the uproar and fierce debate that went on in Japan when our troops were dispatched to Iraq, was reported in the US, but there were very much vocal parties that opposed the dispatch, and oppose any of our troops going abroad for PKOs. For the record, our troops, even though they carry weapons, can use them only when they themselves are under direct attack and only to return fire--so, in Iraq, British troops guarded the Japanese troops--what kind of army do you call that?

At any rate, we are as far from a military-oriented society as we can get, and for all the hullabaloo some other Asian countries raise about us, as far as military action is concerned, nobody is as reluctant as we are of taking any action--which worked fine for a long time, but now, as wealth and power are shifting, we get flack from both sides--one side wanting us to put on more muscle, and participate as is deemed worthy of our economic strength, while the other scream foul, accusing us of building strength for another military aggression, even when the need for us is to protect our coastlines. (Well of course, there are a few islands that are claimed and disputed over by 2 or even 3 sides, which has a lot to do with historic claims that go back hundreds of years, but has even more to do with claiming and developing natural resources.)

End of rant.

 

[Elaina]

I agree history in the US has been whitewashed, but then I consider myself extremely lucky to have had the history teachers I've had that taught outside of textbooks, and even different poits of view from the American.

One of my US history teachers taught us that while Benedict Arnold was a traitor here, he was considered a hero in England and gave refrence texts (which was almost 20 years ago, so I don't remember the book.)

 

[Alan Eardley]

LaMedecine,

Your powers of analysis never cease to impress me. An impressive and thought-provoking posting.

Alan

 

[Chanfan]

Excellent points, LaMedecine! Certainly US history has been whitewashed, and any history is, of course, influenced (even if only subconsciously) by the historian.

Sometimes what is easy to see in others - because you have an outsider's view - is difficult to also see in yourselves.

I know when visiting with friends from England, for example, a few differences came up. For the typical American, for example, you watch the movie Patton, perhaps read a WWII history or two, and form your opinion on how good a General Patton was, and how good (or not) Montgomery was. Of course, my British friends had quite a different view.

I should get around to reading "Don't Know Much About History: Everything You Need to Know About American History but Never Learned"
by Kenneth C. Davis…

 

[Mojito]

One of my US history teachers taught us that while Benedict Arnold was a traitor here, he was considered a hero in England and gave refrence texts (which was almost 20 years ago, so I don't remember the book.)

In 1999 I worked just down the road in London from a house where Arnold once lived...I was quite startled to see him described as an "American Patriot" on the blue heritage plaque on the house! There has been the odd attempt by historians on both sides of the pond to rehabilitate his image, but I know from living in the US what the general popular consensus is there - along with Judas, his name is synonymous with betrayal.

There has been a lot of debate in Australia recently over the so-called 'black armband' view of history. I agree that, as individuals and nations, we can't wear sackcloth and ashes for the deeds of years, decades and centuries past. Particularly for those many citizens of today who were not present and/or culpable when misdeeds were committed. However, whenever people go too far on the Pollyanna side of interpretation and reject any discussion or suggestion of the negative or ambiguous aspects of Australian history (the White Australia policy, the 'Stolen Generation' of Aboriginal children, etc), I think of the outcry here over the Japanese Government sanctioned revisions of WWII history. The whitewashing might not be as extreme, but it's part of the same practice of highlighting the positive and eliminating the negative to give us a false view of history.

Nations have every right to be proud of their achievements. And it is possible to emphasise the negative to the detriment of appreciating what is good and ennobling in a country's history, unbalancing our view of that past. I think we've all met people who take a disproportionately negative view of their own or another nation's past - no deed is too black, no motive too evil, to attribute to governments, people and individuals.

But we should never forget, or allow the negative, to be glossed out of existence...whether that be (for example) the internment of innocent citizens of Italian background, as happened here in Australia, or at a very dark extreme the suffering of the "comfort women" or the citizens of Okinawa. Drawing on another WWII example, Holocaust denial is another extreme. Fortunately there are still those alive who can stand as a living testiment to the horrors of that era.

LaMedicine, thanks for giving us an 'inside' perspective. It can be very difficult for an international audience to read the internal mood and beliefs of another nation, so an articulate and thoughtful commentary from a local is extremely helpful!

 

[Cousin Hepcat]

LaMedecine,

Your powers of analysis never cease to impress me. An impressive and thought-provoking posting.

Alan

Ditto, thanks for the insights

 

[LaMedicine]

I forgot to say in my earlier post (um, I was trying to write coherently in the middle of the night when we here say, even the trees and grass sleep ) that the unrevised textbooks are available to the public if the authors and publishers wish, because they are deemed unacceptable only in the regular classrooms, and not censored as a publication. There are a number of textbooks that were published in the past in the unrevised version for the public, because the authors were dissatisfied with the revision forced on them. There also was a very famous and drawn out law suit by one historian against the Education Ministry and the textbook censor.
It isn't as if the textbooks already in use are going to be collected and burned a la Shi Huangdi of the Qin dynasty. These old text books will be available so long as they survive the wear and tear, and our National Diet Library is required to carry at least one copy of every single published books/magazines in Japan on their shelves, and if you have the proper qualification and ID, anyone can see them.

Also, the where, why and how of the revisions are released, and the publishers/authors do have a chance to dispute the revision. With or without public furor, there have been cases where the revision was revised again, because basically, the revisions are publicised before the final manuscript is printed. If there is any significant revsion as this present one, a lot of the news papers often print copies of the before and afters.

Another big problem is, internally, where the responsibility lies. Is it Tokyo? The Imperial Palace? The central Military HQ? Is it the local HQ, or is it the company directly responsible for the particular group and/or particular area. Who ordered it, who condoned it, who turned a blind eye, who didn't report to whom, so from how high up did the exact orders come? Added to this mix are the kind of civillians who will dress in borrowed plumes. Of course, for those on the receiving end, it doesn' matter from how high the direct directions came, to them, all tigers look alike, so to victims and the "outsiders" the responsibility has to be admitted by the highest up--which actually is the case, only this whole dialogue is going to look like double talk unless one understands the lay of the land. And those whose words will be easily picked up by the media has to tread carefully there.

On another note.
Korean and Japanese historians have been working together for 10 years on a project to write a common comprehensive history textbook for the two countries. The results of the project were 3 publications to be used as sub textbooks, and one main book, the final one having been published very recently. I read a commentary on the final official conference of the historians who participated in the project, in the newspaper only yesterday. There, each of the main participants related how their views changed, and how they worked to comprehend and relate and merge their opinions. Another big bonus of this project was that it enabled many young aspriring academics to study in the other country, and so a whole new generation with open minds were nutured. The conclusion of the writer of the article was that where disputes are, if conscientious people with knowledge and wisdom come together, understanding and recognition of eachother leads to a higher level of good relations.
The same kind of project has been proposed between China and Japan, but I don't know how far this has gotten along.
I haven't read the books that came out of the Korean-Japanese project, but I must not forget to hunt up these books.

End of another rant.