hankyoreh

Prime Minister of Japan

The heavy push in Japan under the Shinzo Abe administration to deny the country’s forcible drafting of comfort women has resulted in its first deletion of references to the women from a high school textbook.

Other publishing companies could adopt the practice, leaving high school textbooks devoid of references to comfort women, as middle school texts already are.

The Tokyo-based textbook publisher Sugen received approval for a revision request submitted last November to the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) to delete references to comfort women in the two volumes of its “Modern Society” textbook and its “Politics/Economy” textbook, the Yomiuri Shinmun newspaper reported on Jan. 9.

As of April, the company’s textbooks will omit a passage reading, “Japan has been faced with some unresolved issues, including matters raised in the 1990s involving military comfort women and forced mobilization and labor by North and South Korean soldiers and civilian military personnel.” Instead, the book will read, “Some individuals who suffered mistreatment by Japan initiated trials to demand compensation, arguing that the compensation issue had not been resolved.”

Students who merely read the textbooks will be unaware that surviving comfort women are among those demanding an apology and compensation from Japan, or that the issue remains unresolved. Sugen textbooks in different areas are used by 1.8% to 8.7% of schools.

The question now is whether the example will be followed by other high school textbooks. In January 2014, MEXT changed its textbook certification standards to require adherence to a unified government perspective in addressing historical and territorial issues. The certification results for books drafted under those guidelines are now set to emerge between March and April of next year.

“The concern is that textbook publishers that are worried about the Abe administration’s reaction are going to take it upon themselves to eliminate references to comfort women, like they did with middle school textbooks,” said Lee Sin-cheol, a research professor at Sungkyunkwan University’s Academy of East Asian Studies.

By Gil Yun-hyung, Tokyo correspondent

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