Mothers in Yokohama struggle to fight distorted textbooks

Mothers in the Tokyo suburb of Yokohama are fighting an uphill battle to prevent schools from selecting history textbooks made by ultranationalists.

With a population of 3.6 million, Yokohama is highly likely to select middle school textbooks with a right-wing bias in early August. A “liaison association” for the selection of Yokohama school textbooks is trying to wage its campaign against textbooks biased toward right-wing interests nationwide, but face battles on two fronts: a conservative swing in Japan and parental indifference.

○ Uphill battle

“Textbooks should be accurate and objective because they are most easily accessed by our children and have a great influence on the formation of their personality,” Hiromi Miyama, 43, a member of the liaison association who has a middle school son, told The Dong-A Ilbo.

She did not raise her voice or get excited about her cause, but said she has but one reason for joining the campaign. “I just want my son to grow up with sound common sense,” she said.

Miyama and other parents founded the association in August 2009 to fight history textbooks that distort history. At the time, members of Yokohama’s education board selected a history textbook published by Jiyusha that was written by a right-wing group.

Since then, people in Yokohama`s 18 districts have formed groups on the history textbook dispute. Some 200 people along with members of the association have joined the cause.

Such efforts have proven fruitless, however. Two right-wing school textbooks passed screening by the Japanese government and four members of the six-member education board, including its chairman who led the selection of right-wing textbooks in 2009, retained their positions.

“It`s outrageous for education board members to unilaterally select school textbooks, ignoring teacher demands,” said Tadayoshi Gatsuno, an association member and former middle school teacher. “Each school should be allowed to select its own textbooks.”

○ What is wrong with the textbooks?

Mothers in Yokohama were of the same opinion, blasting history descriptions that embellish the war started by Japan and look down on neighboring countries because of Japan’s sense of historic superiority.

“The textbooks in question describe the Pacific War started by Japan as the Greater East Asia War, embellishing it as a war for the liberation of Asia,” Miyama said. “The textbooks disparage precious lessons from the war –- peace and abolition of nuclear weapons and discrimination against foreigners living in Japan –- as ‘harmful additives’ in the textbooks.”

Another mother said the textbooks take for granted resolving international conflicts with military might, not dialogue and compromise. “Even people in their 80s say they feel like reading textbooks from Japan`s militarist era,” she said.

The right-wing textbooks also contain distorted descriptions of history involving Korea. According to the Japanese civic group Children and Textbooks Japan Network 21, the Jiyusha textbook justifies Japan’s forced annexation of Korea by saying Imperial Japan built schools and provided Korean-language education together with Japanese-language education.

The other textbook published by Ikuhosha said Japan helped Korea and China’s modernization because the latter were incapable of modernizing on their own.

○ Parental indifference

The liaison association will expand its campaign against such textbooks nationwide. Japan’s municipal and provincial authorities selected in August last year middle school textbooks to be used from this year. Parental indifference and deep-rooted cynicism in Japanese society are the group’s biggest enemy, however.

Miyama said that when she told other parents about what was wrong with the textbooks, they simply responded by saying that if there were anything wrong with the textbooks, teachers would correct them. She said few parents were interested in looking at their children’s textbooks.

Worse, most parents know nothing of how textbooks are selected.

A mother said, “The movement against right-wing textbooks is not about political partiality but about exercising the rights of students and those of their parents to correct education.”

changkim@donga.com