Ilpyong  J. Kim
    Professor Emeritus of Political Science
    University of Connecticut
    Founding President and Vice Chairman of the Board
    The International Council on Korean Studies (ICKS)
    ilpyong.kim@uconn.edu
    KASTN Editor
    OKSPN Member

    and

    Moo-Young Han
    Professor of Physics
    Duke University
    Founding Chairman
    The Society of Korean-American Scholars (SKAS)
    myhan@phy.duke.edu
    KASTN/IEKAS Editor-in-Chief
    OKSPN Member
 
    As you know, from various news media, the issue of the official  revision of the history textbooks for the Japanese middle
    schools  has become one of the most contentious issues in Asia, especially  in China, South Korea, and North Korea.  It
    turned into an  international issue because of its distortions - or, more precisely, whitewashing of the Japanese atrocities in
    Asia during the World War II.  We have briefly reported on this in the last issue of IEKAS, 01-14, 4/27/01.  We referred
    to this alarming rise of the ultra right-wing movements in Japan as the Rise of 'Neo-Tojos,' after the wartime leader of the
    Imperial Japan, Hideki Tojo.

    To the uninitiated, all of these events may appear to be something that exploded only recently and a rather limited issue
    involving school textbooks.  The truth of the matter is quite contrary: it represents only one of many facets that show the
    steady resurgence of the ultra right-wing nationalists in Japan.  The resurgence is not unlike the historical rise of the ultra
    right-wing military extremists that profoundly influenced the geopolitics of Northeast Asia for the first half of the 20th
    century - two Sino-Japanese wars, the Russo-Japanese wars, the colonization of Korea by Japan, and the military
    occupation of China by Japan.  It all ended with the surrender of Japan in 1945 at the end of the World War II.

    It is this rise of the new ultra right-wing movements in Japan - dubbed by us as the 'RISE OF THE NEW-TOJOS' -
    and how it  works its way into the revision, a steady and continuous  revision, of the official history textbooks for Japanese
    schools that we would like to be able to shed some light  onto.

    All this uproar is set to repeat itself next year, this time involving the history textbooks for high schools. The once-
    in-four-years revision of the textbooks for the high schools comes due in 2002.

    THE RISE OF THE ULTRA RIGHT-WING ("NEO-TOJOS")

    It was in the late 1970s when one of us (Ilpyong Kim) was a  visiting professor of International Relations at Tokyo
    University under the Fulbright lectureship that a profound change of mood taking place in Japan began to be clearly
    visible. The upsurge of the Japanese right wing nationalism  began to show its head around this time as the changing
    international environment encouraged such movements. This rise in the Japanese right-wing nationalism is very similar to
    the rise of fascism and nationalism in the 1930s in both Japan and Germany that was eventually to lead to WW II.

    Japanese right wing groups are highly organized and also amply financed. There are hundreds of such groups, from Tokyo
    on down to every local regions in Japan.  They press for the glorification of Hirohito (the late Emperor who reigned
    sovereign during WW II); they claim he had done nothing wrong, despite well-documented history of Hirohito's
    involvement in the decision-making in the attack on Pearl harbor. They want  to change the name for WW II from its
    current usage of the Pacific War to the Great East Asian War.

    They would like to insert into history books how beneficial the Japanese occupation of Korea was to Koreans and how,
    in fact,  Japan engaged in the war of liberation from kings, emperors and  landlords when Japan invaded Korea,
    Manchuria and China.

    The right-wing's insistent efforts to revise the history  textbooks - pure and simple distortions of history - actually
    had its beginning in as far back as 1982 and the efforts have  been continuously going on, as a matter of fact, for 18
    years now.  The recent flare up is only the latest in the continuing  battle on their part.

    HOW IT WORKS

    As required by their laws, the textbooks for middle and high  schools are revised every four years in Japan.  Each time
    panels of specialists are formed by the Ministry of Education  and the final revisions are approved also by the Ministry of
    Education.

    Each revision goes through three stages: first, the Ministry of Education selects and appoints committee members to
    propose revisions, second the revised textbooks (more than one versions)  are approved and endorsed by the Ministry
    of Education, and  finally local schools make decisions as to which textbook to  be adopted for the classroom usage.

    The first two stages are easy targets for the right-wing groups, since they involve relatively small number of people.  It is
    much easier to lobby furiously and bring enormous pressure to  bear upon a small number of paper-pushers, the
    career-conscious middle-level bureaucrats, who they themselves may very well harbor right-wing sentiments.  Finally,
    the right-wing groups will bring pressure to local education boards.  This is not as straightforward as influencing the
    Ministry bureaucrats.

    In the past the middle and high school teachers of history or social studies usually made the decision to adopt their own
    textbook and since most of the Japanese teachers are very  liberal (they are members of the Japanese teachers union, the
    Nippon Kyoso), they have rejected in the past the textbooks the right wing groups pushed for adoption. The right wing
    groups have since changed their tactics at the local levels.  Now they pressure the local boards to make decisions
    bypassing teachers.

    It is our understanding that some school districts changed the process and now the local education boards indeed make
    decision while some other school districts will continue to have the teachers of social studies make the decision. It is
    rather complicated process and we have to know more about the Japanese political process including the decision making
    process of adopting textbooks at the local school district level, in addition to processes at the Education Ministry.

    DISTORTIONS

    There are some 200 to 400 facts that have been in disputes in the history of the revisionism and the latest attempts at
    revision involve no less than 137 distortions.  W do not wish  to make a complete analysis of all these facts here.

    Suffice it to mention some of the most serious distortions.  One is in their attempts to sanitize and minimize the atrocities,
    one in Korea and the other in China, namely, the denial, an outright denial, of the Nanking Massacre, during which the
    rampaging Japanese army tortured, raped and killed an estimated 100,000 Chinese in the city of Nanking, and the
    Comfort Women,  Korean women forced into sex slavery for the Japanese army in front line areas.  The other is to
    stress how beneficial the  Japanese occupation had been to the cultural developments in both Korea and China.