Well guess where that debate is vitriolic? Since you're reading this blog, you can probably make a very educated guess! I did a research project on Japan's "rekishi mondai" (history problem) last year. The more I learned about it, hte more important it became to me. This isn't just a matter of lying -- or, at best, telling half-truths to generations of young people. It's also a matter of foreign policy.
The issue is this: in the build-up to World War II, Japan's weak and ineffective parliamentary democracy (some things don't change!) was violently overthrown by the Japanese army. In order to secure raw materials for the country's rapid militarization, and in an attempt to demonstrate its parity with imperialist Western countries, Japan bestowed the beneficence of its rule on China, Korea, Manchuria, and Southeast Asia, euphemistically dubbed the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. The Japanese, like any conquering nation, were not especialy honorable during the process. In particular, the Rape of Nanjing and comfort women are issues familiar to most people. Unless you're Japanese.
Here's the thing about these textbooks: in order to be published they must be approved by the central government. The government, then, controls both public and private school curricula. The Ministry of Education has the right to "recommend" changes. New textbooks are written and approved every couple of years; the list of revisions is usually made public. And every cycle, there are protests in China and Korea (never mind the anti-Japanese bias in their texts.) That's because the Ministry, in the interest of freedom of speech, always approves at least one book that denies the atrocities committed in World War II happened in the first place. Not only does this bolster anti-Japanese sentiment amongst its neighbors, but it reinforces amongst Japanese people the opinion that Koreans and Chinese are, as a rule, unreasonable and bitter. These tensions have very real impacts on East Asian relations.
I brought the topic up with my host mom once, and all she had to say was, "It couldn't be helped; it was a war." I'm pretty sure using live civilians for bayonet practice or cutting pregnant women open for jollies are not wartime necessities, but I'm equally sure that most Japanese people don't know that such things occurred. In fact, it is this defense that textbooks used to exonerate the grandparents and great-grandparents of today's students: most civilians didn't know it was going on, and anyway army officers are evil. I found in my research that the language in Japanese history textbooks tend to use the passive voice, removing agency from enlisted soldiers and, effectively, individuals in general. In fact, some sentences conveniently leave out subjects altogether, creating the effect of attaching blame to no one.
Conservatives claim that by talking about these issues, young people will no longer be proud of their country. It will be interesting to see what will happen now that the comparatively liberal Democratic Party of Japan is in charge, but these extremists are still active and powerful. Even the National Peace Memorial Museum in Hiroshima, which is devoted to preserving the memory of a different atrocity, disputes, as most history textbooks do, China's estimates as to how many were killed in the Rape of Nanjing.
Lest you become smug, America is not free of such problems. As an article in the January/February Washington Monthly illustrates, it might not be long until we have to fight for the sanctity of our history textbooks. Texts are approved by the state, not the federal government. As such, publishes tend to slant their texts to the standards and tastes of the states with the largest market shares. Since California is a bit short on cash, this means that Texas, whose Board of Ed has recently been taken over by a bloc of extremists conservatives, gets to call the shots. If they have their way, Joe McCarthy will be remembered as an honest if ruthless defender of American values, and the impact of MLK and popular movements in general will be significantly downplayed.
We don't have to look far to see what will happen if they actually succeed -- all we have to do is hop across the Pacific. History education is pretty much non-existent in Japan -- none of my Japanese peers could answer basic questions about anything after the Meiji Restoration in 1868. (It should be noted, then, that general history education ends at around the point of Westernization, which spurred Japan's imperialist ambitions to begin with.) When history is reduced to a series of facts to be memorized and forgotten, its impact is lost upon us. If we want to improve the world, we have to know why it's in the shape it is today, and for that we have to look at least as far back as 1868. We have to confront the less pleasant aspects of our national narratives, because we have as much power to chose our history as we do in deciding when and where we are born.
A lot of people in the US -- educators and students alike -- see history education as Essay Writing 101 with some vaguely interesting content thrown into the mix. But that's simply not the case. When taught correct, when the contributions of all people who make history (i.e., you and me) are accounted for, history classes can call us to action. History teaches us how to shape the future.
