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Controversial textbook approved
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DESPITE weeks of protest from its Asian neighbours and peace-loving organizations and scholars in Japan, the Japanese Education Ministry yesterday officially approved a controversial history textbook for junior high school for 2002 without redressing its history-distorting essence and the beautification of Japan's past aggressions.
The history textbook was complied by nationalist Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform headed by professor Kanji Nishio of the University of Electro-Communications.. The right wing group claims the current books are biased against Japan and full of self-denigration.
Under pressures both at home and abroad, The Japanese Government demanded the group make a total of 137 changes to the too apparent narration of beautification on aggressions.
Distortion
Yet, it can be easily found that there is no change to the textbook's essence of history-distorting and beautification on Japan's past military aggressions.
The approved textbook, for instance, failed to mention the Nanjing Massacre as a historical fact, in which over 300,000 Chinese civilians and unarmed soldiers were slaughtered by Japanese aggressors in 1937.
Instead, it mentioned the killing in the part of Far East Tribune Trial and tries to obliterate it, saying that "many Chinese civilians are massacred in Nanjing ... but the data have many questionable points and the controversies on that continue to nowadays".
In another inflammatory passage, the book also credited war with Japan with sowing the seeds of Southeast Asia's independence from European colonial masters.
"One of the factors that speeded up the independence of Asian nations was Japan's military debouchment," the book states, according to the ministry.
The textbooks, which will go into print from April next year, still contains no references to atrocities, including "comfort women", who were forced to serve as sex slaves for Japanese soldiers during World War II.
A similar dispute occurred in 1982 when a Japanese history textbook changed the word "aggression" to "advance" in describing the Japanese military action against China.
The Japanese Government, under pressure from Asian countries at that time, adopted a article on textbook issue, and promised to deal with its Asian neighbours in modern and contemporary periods in light of international understanding and co-operation.
Condemnation
A spokesman with the Chinese Ministry of Education said yesterday that the education circle of China are indignant over a new Japanese history textbook for the year 2002, Xinhua reported.
The spokesman said the Japanese Government has the front to approve the textbook, which, compiled by the Japanese right-wing scholars, has turned a blind eye to Japan's aggression against China and other Asian countries, distorted the history and even gone so far as to whitewash and exculpate the Japanese militarists.
South Korea yesterday expressed deep regret over the outcome of the screening of the textbook.
The South Korean government "is gravely concerned that the distorted view of history that such textbooks are likely to instill in Japan's growing generation is not only undesirable for Japan's future and its responsibilities in the international community but also highly detrimental to Korean-Japanese relations", said the statement.
Meanwhile, South Korean civic organizations unanimously condemned the approval of distorted history textbooks.
"The Pan-National Headquarters for Blocking Japan's Distortion of School Textbooks", which comprises 51 civic organizations and 12 Japanese partners, said it will wage large-scale campaigns to block Japanese middle schools' adoption of distorting-history textbooks.
The organization released a joint declaration at a new conferences held in Seoul yesterday which accused the Japanese Government approved textbooks distorting and ignoring historical facts in the past wartime.
On March 23, Japanese Social Democratic Party leader Takako Doi called on the Japanese Government to face the truth of the past history at a gathering.
A group of Japanese intellectuals, including Nobel literature prize winner Kenzaburo Oe and Mutsuko Miki, widow of former Japanese Prime Minister Takeo Miki, issued a statement on March 16, saying that the history textbook draft submitted for screening failed to chronicle Japan's wartime sex slavery. There is no "sincere regret and apology" for Japan's colonial rule and aggression, the statement noted.
The Japanese Government's approval of the textbooks is expected to worsen the ties between Japan and its Asian neighbouring nations.
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