JAPAN: Court Ruling Revives Row Over History Textbooks

By Suvendrini Kakuchi Reprint | | Print |

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Sep 8 1997 (IPS) - In 1964, historian Saburo Ienaga sued Japan’s education ministry after it censored a high school textbook he had written on the nation’s wartime history, including the imperial army’s medical experiments on Chinese prisoners in the 1930s.

On Aug 29, after more than 30 years of waiting, Ienaga won a legal victory after the Supreme Court ruled that the ministry had acted illegally in ordering him to sanitise his book’s contents.

“The fight has left me drained,” said Ienaga, now 84 and suffering from Parkinson’s disease.

With his triumph, Japan has moved a step forward in accepting its brutal colonisation of China, Korea and parts of Asia before and during the Pacific War.

Analysts say the Supreme Court decision could signal the start of a shift in Japan’s long-time reluctance to fully own up to its wartime abuses, which remain a thorn in the economic superpower’s relations with many Asian countries.

Yet there is unlikely to be a massive, instant change in attitude, given the still-deep divisions in Japanese society over how to come to terms with war crimes committeed more than half a century ago.

The Supreme Court ruling said the education ministry abused its power when it ordered Ienaga to scrap from his textbook a reference to human experiments conducted by the Japanese imperial army in Manchuria in the 1930s. The petty bench of the nation’s top court ordered the ministry to pay 400,000 yen to Ienaga.

But at the same time, the court said the screening of textbooks is still constitutionally valid — a ruling that many observers say detracts from the impact of the landmark judgement.

“Still, I am glad I am still alive to have won this small victory,” said Ienaga, who said he pursued the three separate suits he brought against the education ministry in order to “protect his freedom of expression”.

For now, the education ministry will continue to have the power to screen Japan’s history textbooks, which gloss over some of the brutal facts of Japanese colonisation.

But even this is controversial, judging by the ongoing debate about a committee working to produce a new history textbook.

If Ienaga and a good part of the public want Japan’s school books to say more about its wartime conduct, a group of academics has begun an aggressive campaign to cleanse the texts of what it says are unproven accounts of abuse.

The drive is headed by Nobukatsu Fujioka, history professor at the prestigious University of Tokyo.

In interviews in the ‘Sankei Shinbun’ daily, Fujioka said current textbook accounts of Japan’s war with China and its involvement in the Pacific War, are humiliating for the Japanese and have not been proved with concrete evidence. He argues that Japan must have its own view of history and must convey the Japanese side of the story.

Among the information the group wants deleted from textbooks are statements saying the imperial army was directly involved in recruiting Asian women as sex slaves or ‘comfort women’.

The Japanese government has admitted that the imperial army played a key role in forcing some 200,000 women from South Korea, China, the Philippines and Indonesia into brothels to serve its troops.

While apologising for its conduct, Japan refused to pay compensation to these women and chose instead to start a private fund for them. Several groups of former ‘comfort women’ had sued the Japanese government for compensation.

The ‘comfort women’ issue remains unsettled between Japan and the rest of Asia, as does the matter of Japan’s responsibility for Unit 731, the imperial army’s unit for bacteriological warfare that performed experiments on thousands of Chinese prisoners.

Experts are worried about the emergence of Fujioka’s group, saying its arguments are reminiscent of efforts in the past to drum up nationalistic feelings against foreigners, a factor that led to militarisation in the early twentieth century.

These moves are “too dangerous”, said professor Toru Yuge of the University of Tokyo.

Ienaga’s legal struggle itself illustrates the depth of the fissures in Japanese society over its unpleasant past. While keeping up his legal fight, he was threatened by Japan’s powerful right-wing sector and ridiculed by academics who had opposed his professorship in the prestigious University of Tsukuba.

Even today, academic scholars and journalists who try to question the role of the Japanese emperor in the country’s conduct during the Pacific War are often threatened by ultra-nationalists.

Among others, Ienaga was ordered by the government to change terms such as Japan’s “aggression” in China, and delete references to Unit 731, saying there was no evidence to support these. Ienaga refused.

But after strident protests from the Chinese government and South Korea in the late seventies, the government in the late eighties decided to include these events as well as use the word “aggression” when referring to Japan’s push into Manchuria.

The situation highlight the dilemma that Japan faces today. It desperately needs the friendship of its Asian neighbours, but at the same time cannot as yet fully come to terms with its history.

Still, Ienaga’s victory is rekindlinf discussion of the need for Japan — some analysts say much like Germany after Nazi rule — to undertake a frank, if painful, admission of past atrocities.

Norifumi Tateishi, a lawyer who worked with Ienaga, says the Supreme Court decision will have a positive influence on other lawsuits being fought by ageing victims of Japanese colonisation. These include suits filed by former ‘comfort women’ from Korea and the Philippines, and Korean men who were forcibly conscripted into the Japanese imperial army.

Ienaga and his supporters hope his struggle will leave its mark on the brand of history Japanese children will learn about their country in the coming years.

“Many times I was lonely and very, very tired,” Ienaga told journalists recently. “But I was determined that history textbooks be based on a public discussion on Japan’s colonisation of Asia and its entry into war with the Allied forces. I have at least achieved this.”