Japan's Teachers Union Chief Slams History Textbook

[bobbieinok]

http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200503/200503150038.html

Minei Masaya, president of Japan Teachers¡¯ Union (JTU) Institute For Education and Culture, expressed concern Tuesday about a controversial Fusosha textbook which he said gives Japanese students a distorted view of history. He said the JTU¡¯s 400,000 members would use their influence to make sure as few schools as possible adopt the text.
Masaya, in Seoul to attend a symposium on major pending policy issues in Korean and Japanese education reform, jointly sponsored by the JTU and the Korean Federation of Teachers' Associations, said the Fusosha text attempted to justify Japanese invasions and lacked self-critical awareness of Japan¡¯s actions in Korea and China.

He said the background to the Fusosha text was renascent nationalism in Japan, including discussion over whether to amend Japan¡¯s basic law on education - all of which the JTU opposes. ...

more....

(from a background article linked at right)

The Alliance for Asian Peace and History Education on Friday singled out problematic accounts in the revised edition of a Japanese middle school history textbook published by Fusosha Publishing Inc with the support of a rightwing group calling itself the "Society for Composing a New Textbook on History." Some of them are summarized here:

....

¡Þ 7: Koreans were grateful for their annexation by Japan

Some Korean people favored the annexation by Japan. The Japanese government-general tried to modernize Korea.¡±

¡Þ 8: The textbook offers a whitewash of Japan¡¯s conscription of Koreans and other brutalities.

The text does this by avoiding words that carry any implication of coercion, saying for instance merely that under colonial rule Koreans were "encouraged" to change their family names to Japanese ones after the Chinese-Japanese War broke out, and that Japan carried out policies to japanize Koreans.

¡Þ 9: The text emphasizes Japanese suffering

On March 10 1945, the Allied Forces¡¯ attack on Tokyo claimed 100,000 lives overnight. U.S forces landed on the main island of Okinawa and occupied it after a two month-long battle in which a total of 188,000 Japanese soldiers and civilians were killed.

¡Þ 10: China is blamed for the Manchuria Incident

The anti-Japanese movement among the Chinese grew violent, and they frequently disturbed the operation of the railways and attacked Japanese people. Chinese communists infiltrated the Kuomintang and provoked Japan into declaring a war.

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[rpannier]

1. I live in Korea

And the Japanese try that every ten years or so. There are some in Japan that are unwilling to accept the sheer evil of what they did to the Koreans.

[BoogDoc7]

2. Don't they...

Also omit Pearl Harbor from their histories?

[TahitiNut]

5. "what they did"

Personally, I don't believe we can possibly heal until we accept what we have done.

We slaughtered millions of Native Americans.
We slaughtered millions of Jews.
We slaughtered millions of gays, gypsies, and other "undesirables."
We murdered and enslaved people on the Korean peninsula.
We slaughtered millions in the "Killing Fields."
We have committed uncounted atrocities upon one another.
We have raped, befouled, and pillaged our beautiful blue marble.

This is not the guilt of some narrowly-defined, historically-marginalized people ... it is the shared guilt and shame of all peoples.
We must share both the guilt and shame of being perpetrators and the pain and suffering of being our own victims.
We can do better.
We must do better.

[rpannier]

10. You know this is an issue about Korea...

Don't change the subject. You marginalize the evil that was committed. Should the world now ignore what the Nazi's did because the US did something terrible. Stick to the issue.

[TahitiNut]

12. I can only assume you didn't read my entire post.

:shrug:

[rpannier]

13. My apologies

I misread your entire article. Again...I apologize.

[TahitiNut]

14. No problem.

Namaste.

[bpilgrim]

3. "The Japanese government-general tried to modernize Korea"

"anti-Japanese movement among the Chinese grew violent, and they frequently disturbed the operation of the railways and attacked Japanese people"

sounds an awfully lot like the chimp talk'n bout the ME, don't it?



Japanese aircraft bombed south Shanghai Station Aug.28,1937.
About 200 people in the waiting room were dead or wounded by the bombing. A crying baby was left alone after the bombing. - Life Oct. 4, 1937

what will history teachers say in this country about FALLUJAH?

peace

[Baclava]

4. I guess they forgot The Rape of Nanking too?

"The Nanking Massacre began on December 13, 1937 when the Japanese Imperial Army captured Nanking (Nanjing), which was then China's capital. Japanese soldiers ransacked city streets, randomly killing Chinese men, women and children. Within hours, the streets and alleys of Nanking were littered with the bodies of civilians and prisoners of war. The slaughter continued for several months. As many as 80,000 women of all ages were raped by Japanese invasion troops."


http://www.tribo.org/nanking/
http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/reviewswc3.htm
http://www.fatherryan.org/holocaust/holocaust77/rapenanking.htm

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. How nice to see that I do indeed understand the trends

Asia Pacific Zone of Influence will happen if the Japanese Nationalists can get their way...

[Voltaire99]

7. Perhaps the Japanese are taking a page from Texas text books.

US school children read a right wing-approved diet of nonsense in which the fatherland is always innocent liberator, no matter how many foreigners die under its bombs.

[BoogDoc7]

8. Most...

History books are pretty terrible - almost as bad as American science texts. Most have positions under-represented or poor information, of state half-truths about what actually went on (US Civil War is particularly bad in most texts, with poor or incomplete views on slavery, racism, and who all the good and bad guys were on both sides).

Of course, the modern public schools don't teach children how to think, study, research, and write from the beginning properly anyway. Teachers' unions, schools of education, corporations, lawmakers, and parents ALL at fault on this.

[NNN0LHI]

9. Do they mention the "comfort women" their soldiers used for sex slaves?

Even "comfort women" is a misnomer. Most were just little girls. The fucking bastards.

Don

[0007]

11. I like the story about how we dropped the bomb to save lives!

History is only as good as the person who wrote it.