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Negative Teaching Materials of History
The fact-distorted junior high school history textbook, compiled by the "new history textbook compilation committee" which is composed of Japanese right-wing scholars, has been printed and published by the Fusosya Publishing House and distributed and sold in Japan after having been examined and approved as "Pass" by the Japanese Ministry of Education and Science in April.
On July 2, this publishing house filed an application to the said Ministry, indicating that it would revise 9-point narration in the textbook on its own initiative, five points of which come within the scope of the requirements raised for revision by the government of the Republic of Korea (ROK), while regarding that part that seriously slanders and distorts historical facts as pointed out by the Chinese government, the Fusosya Publishing House refused to revise it, Nishio Kanji, a representative of the "new history textbook compilation committee", claimed that China's requirement "was essentially different from the requirement of the ROK", China requires "the Japanese side to admit that it was once an aggressive country, to this we cannot agree".
As to the question concerning whether Japan had invaded other countries during World War II, there had been forgone conclusion in history long ago. The Chinese people still remember that precisely because Japan invaded China, during the period from the September 18, 1931 Incident to Japan's surrender in 1945, the Chinese people had experienced arduous national liberation war against Japan, which took a toll of 35 million Chinese soldiers and civilians and incurred well over US$600 billion worth of direct and indirect economic losses.
People of various countries around the world would not forget that precisely because Japan had committed the crime of aggressive war, the Far East International Military Tribunal formed by representatives of 11 countries including China, the Soviet Union, the United States and Great Britain in 1946 conducted trials of arch Japanese war criminals in Tokyo for over two years, seven of whom who had committed heinous crimes were sentenced to the gallows.
It is still fresh in the memory of the Japanese people that in the China-Japan Joint Declaration published by the Chinese and Japanese sides in Tokyo on November 26, 1998, it was written: The Japanese side keenly feels its responsibility for the serious disaster and harm brought to the Chinese people by its war of aggression against China, for this it expresses its deep self-examination.
According to the logic of the Japanese right-wing scholars, if Japan's past acts of aggression were a misunderstanding of Asian nations, then the history textbook published by the Fusosya Publishing House should be the only correct version, the accounts about this phase of history given in the history textbooks of Asian countries as well as various other countries around the world should all be revised.
If Japan's "aggression was meritorious", wouldn't the aggressive history and war crimes of the German and Italian fascists in alliance with Japan during World War II be all unjust, false and erroneous cases? People with elementary knowledge and a slight sense of justice would sneer at the fantastic talks and theories of Kanji and his like.
The fact that some Japanese dare to deny aggression and distort history under the broad daylight is both an expression of the rampage of the Japanese right-wing forces and a demonstration that the appearance of the right-wing history textbook does have its soil and market. It is noteworthy that the so-called autonomous revision was put forward by the Fusosya Publishing House before various localities of Japan decided to adopt this textbook next year, they attempted to improve so-called quality through such irrelevant and superficial "revisions", it aims to expand influence and divert people's attention.
It should be pointed out that this right-wing textbook, compiled by the "new history textbook compilation committee", was completed under the thought of trying its utmost to beautify aggression, so whatever "revisions" may be made, its initial intention of prettifying the history of aggression will not be changed, nor will the keynote of propagating the "royal conception of history".
As a matter of fact, it was totally unnecessary for the Fusosya Publishing House to raise the point of so-called autonomous revision, such patch-up work could only make the matter worse, it would be better for it to give the existing edition the label: A negative teaching material of history.
This essay is written by Yu Qing and published on Page 3 of People's Daily on July 6.
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