Japanese History Organizations Oppose to the Adoption of the History Textbooks

Representatives of the 21 history organizations in Japan presented a report that pointed out the distortions in the middle school history textbooks made by the `Association to Make New History Textbooks` at a press conference held in Tokyo yesterday, and said that new history textbooks should not be adopted. Pointing out the 56 mistakes, the representatives criticized the textbooks saying that ``it is questionable whether people with serious scholarship in history wrote the textbooks.`` 30 organizations of the Japanese Historical Society, such as the Society for the Study of Japanese History and the Society for the Study of Japanese Contemporary History, participated in writing of the report. The participants pointed out that ``if school uses a history textbook that is written from a self-centered narrow perspective and that includes the slander of other countries, it will hinder students from developing a historical understanding for co-existence and forming the international sensibility.`` In order to urge not to adopt these textbooks, they sent out the report to the education committees in the city-prefectures nationwide since they hold the rights to adopt the textbooks.

Meanwhile, it was reported that Osaka Publishing Company, one of the history textbook publishing companies, corrected its previous description of `rule` of Manchuria to `invasion` with the permission of Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture after having been officially approved. Sankei Shimbun reported that the correction was made as the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture accepted the publishing company’s proposal to `correct the mistakes`. This case indicates that the Korean government’s request for correction is not unreasonable since corrections can still be made even after having been officially approved by the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture, by the request of the publishing company.

Shim Kyu-Sun ksshim@donga.com