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Japanese Govt Officially Approves Controversial History Textbook
The Japanese Education Ministry on Tuesday officially approved a controversial history textbook for junior high school for 2002 without redressing its history-distorting essence and the beautification of Japan's past aggressions, again arousing indignation from neighboring Asian countries and peace-loving organizations in Japan.
The history textbook, which drew protests from some Asian countries as well as peace-loving organizations and scholars in Japan, was complied by nationalist Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform. The right wing group claims the current books are biased against Japan and full of self-denigration.
Under pressures both at home and abroad, The Japanese government demanded the group make a total of 137 changes to the too apparent narration of beautification on aggressions.
Yet, it can be easily found that there is no change to the textbook's essence of history-distorting and beautification on Japan's past military aggressions.
The approved textbook, for instance, failed to mention the Nanjing Massacre as a historical fact, in which over 300,000 Chinese civilians and unarmed soldiers were slaughtered by Japanese aggressors in 1937.
It instead mentioned the killing in the part of Far East Tribune Trial and tries to obliterate it, saying that "many Chinese civilians are massacred in Nanjing ... but the data have many questionable points and the controversies on that continue to nowadays. "
A similar dispute occurred in 1982 when a Japanese history textbook changed the word "aggression" to "advance" in describing the Japanese military action against China.
The Japanese government, under pressure from Asian countries at that time, adopted a article on textbook issue, and promised to deal with its Asian neighbors in modern and contemporary periods in light of international understanding and cooperation.
In accordance with the article, the Japanese government should have demanded thorough changes to the history textbook draft, which was handed in for screening last December, analysts said.
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