I talked before about the controversy in Greece over its textbook. Now another controversy has blown up in Japan over the textbooks talking about the happenings in Okinawa during the fag end of the World War II.
Suicide Cliff Monument, Okinawa
I quote:
In March, Japan's Education Ministry ordered publishers of secondary school history textbooks to delete references to coercion by Japanese troops. "There are divergent views of whether or not the suicides were ordered by the army and no proof to say either way," a ministry official told the Stars and Stripes, the US military's daily newspaper.
One passage in a textbook was changed from: "Japanese forces made [residents] commit mass suicide and kill one another using hand grenades that [the Japanese forces] had distributed." To: "Using hand grenades that Japanese forces had distributed, mass suicide and the killing of one another took place."
More than 100,000 signatures have been collected against the directive and Hirokazu Nakaima, the island's governor and a member of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, is taking part in today's demonstration, an embarrassing snub to the central government. School children will tell the protesters why they will not use the censored textbooks and witnesses of the battle will recount their stories.
Not good, but just goes to show how little history has to do with facts and all to do with perceptions. A fascinating book on Historiography by EH Carr, What is History tells us how history is constructed. So when people think of history as facts, well, that's just one view.
I think I wrote an essay on it for my Master of Research Course in 2003, if I manage to find it, I will dig it out and post it for posterity (thereby boring the entire internet with it, rather than just my professor!).
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