This Article Immediate free access via SAGE Open OA Abstract Free Full Text (Free PDF) Free Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in Web of Science Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Schneider, C. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

The Japanese History Textbook Controversy in East Asian Perspective

University of Leipzig, Germany

Controversy over the inadequate presentation of Japan's colonial and wartime past in the country's history textbooks is one of the most protracted, notorious, and politically relevant "history problems" currently troubling East Asia. This article provides an overview of the controversy's evolution since 1982, situating it in changing domestic and regional contexts, analyzing its particularities and interrelations with other controversial issues, and evaluating its impacts on textbooks and societies at large. It shows how increased domestic and foreign scrutiny and contestation have triggered cycles of greater openness, conservative counterreactions, subsequent backlashes, and renewed debate in the field of textbooks and have overall contributed both to reinforcements and to reconsiderations of foreign relations in the region.

Key Words: East Asia • history education • textbook controversies/debates

References

• Askew, D. 2004. New research on the Nanjing incident. Japan Focus 126. http://japanfocus.org/products/details/1729.
• Barnard, C. 2003. Language, ideology, and Japanese history textbooks. London: RoutledgeCurzon.
• Chan, C., and B. Bridges. 2006. China, Japan, and the clash of nationalisms. Asian Perspectives 30 (1): 127-56.
• Committee I: Japanese-Korean Women's Committee for the Writing of a Common History Teaching Material. 2005. Japanese-Korean modern and contemporary history from a gender perspective [in Japanese]. Tokyo: Nashinokisha.
• Committee II: Japanese-Chinese-Korean Committee for Common History Teaching Materials of the Three Countries. 2005. History that opens the future: Modern and contemporary history of three East Asian countries [in Japanese]. Tokyo: Kôbunken.
• Conrad, S. 2003. Entangled memories: Versions of the past in Germany and Japan, 1945-2001. Journal of Contemporary History 38 (1): 85-99.[Free Full Text]
• Dierkes, J. 2005. The stability of postwar Japanese history education amid global changes. In History education and national identity in East Asia, ed. E. Vickers and A. Jones, 255-74. New York: Routledge.
• Ducke, I. 2002. The history textbook issue 2001. A successful citizens' movement or foreign intervention? DIJ Working Paper 02/6, Deutsches Institut fuer Japanstudien [German Institute for Japanese Studes], Tokyo.
• Fiola, A. 2005. Anti-Japanese hostilities move to the Internet. Washington Post, May 20. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/09/AR2005050901119_pf.html.
• Fujinaga, T. 2006. The 2005 history textbook issue and Japanese society: The discussion on the Tsukuru-kai textbook [in Japanese]. Paper presented at the fourth international symposium for a common historical perspective in East Asia, Seoul, Republic of Korea, December.
• Gries, P. 2004. China's new nationalism: Pride, politics and diplomacy. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Hayashi, Hirofumi. 2008. Disputes in Japan over the Japanese military "comfort women" system and its perception in history. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 617:123-132.[Abstract/Free Full Text]
• Kahn, J. 2006. Where's Mao? Chinese revise history textbooks. New York Times, September 1. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/01/world/asia/01china.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss.
• Kimijima, K. 2000. The continuing legacy of Japanese colonialism: The Japan-South Korea Joint Study Group on History Textbooks. In Censoring history: Citizenship and memory in Japan, Germany, and the United States, ed. L. Hein and M. Selden, 203-25. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.
• Klein, T. 2005. Staging a tradition? The 2005-anti-Japanese protests in the People's Republic of China in historical perspective [in German]. Historische Anthropologie 13 (3): 403-13.
• Lim, J. 2008. The antagonistic complicity of nationalisms-On nationalist phenomenology in East Asian history textbooks. In Contested views of a common past: Historical revisionism in contemporary East Asia, ed. S. Richter, 197-214. Frankfurt, Germany: Campus.
• Liu, Jie, Mitani, Hiroshi, and Yang, Daging, eds. 2006. Historical views that transcend national boundaries: An effort toward Sino-Japanese dialogue [in Chinese and in Japanese]. Tokyo: Tokyo University Press/Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press.
• Narita, R., and M. Iwasaki. 2008. Writing a history textbook in East Asia-The possibilities and pitfalls of "history that opens the future." In Contested views of a common past: Historical revisionism in contemporary East Asia, ed. S. Richter, 263-75. Frankfurt, Germany: Campus.
• Nelson, J. 2002. Tempest in a textbook: A report on the new middle-school history textbook in Japan. Critical Asian Studies 34 (1): 129-48.[CrossRef][Web of Science]
• Nozaki, Y., and H. Inokuchi. 2000. Japanese education, nationalism, and Ienaga Sabur's textbook lawsuits. In Censoring history: Citizenship and memory in Japan, Germany, and the United States, ed. L. Hein and M. Selden, 96-126. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.
• Oguma, E., and Y. Ueno. 2003. Pain-relieving nationalism [in Japanese]. Tokyo: Kei gijuku daigaku shuppankai.
• Reilly, J. 2006. China's history activism and Sino-Japanese relations. China: An International Journal 4 (2): 189-216.
• Rose, C. 1998. Interpreting history in Sino-Japanese relations. London: Routledge.
• ---. 2005. Sino-Japanese relations: Facing the past, looking to the future? London: Routledge.
• Saaler, S. 2005. Politics, memory and public opinion: The history textbook controversy Japanese society. Munich, Germany: Iudicium.
• ---. 2006. Historical revisionism in crisis. The end of the history textbook controversy in Japan? [in German]. Internationale Schulbuchforschung 28 (1): 85-93.
• Sakamoto, T. 2003. How should textbooks be written? In The contested past: A historians' debate in Japan [in German], ed. S. Richter and W. Hoepken, 151-66. Weimar, Germany: Boehlau.
• Schneider, C. 2008. National fortresses besieged: History textbooks in contemporary China, Taiwan, and Japan. In Contested views of a common past: Historical revisionism in contemporary East Asia, ed. S. Richter, 237-62. Frankfurt, Germany: Campus.
• Seaton, P. 2005. Reporting the 2001 textbook and Yasukuni Shrine controversies: Japanese war memory and commemoration in the British media. Japan Forum 17 (3): 287, 309.
• Seraphim, F. 2006. Relocating war memory at century's end: Japan's postwar responsibility and global public culture. In Ruptured histories: War, memory, and the post-cold war in Asia, ed. S.M. Jager and R. Mitter, 15-46. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Soh, C. 2005. Politics of the victim/victor complex: Interpreting South Korea's national furor over Japanese history textbooks. American Asian Review 21 (4): 145-78.
• Whiting, A. 1989. China eyes Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Yang, D. 2002. Mirror for the future or the history card? Understanding the history problem. In Chinese-Japanese relations in the twenty-first century: Complementarity and conflict, ed. M. Sãderberg, 10-31. London: Routledge.
• ---. 2008. Historical revisionism in East Asia: What does politics have to do with it? In Contested views of a common past: Historical revisionism in contemporary East Asia, ed. S. Richter. Frankfurt, Germany: Campus.
• Yoshida, T. 2000. A battle over history: The Nanjing Massacre in Japan. In The Nanjing Massacre in history and historiography, ed. J. Fogel, 70-132. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Yuan, W. 2006. Modernisation and history textbooks [in Chinese]. Freezing Point 574, January 11. http://zqb.cyol.com/gb/zqb/2006-01/11/content_118530.htm.
• Zhu, D. 2006. Perspectives on the 2005 Japanese history textbook issue: The perspective of Taiwanese society. Paper presented at the Fourth International Symposium for a Common Historical Perspective in East Asia, Seoul, Republic of Korea, December.

The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 617, No. 1, 107-122 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/0002716208314359


SAGE Open article

CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?

This Article Immediate free access via SAGE Open OA Abstract Free Full Text (Free PDF) Free Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in Web of Science Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Schneider, C. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                         What's this?