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Japan’s Education of Distorted History

“Post-war, we started on our path bearing in mind the feelings of deep remorse over the war. Our actions brought suffering to the peoples in Asian countries. We must not avert our eyes from that. I will uphold the views expressed by the previous prime ministers in this regard.”

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe made the remark as he addressed a joint meeting of the US Congress on April 30, 2015. However, contrary to Abe’s remarks, the Japanese government chose to educate children with textbooks that justify Japan’s colonialism and glorify war.

Japan’s middle school social studies textbook that passed the 2015 review

The “comfort women” issue was included in all textbooks in 1997.
In 2015, only 1 of 18 textbooks included the issue, with the victims’ testimonies and images deleted.

The number of victims of the Great Kanto Earthquake (thousands) and the Nanjing Incident (hundreds of thousands) were rewritten as “many.”

Professor Herbert Ziegler, co-author of American high school history textbook “Traditions & Encounters: A Global Perspective on the Past”

“Representative of the Japanese consulate in Honolulu ...walked into my office, uninvited… essentially requesting some sort of revision…
Neither the publisher nor I entertained any such notion…
…no government should have the right to censor history…”

Source : KBS NEWS
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