A group of Japanese is reportedly taking legal action
against?their local government over a history textbook that
they say whitewashes Japan's wartime aggression.
Japan's Education Ministry approved last April the new edition
of The New History Textbook, written by right-wing scholars,
which prompted outrage in China and South Korea where bitter
memories persist of Japan's wartime aggression.
The lawsuit was filed by eight residents of Suginami, a
residential district in west Tokyo that attracted media attention
last year when it became one of the few school districts to adopt
the junior high school textbook.
"As a resident, I cannot keep silent over the choice of an
unwanted textbook for growing children," Eriko Maruhama, a
plaintiff in the lawsuit, told a news conference.
In addition to a recall of the textbook from 23 junior high
schools in Suginami from this April, the plaintiffs are demanding a
symbolic 8,000 yen (US$68) in damages.
A similar lawsuit was filed?last December by about 1,000
plaintiffs, including Chinese and South Koreans, against the
governor of Ehime in western Japan for adopting the textbook for
use at four government-run schools from April.
Plaintiffs in the latest suit say the defendant, the Suginami
local government, adopted the textbook despite poor reviews from
schoolteachers.
The Suginami school board said that it made an appropriate
decision by adopting the book.
"The decision to use the textbook was based on laws and
ordinances," the board said in a statement.
The textbook plays down the 1937 Nanjing
Massacre and ignores the sexual enslavement of women for
Japanese soldiers.
The book's authors and supporters have argued that the text's
approach corrected a "masochistic" view of history?that they
said had deprived Japanese of pride and patriotism.
Fewer than 0.5 percent of 583 school districts decided to adopt
the text, the daily Mainichi Shimbun reported last
August.
(China Daily February 10, 2006)