Rewriting History Textbook

Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology released the result of examination on history textbook for high school students for 2017 on Friday. Receiving request from Shinzo Abe administration, description on territory issues has swollen by 1.6 times compared to the previous year. Some events in modern history, including Nanjing Massacre or comfort women, will be taught as preferable for a revisionist prime minister.

2017 will be the first year, in which new regulation for history textbook will be applied. New regulation required every textbook to follow official interpretation of the government, not to emphasize specific element too much and to quote all opinions about numbers in an event with no settled interpretation. Receiving governmental recommendation, one textbook changed its description about number of death of Japanese-Koreans from “thousands” to “hundreds to thousands. Another textbook added an expression of “was settled through treaties with other nations” in post-war compensation over forced labor on the Chinese.

The administration did not hesitate in posing its opinion on some controversial issues. On Nanjing Massacre, a column article in the history textbook of Jikkyo Press was entirely rewritten after receiving opinions from the government. Firstly, the column referred to various interpretations about the event, included recognition of Ministry of Foreign Affairs that there had been several opinions about the number of victims, and quoted the number of 200,000 from the sentence of Tokyo War Tribunal. After five sessions with the officials, Jikkyo Press added an opinion that calculated the victims as 70,000 and deleted the description about Tokyo War Tribunal.

In the draft of a textbook of Shimizu Shoin Press, reinterpretation of Constitution of Japan, which paved the way to exercise collective self-defense right, was interpreted as “actual change of Article 9.” The government seemed to be frustrated with it. The officials demanded Shimizu changing the description. It was rewritten as “legislation of contingency law and reinterpretation of Article 9.”

Publishers have to pay for reediting the textbooks which are requested to change their contents. Avoiding additional cost, the publishers will be likely to obey possible opinions from the administration. As its result, history textbook will be closer to public advertisement of the government. It is doubtful whether such textbooks will raise young students with wide and open mind to the world.