Rethinking Schooling for the 21st Century

In discussing relations with neighbouring countries, besides stressing the
American alliance, the texts highlight territorial disputes with Russia, Korea
and China. There are notable differences in the representation of these: Teikoku
Shoin, for example, simply asserts that the islands in question have been
‘Japanese territory from ancient times’ (Nihon koyuu no ryoudo) (pp. 168-9),
whereas Tokyo Shoseki in each case details the origins of and legal basis for
Japan’s claims — though without presenting the claims of the opposing parties
(pp. 196-7). 29 Tokyo Shoseki, unlike Teikoku Shoin, also notes the relevance of
‘great suffering in past wars’ to the state of relations between Japan, Korea and
China, but without offering any details (p. 195). The improvement of relations will
depend, opines the former text, on a ‘strengthening of mutual understanding’
and ‘working together for greater development and prosperity’.
But a crucial barrier to that understanding remains divided memories of war
— especially the Asia-Pacific War (Shin and Sneider, 2011; Morris, Shimazu and
Vickers, 2013) — divisions that Japan’s own curriculum does little to explain or
resolve. Images of the Hiroshima or Nagasaki Peace Parks adorn the covers of
several Civics texts, 30 reflecting the continuing centrality of memories of atomic
attack to constructions of Japanese identity as inherently pacifist. However,
on aspects of the war key to perceptions of Japan in neighbouring countries,
textbooks are far less forthcoming — and have become noticeably less so in
recent years (see Cave, 2013).
Indeed, all textbooks place far more emphasis on the wartime suffering of
ordinary Japanese than on the experience of those subjected to Japanese
invasion. This focus is heightened by ‘investigative’ sections inviting students to
research and reflect upon particular events: Tokyo Shoseki provides a two-page
spread on Hiroshima (pp. 230-1), while Teikoku Shoin focuses on the American
invasion of Okinawa and the suffering of civilians there — admittedly at the hands
of the Japanese army as well as the Americans (pp. 230-1). (If any Japanese villain
emerges from textbook accounts, it is the faceless ‘military’.) The Teikoku Shoin
text also features a similar ‘investigative’ section on the migration of colonists
from Nagano Prefecture to Japanese-occupied Manchuria, but largely ignores
the impact of this phenomenon on the local population (pp. 222-3). One footnote
refers to a single paragraph elsewhere on ‘Chinese resistance’, but another links
to a longer discussion of the plight of Japanese stranded in mainland Asia after
the 1945 surrender. Meanwhile, both Tokyo Shoseki (p. 223) and Teikoku Shoin (p.
225) discuss the Nazi Holocaust with reference to the role of Sugihara Chiune,
Japanese consul in Latvia, in issuing ‘visas of life’ (inochi no biza) to persecuted
29 Teikoku Shoin’s history textbook, in another two-page spread on Japan’s territorial disputes,
does provide a brief account of the history of the Japanese claims to the various islands
similar to that provided in the Tokyo Shoseki Civics text.
30 For example, the image of the Nagasaki Peace Memorial Statue is featured on the back
cover of Nippon Bunkyo Shuppan (2016) and the front cover of Shimizu Shoin (2016) Civics
textbooks. The image of the Hiroshima Dome is on the front cover of Kyoiku Shuppan (2016)
Civics text.
82
Chapter 3: East Asia