Japan’s education ministry approves deletion of textbook descriptions of wartime sex slavery

The Japanese government has approved a private publishing company’s plan to delete the descriptions of the Japanese military’s World War II sex slavery from high school textbooks. Attention is being drawn to whether other Japanese textbook publishers will follow suit before the Japanese government’s announcement of the result of its review of middle school textbooks.

According to the Japanese daily Yomiuri Shimbun on Friday, Suuken Publishing requested the Japanese government’s approval of the company’s plan to delete the expression of “comfort women” and “forceful mobilization” in its three high school textbooks. The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology approved the plan on December 11, 2014, apparently because of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s policy of negating the wartime sex slavery.

Suuken’s existing "Modern Society" textbook states that Japan has unresolved World War II issues including the military comfort women, former Japanese troops with Korean nationality, and compensations for forced mobilization of laborers. The publishing company’s new textbook has replaced the part with a sentence stating that individuals who suffered damage from Japan during World War II demanded apologies or filed lawsuits demanding compensations, claiming that compensations to individual victims were not settled.

The publishing company also deleted the statement that there were controversies over post-war reparations for individuals, including forced laborers and comfort women, replacing it with a sentence saying that individual victims in South Korea are filing lawsuits seeking apologies or compensations.