Opinion

The feel-good historians

By Douglas Lummis

"It was a direct result of our movement." Nishio Kanji, speaking at a press conference on April 3, was referring to the big changes in this year's crop of junior high school history textbooks. Nishio's movement is led by the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform, which he heads.

2 The Society was founded in 1997, and began an attack on what it called "masochistic" (jigyakuteki) textbooks. By dwelling on the ugly and painful aspects of Japan's modern history, these history texts make students feel bad. Reading them makes students suspicious of their government. Other countries have patriotic, feel-good history texts. Why can't we?

Supported on the one hand by those ear-splitting rightwing soundtrucks and on the other hand by a number of Liberal Democratic Party politicians, their movement has been a booming success. The textbook they themselves produced, written by Nishio and Fujioka Nobukatsu, has been approved by the Education Ministry. More importantly, there has been a rush among the other textbook companies to conform to the new line, and to cut out or rewrite "masochistic" passages.

Thus (according to a Ryukyu Shinpo report): In the text published by what the report calls "Company C," the Nanjing Massacre becomes the Nanjing Incident.

Of the six texts that had specified the number of civilians killed by the Japanese military at Nanjing, five no longer do. "Company C and D" have replaced the number 200,000 with the expressions "a great many" and "a large number of," respectively. In the text published by "Company F," the subtitle "Japan's Invasion of Manchuria" becomes "The Manchurian Incident and the Withdrawal from the League of Nations." And on and on; you have most likely read all this already.

Probably the thing most unbearable to the Society members was the references to the "comfort women" (sex slaves) used by the Japanese military. And here they have been especially successful. All seven of the texts presently in use mention this horror; in the new texts, only three do.

Doubtless, the Society is right that reading about the "comfort women" can make young students unhappy. Though surely not so unhappy as the experience made the "comfort women" themselves (many of whom were the same age as the students). And the same is true of the other experiences these "historians" don't want their young people to read about.

This brings us to a problem in the Association's methodology. If you want to conceal something, it is best not to say so. If you announce beforehand your intention to hide the truth, what you then say is not going to be very persuasive.

For what is so maddening about the events of history is that, no matter how hateful they may be, you cannot make them vanish. You can reinterpret them, refuse to mention them or claim that they never happened, but you cannot make them not to have happened.

And many of those events are so cruel and ugly that to learn about them is almost unbearable. That's just how it is.

Which leads to a harder question: What are the things going on now that historians of the future will wish they could conceal from young people? Might the activities of the Society be one of them?

Shukan ST: April 20, 2001

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