The Tokyo metropolitan board of education yesterday adopted a disputed junior high school textbook on Japanese history for use at four middle schools offering six-year programs and 19 schools for disabled children from the next academic year beginning in April 2006.
The decision will expand the number of Tokyo metropolitan government-run schools that use the textbook from one to four six-year schools and from two to 19 disabled-children schools. The textbook distorts the history of Japan's war of aggression against its Asian neighbors and whitewashes its atrocities on Asian people.
The four middle schools will use the textbook for four years from next April in line with the board decision. But graduates of the four high schools and some civilian groups have released statements protesting against the board's decision.
All the six members of the board voted in favor of the disputed textbook compiled by the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform for use at the four six-year schools.
The Tokyo metropolitan government launched one six-year school - Hakuo High School and Junior High School in Taito Ward - this April by reorganizing former Hakuo High School. It has been using the notorious textbook since its inception this April.
The Tokyo metropolitan board of education first adopted the fallacious textbook in August 2001 for use in two schools for disabled children for the following academic year.
Yesterday's decision by the Tokyo board follows a July 13 decision by the education board in Otawara, Tochigi Prefecture, to use the history textbook published by Fusosha Publishing Inc at 12 junior high schools in the area.
Before the addition of the new schools, the rate of junior high schools using the textbook was only 0.04 percent.
Critics in Japan, along with those in neighboring countries, have strongly protested against the use of the textbook, saying it glorifies Japan's militaristic past and justifies its invasion of China, Korea and other Asian countries.
The book alleges that "Japan's victories in the early stage of the war nurtured the dream of independence and courage among the people of Southeast Asia and India."
Regarding the 1937 Nanjing Massacre in China, the textbook says, "The Japanese forces caused a large number of Chinese military and civilian personnel to die or be injured." But it challenged the validity of the number of casualties in the massacre, in which Japanese troops killed more than 300,000 Chinese civilians and unarmed soldiers.
China holds that the textbook has severely distorted the truth about Japan's invasion of China and the wartime atrocities of Japanese troops during World War II.