Abe's government wants history textbooks to better reflect its vision of history

The Education Ministry is planning to implement school textbook reform to better reflect the government’s stance on topics such as history and island disputes.
Education Minister Hakubun Shimomura said his ministry will revise the textbook screening process for elementary, junior high and high schools, TBS reported Saturday. “We are attempting to adopt the government’s viewpoint on textbook criteria, but this doesn’t mean that we will block various historical or political viewpoints,” he told a news conference.
According to the proposal, textbook certification revisions will start next fiscal year beginning with middle school textbooks. With subjects like history and territorial disputes, the reform seeks to encompass the government viewpoint. But where varying viewpoints exist on a particular subject, then each will be explained fully and objectively to provide an overall sense of balance to the textbook curriculum, Shimomura said.

Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LPD) has a long standing issue with Japan's actions before and during World War II.   A majority of its members are historical revisionists concerning the most egregious atrocities committed by the Japanese Imperial army.

Comfort women were women and girls forced into a prostitution corps created by the Empire of Japan during World War II. The name "comfort women" is a translation of a Japanese name ianfu (慰安婦).^[1][2] Ianfu is a euphemism for shōfu (娼婦) whose meaning is "prostitute(s)".^[3]

Estimates vary as to how many women were involved, with numbers ranging from as low as 20,000 from some Japanese scholars ^[4] to as high as 410,000 from some Chinese scholars,^[5] but the exact numbers are still being researched and debated. Many of the women were from Korea, China, and the Philippines,^[6] although women from Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan, Indonesia and other Japanese-occupied territories were used for military "comfort stations". Stations were located in Japan, China, the Philippines, Indonesia, then Malaya, Thailand, Burma, New Guinea, Hong Kong, Macau, and French Indochina.^[7]

According to testimony, young women from countries under Japanese Imperial control were abducted from their homes. In many cases, women were also lured with promises of work in factories or restaurants. Once recruited, the women were incarcerated in "comfort stations" in foreign lands.^[8]

A U.N. report on May 31 criticized Japanese politicians and local leaders for denying the facts about “comfort women” and urged Tokyo to take measures to prevent "re-traumatizing" the victims.

The Japanese government should "refute attempts to deny the facts by the government authorities and public figures and to re-traumatize the victims through such repeated denials,” the report of the U.N. Committee against Torture said.

The report not only criticized Diet members and high-ranking local government officials, but it also expressed concern that public compensation or relief measures have not been provided to former comfort women and that those involved in setting up the comfort women system have not been prosecuted.

The report also called on the Japanese government to accurately describe the comfort women issue in history textbooks.

The Nanjing Massacre,
1937-38

Summary

The Nanjing Massacre, also known as "The Rape of Nanking," is a rare example of simultaneous gendercides against women and men. It is generally remembered for the invading forces' barbaric treatment of Chinese women. Many thousands of them were killed after gang rape, and tens of thousands of others brutally injured and traumatized. Meanwhile, approximately a quarter of a million defenseless Chinese men were rounded up as prisoners-of-war and murdered en masse, used for bayonet practice, or burned and buried alive.

The background

The Second World War began in Asia. Japan's military dictators had long viewed China as the main outlet for their imperial and expansionist ambitions (for an overview, see Saburo Ienaga, The Pacific War 1931-1945). Japanese forces invaded and occupied Manchuria in northeast China in 1931, setting up the puppet state of Manchukuo. After the manufactured "Marco Polo Bridge Incident" of July 1937, the Japanese launched a fullscale invasion of China, capturing Shanghai on 12 November and the imperial capital, Nanjing, on 13 December. Numerous atrocities were committed en route to Nanjing, but they could not compare with the epic carnage and destruction the Japanese unleashed on the defenseless city after Chinese forces abandoned it to the enemy.

(III) 1970 TO 1990

The denial of the Nanjing Massacre started around 1972, when the right-wing political force in Japan began to rise. The Japanese denial of the Nanjing Massacre and other brutalities in Asia can be divided into three broad categories:
(a) Complete Denial of the Massacre
By the end of 1971, the wave of confessions by Japanese soldiers and research by journalists exposing the brutal crimes in Asia encountered strong resistance from the right-wing conservatives. The articles by Katsuichi Honda, the "Journey to China", triggered a new phase of response in the Japanese treatment of the war crimes from the Japanese right-wingers. The denial movement began with two controversial yet influential articles: (1) an article by a self-claimed Jew named Shichihei Yamamoto, "Reply to Katsuichi Honda" published in Every Gentlemen, March 1972; (2) an article by Akira Suzuki, "The Phantom of The Nanjing Massacre", published in the April issue of the same Journal. This wave of open and public Japanese denial of their war crimes escalated over the years, as evidenced by Massaki Tanaka's book "Fabrication of Nanjing Massacre" (Nihon Kyobun Sha, 1984) in which not only was the Nanjing Massacre denied, but the Chinese Government was charged as responsible for the occurrence of the Sino-Japanese War.
(b) Disputes on the Number of People Killed in the Massacre
Besides total denial, another line of Japanese thoughts insisted that the Nanjing Massacre was exaggerated by the Chinese. This view is best elaborated in a book written by Hata Ikuhiko "Nanjing Incident" (Chuo Koron Shinsho, 1986) in which it was argued that the number of victims in the Massacre was between 38,000-42,000. It was also argued that the killing of surrendered or captured soldiers should NOT be considered as "Massacre". This book is now considered as the official history text on the issue by the Japan Ministry of Education.
(c) Distortion and Rewriting of History
In 1982, the Ministry of Education embarked on a campaign to distort the presentation of the history of World War II. In the process of the revision of history textbooks in Japan, Japanese "aggression" in China was substituted by "advancing in and out" of China during the Sino-Japanese War. The Nanjing Massacre was described as a minor incident which occurred because the Japanese soldiers were too frustrated by the strong resistance from the Chinese Army. Although the substitution of the word "aggression" by "advancing in and out" was finally stopped because of the strong protest by the surrounding Asian countries and various Japanese educational groups, the rewriting of the Nanjing Massacre remained. Moreover, the Ministry of Education has never admitted that the distortion of history is a mistake.