By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Apr 8 2005 (IPS)

New history textbooks that glorify Japan’s wartime past and distort facts of the country’s past colonisation of East Asia have heightened anti-Japanese sentiment in China and South Korea. However, some Japanese academics remain adamant that the textbooks record the ”true and correct” stance of Japan in World War II.

”Sixty years after the end of World War II, Japan is now mature enough to voice whatever it thinks,” said Toshiyuki Shikata, an international relations professor at Teikyo University when commenting on the new textbooks.

The Japanese government this week approved the books that deleted past references to Korean and other Asian ”comfort women” who were forced to provide sex to Japanese soldiers during World War II.

The new history text books also state that Japan ”owns” the disputed Takeshima Island in the Sea of Japan, much to the chagrin of South Korea, which has overlapping claims and refers to the island chain as Dokdo.

To add salt to Seoul’s wounds, an ordinance was passed by Shimane prefecture in March to establish ”Takeshima Day” that legally recognises the territory as under Japanese jurisdiction.

South Korea Foreign Affairs and Trade Minister, Ban Ki Moon, strongly condemned the move that marks the anniversary of the Japan’s victory in the Russia-Japan war and Moscow’s formal cessation of the disputed islands. He told his Japanese counterpart, Nobutaka Machimura, at a conference in Pakistan Thursday that it was a step taken by Tokyo to ”glorify history and teach a distorted version of it to young people.”

The new text books that will be used in public junior high schools from April 2006 added fuel to fire in China and South Korea – two countries that suffered the worst under Japan’s colonisation of most of Asia.

Television screens this week showed anti-Japan demonstrations in both countries with protestors burning Japan’s national flag and attacking Japanese shops.

China’s Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Wu Dawei said Beijing stood firm that the text books were not acceptable and said Tokyo’s position, “hurt the feelings of the Chinese.”

Still, top-level officials in Tokyo seemed unfazed despite their neighbours’ fuming anger.

”Japan and South Korea have different ways of looking at history. I don’t see why the dispute over textbooks and Takeshima should affect overall relations that are based on good economic and cultural ties,” said Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.

Koizumi’s stance was echoed in mainstream Japanese media that have mostly highlighted anti-Japanese demonstrations as the result of China’s nationalistic education. The ‘Yomuiri Shimbun’ newspaper even said South Korea and China were actually meddling in the ”internal affairs of Japan.”

According to the academic Shikata, most people support Japan’s position in defending its colonial history. This stems from decades of Japan having to take the blame for its past, he said.

”Several top Japanese political leaders have in the past apologised to South Korea and China. Japan has also paid compensation in the form of huge aid packages to help both countries develop,” Shikata pointed out.

”But whenever there is a problem, Japan has always been criticised for its past colonisation. The feeling now is, enough is enough,” he said emphatically.

Shikata pointed out to China’s rising military budget as a case in point, together with the abduction of Japanese nationals by North Korea and the foray by a Chinese submarine into Japanese waters last November.

Komzawa University professor Osamu Nishii, a senior expert on constitutional reform, claims that Japanese colonisation also had its ”positive elements like providing industrial development, building schools and roads in the colonised countries”.

”Japan must be brave and clear about its history. Only then can we be accepted as a country that can participate in the United Nations Security Council,” he explained.

Japan wants a permanent seat in the to-be-revamped Security Council, and is lobbying hard for favourable votes when the United Nations meets in September.

But other analysts are not to happy with the position adopted by Japan in relation to the textbooks.

”The short-term fallout for Japan is too big to ignore,” said Tetsuro Kato, a professor who teaches politics at the prestigious private Hitotsubashi University. He is calling for a levelheaded discussion and said nationalistic sentiments should be put aside for the sake of good relations.

Gebhard Hielscher, a German writer and commentator on the issue of Japan’s war history, said Japan sill had the chance to resolve its current strained ties with China and South Korea before the upcoming U.N. Security Council decision this fall.

”I hope (Prime Minister) Koizumi will understand that trying to whitewash Japanese colonisation will not clear anything and only make the future of fostering ties really difficult,” he pointed out.

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