July 24, 2009

Teachers and other educators in the Tokyo Network against adoption of textbooks praising the past Japanese war of aggression for junior high school students held an emergency rally on July 23 in Tokyo to broaden their campaign.

The rally was called in response to the Tokyo Metropolitan Board of Education push to have metropolitan 6-year high schools and special education schools use the textbooks edited by the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform, a group founded in 1996 to promote the rightist view of past Japanese wars, in history and civics classes. The board of education had planned to decide on the adoption of these textbooks at its meeting on July 23, but due to the absence of two out of six members of the board, the decision was delayed until August. The rally was held to increase pressure on the board of education to give up on the use of the textbooks that praise the past wars of aggression.
In the keynote report to the rally, Tawara Yoshifumi, secretary general of the National Network 21 on Children and Textbooks warned against Yokohama City moving toward the adoption of the controversial textbooks for its public schools. He also called for putting pressure on school districts that have already adopted them. – Akahata, July 24, 2009