Distorted textbooks applied to Japanese students
(asahi.com)
Updated: 2005-07-13 16:34

Despite local outrage, Otawara, Japan, on Wednesday became the first municipal government to adopt textbooks that China and South Korea have angrily denounced as glorifying Japan's military past.

A member of Taiwan's Labor Party demonstrates outside the Interchange Association, in Taipei, protesting an amendment in Japanese history textbooks. [AP]

The city's education board unanimously agreed to use the textbooks at 12 public junior high schools from next April, including four in Kurobane and one in Yuzukami after the towns merge with Otawara in October, city officials said.

The textbooks on history and civic studies were written by members of the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform, a group of nationalist scholars who say other history textbooks present Japan's military behavior in a bad light.

But China and South Korea say the revisions made by the society do nothing but distort Japan's history.

Seoul has said the society's textbooks, published by Fusosha Publishing Inc., justify Japan's colonial rule over the Korean Peninsula. South Korea is also angered over a reference that claims Takeshima island, called Tokto in Korean, as Japanese territory.

Beijing said the history book takes an overly positive approach to Japan's past military aggression and only briefly touch on Japan's invasion of China.

The textbooks are currently used at private schools, Tokyo metropolitan government-run six-year secondary schools, and schools for disabled students in Ehime Prefecture, according to the society.

"We think that children will develop an attachment to Japan after learning the appropriate traditions and history of their homeland," Ryu Onuma, who heads the education board, said after the textbooks were adopted.

But others obviously disagreed. About 30 local residents held a protest in front of the site where the education board held its meeting.

As Onuma was leaving the area in an official car, the protesters circled the vehicle and demanded that he reconsider the decision.

In Tochigi Prefecture, 10 municipal governments, including Oyama, adopted the textbooks in 2001.

But each municipality's education board overturned the decision.

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