The educational board of Japan's central Shiga Prefecture said
Wednesday that it will adopt a junior high school history textbook
that whitewashes Japan's aggressive war against its Asian
neighbors.
The textbook, edited mainly by the Japanese Society for History
Textbook Reform and published by Fusosha Publishing Inc., will be
used at one of the three prefectural government-run junior high
schools from the next school year beginning in April.
It "will contribute to enhancing students' interests in grand
sense of our nation's history and characteristics of each era. The
students will be enabled to broaden their views," Keiko Takahashi,
head of the educational board, was quoted by the Kyodo News as
saying when announcing the adoption of the textbook.
Currently, the notorious textbook has been adopted only in
Ehime, Otawara, Tochigi and Tokyo's Suginami Ward. Most of Japanese
junior high schools have refused to use it.
According to the major Japanese daily Mainichi Shimbun,
of all 11,035 state and private junior high schools across Japan,
only 48 adopted the Fusosha textbook, merely 0.4 percent of the
total and far less than the publisher's target of 10 percent.
(Xinhua News Agency September 1, 2005)