Well, this could be embarrassing for a lot of folk:
The Japanese government has hit back in the history textbook war, announcing yesterday that it will scrutinize history textbooks from 20 countries, including South Korea, China and the United States.
Officials in Tokyo said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Education will conduct reviews, with the modern history in China’s and South Korea’s textbooks a priority. World War II, territorial issues and any descriptions of Japan will also be studied.
Japan has been engaged in a series of diplomatic rows after it authorized history textbooks criticized by its Asian neighbors for glorifying its military aggression during World War II.
“Through the studies, we will prove that it is not only textbooks in Japan that are providing unique narrations,” a Foreign Ministry official said.
Perhaps the Japanese Foreign Ministry read this from the NYT?
Given the scrutiny and Japan’s comparatively long record of democracy, the textbooks here are perhaps more balanced than others in the region. China’s textbooks, for instance, teach that Chinese resistance, not the United States, defeated Japan in the war; they say nothing of the postwar Great Leap Forward, in which some 30 million Chinese died because of Mao Zedong’s misguided agrarian policies.
In South Korea, which democratized in the late 1980’s, textbooks have improved, though certain taboos remain, such as any mention of Koreans who collaborated with Japanese colonizers.
23 Comments
Nooji: “korea?€™s historical inaccuarcies do not piss off entire nations. neither does china?€™s.”
Gerry: Yes, Japanese textbooks piss off Korea and China, but maybe that means the problem is more with Korea and China than with Japan. Afterall, the textbooks do not seem to bother Americans that much, even though Americans also sufferred under the Japanese and Koreans during the war.
I think it is great that Japan may finally start taking Korea and Japan to task, instead of just bowing her head and saying, “Yes, whatever you say.”
Correction: “…start taking Korea and China to task,…”
Half-jokingly, I wonder if they’ll turn a stern eye towards Belgium’s whitewashing of their Congo history?
just trying to change the subject. korea’s historical inaccuarcies do not piss off entire nations. neither does china’s.
‘columbus discovered america…’
‘i cannot tell a lie….’
Marmot, why not continue to quote until the very end of that article? They have one person quoted as saying, but… Korea’s text books are improving while Japan’s is going the other way.
More than embarrasing, I’d say it totally misses the point.
p.s. Marmot, many thanks for the link on the KJI Dell computer video the other day.
Obviously the Japanese aren’t doing this for some noble pursuit of the truth but ….
Peer review can’t hurt.
Even if you think Korea and China are at fault here (Gerry), that in no way means that Japan is in the right.
How are school textbooks written/chosen in the West? Is there a simple way to de-politicize this process? Or does it just require countries to grow up and face the truth, good and bad?
i say, bring it on, japan… bring… it… on!
seriously, bring it on. i think korean textbooks should be scrutinized by outsiders. i would like to see a bit more recognition about how korea got liberalized and who fought on its side in the korean war (well, this is taught, but it should be emphasized more) and how korea got rich on the vietnam war just like japan got rich on the korean war.
anonymous: How are school textbooks written/chosen in the West? Is there a simple way to de-politicize this process? Or does it just require countries to grow up and face the truth, good and bad?
Stateside, textbooks are written to emphasize the imaginary sins of the Great Satan and approved by school boards staffed by anti-American teachers. As to politicization - it’s always politicized - he who controls the past controls the future. In America, textbooks are decided, as in Japan (I think it was part of MacArthur’s reforms, to decentralize the power of the Japanese state), on a township-by-township basis, just as our police and fire departments answer only to the mayor, not the state governor or to the president.
I think scrutiny would be good for all countries–and it may bring about reasoned debate about what age is appropriate for discussing certain bad aspects of a country’s past. Japan should realize it may bring even more scrutiny upon its textbooks. New light from outside upon China’s textbooks will not change the textbooks in China, though.
Nora,
Currently can’t access your Blog in China. All Blogspot blogs are blocked in China and the anonymizer ‘anonymouse’ has not worked for your site in the past few days.
Tangent, try Unipeak, it has worked before through China’s block: http://www.unipeak.com/index_cn.html
what?! chinese people can’t access my blog?! well, that might explain the low turnout.
i wish i could, but can’t help you with that. if i knew how to set up my own domain somewhere and run a blog, i’d do it, but i don’t know how. anyone able to direct me to a how-to that even a ??´?§¹ could figure out?
you also wrote:
New light from outside upon China?€™s textbooks will not change the textbooks in China, though.
not now, maybe, but someday when/if china is ever ready to decide to free the truth, then maybe the can look at outsiders’ sample textbooks for china as a good start.
Meow,
Thanks, but, Unipeak ain’t workin’ here…and hasn’t been for a while.
Nora,
Correct, nothing you can do except change your blog provider. Even if you were inclined to do that, I wouldn’t want you to, because that would be penalizing Blogspot for whatever they did to piss the Chinese censors off. Whatever they did, must be fine by me.
Yes, Maybe someday the textbooks will change, someday…
I was quite amused at the starkly different depictions of the Revolutionary War (US vs Britain) between our Canadian public school textbooks and the American textbooks we had at home (my father is American). The Canadian version talks about the abuses of the “rebels” against the “loyalists,” while the American texts explained the terrors of the “redcoats,” and those traitors who sided with them. Reading both accounts explains some of the roots of the differences between the revolutionary US and loyal Canada.
As they say one man’s patriot is another man’s tax avoiding rebel colonial hick. Your comment reminds me of a not too popular Mel Gibson movie. I think it was released a few years back and in a daring stroke of artistic subtlety, titled “The Patriot”. My few English acquaintances had some quite choice words to say about it, and a considerable degree of eye-rolling for the climactic scene in which the villain (a redcoat, natch) was impaled by by nothing less than an American flag.
When I was teaching history in Canada, I got to choose the textbook. Usually it’s the head of the department, but it was a small school and I was a department of 1.
There are a bunch of companies (about 5 at the time) that made textbooks for the courses and they tried to flog them to whoever they could. I would imagine there was some funny business at the top as ex and current teachers tried to make connections in the Ministry of Education and school boards, but they just sent me pamphlets and sample books. There was no official “approval” process as far as I know. They just had to match the course objectives laid out by the Ministry, and they all did.
I honestly thought most of them tried to be rather objective. Usually, there was too much in them to cover, so you could dwell upon sins or accomplishments; it was your choice.
I don’t recall them dwelling upon Canadians killing German POWs in Holland, the often racist reception many African Americans had at the end of the Undergroung Railroad, and, as said above, there was more sympathy with the “loyalist” point of view, the importance of the Proclamation of 1763 and all that, but they didn’t pull any punches about the Riel Rebellions, the rejection of Jewish refugees or the Japanese internment camps. There’s only so much time in the year.
Funny! The NYT was the article at which Korean netizens were so angry last week, because the Korean media (Yonhap) took this part:
“Given the scrutiny and Japan’s comparatively long record of democracy, the textbooks here are perhaps more balanced than others in the region. China’s textbooks, for instance, teach that Chinese resistance, not the United States, defeated Japan in the war; they say nothing of the postwar Great Leap Forward, in which some 30 million Chinese died because of Mao Zedong’s misguided agrarian policies.”
The Canadian version talks about the abuses of the ?€œrebels?€? against the ?€œloyalists,?€? while the American texts explained the terrors of the ?€œredcoats,?€? and those traitors who sided with them.
This is interesting in that when I was coming up, the textbooks did not dwell on such, rather it was just about facts and what motivated the Americans at the time. Our books were rather impartial and did not demonize the British. This makes me wonder as to what passes as an “education” nowadays in the States and Canada. It seems that creative writing is more popular in too many countries (China included).
rah rah rah…..
Daily Linklets (It’s Still Thursday for Me)
Modest South West Asians, the Great Game through time, Japanese irony, Korean revisionism, pandering pandas, the collapse of Nepal, America’s friend Vietnam, and more, on today’s Daily Linklets.
In many (most? all?) US states, a large number of textbooks are officially approved as suitable by the state Department of Education (or similar such body) for meeting certain state standards. Then local school districts and townships select the particular textbooks used.
This can result in, say, left-wing college towns picking A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn, while right-wing towns pick something considerably more complimentary, to say the least.
You can note the obvious similarities to the Japanese system.
Well, I was somewhat surprised at all the attention they finally gave to the French in that dreadful movie.