September 22, 2011
Six academics from Yokohama City on September 21 visited the Ministry of Education to submit a petition calling on Minister Nakagawa Masaharu to take appropriate measures in regard to clerical errors, factual errors, and inappropriate descriptions in a history textbook to be used in Yokohama municipal junior high schools.
The history textbook, published by Ikuhosha, is controversial because of its nationalistic interpretation, and about 100,000 students in 149 junior high schools will start using the textbook in April next year for four years.
The six said that they found at least 18 mistakes and false accounts in the textbook in question.
Quoting a passage from the textbook that claims that the Asia-Pacific War was for the “self-existence and self-defense” of Japan, former Japanese Ambassador to Nepal Yoshida Shigenobu stated, “That is extremely biased.”
The ex-ambassador also pointed out that the textbook omits the Japanese Army’s involvement in the mass suicide of civilians during the 1945 Okinawa Battle and criticized this omission as “lacking compassion for the Okinawans.”
Professor Emeritus of Hitotsubashi University Fujioka Sadahiko pointed out that although the Yokohama City Board of Education knew that another war-glorifying history textbook publisher Jiyusha had plagiarized a chronological table, the board continued to use it for two years in about half of the city’s public junior highs.
The history textbook, published by Ikuhosha, is controversial because of its nationalistic interpretation, and about 100,000 students in 149 junior high schools will start using the textbook in April next year for four years.
The six said that they found at least 18 mistakes and false accounts in the textbook in question.
Quoting a passage from the textbook that claims that the Asia-Pacific War was for the “self-existence and self-defense” of Japan, former Japanese Ambassador to Nepal Yoshida Shigenobu stated, “That is extremely biased.”
The ex-ambassador also pointed out that the textbook omits the Japanese Army’s involvement in the mass suicide of civilians during the 1945 Okinawa Battle and criticized this omission as “lacking compassion for the Okinawans.”
Professor Emeritus of Hitotsubashi University Fujioka Sadahiko pointed out that although the Yokohama City Board of Education knew that another war-glorifying history textbook publisher Jiyusha had plagiarized a chronological table, the board continued to use it for two years in about half of the city’s public junior highs.
