TOKYO: A Tokyo district on Friday adopted a history textbook critics say whitewashes Japan's past militarism, a decision likely to anger the country's Asian neighbours.
Japan's Education Ministry approved the new edition of "The New History Textbook," written by nationalist scholars, in April, prompting outrage in the Republic of Korea (ROK) and other Asian countries, where bitter memories of Japan's past aggression persist.
An official at the education board in Suginami, a mostly residential area of western Tokyo, confirmed that the text had been adopted for use in junior high schools but would give no further details.
The debate on whether to adopt the textbook in Suginami, which is home to some 500,000 people and has 23 junior high schools, was so fiercely politicized that a final decision had been postponed for a week.
In the end, three of five members of the board voted in favour of the textbook, Kyodo news agency said.
Hisao Ishiyama, head of a group of academics and teachers opposed to the textbook, said he was shocked by the result.
"This will force schools to use the textbook for the next four years, meaning that many people will be exposed to its very warped version of history," he said. "It is an extremely distressing result."
Critics say the book, sponsored by the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform (Tsukurukai), plays down the 1937 Nanjing Massacre in China and ignores the sexual enslavement of women for Japanese soldiers.
In mid-July, the city of Otawara in Tochigi prefecture, 150 kilometres north of Tokyo, became the first municipal government to adopt the book.
As some Japanese conservatives continue to deny Japan's war crimes during World War II, women in the ROK who were forced into sexual slavery by Japan's Imperial Army during the war presented a petition demanding an official apology and compensation to a representative of the prime minister on Friday.
More than half a million people from around the world signed the petition, addressed to Japan's Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and timed to mark the 60th anniversary of Japan's World War II surrender on August 15, event organizers said.
Japan has apologized to the women and set up a partly public fund to provide compensation. But critics say it has undercut its apologies with comments by leading government figures playing down the issue.
(China Daily 08/13/2005 page6)
