The Real Problem of Textbook Issue.

China and Korea call for improvement of Japanese history education. In China's case, Chinese government criticize that Japanese must teach about facts of Nanjing Massacre at schools. In response, some Japanese publisher revised their text book and described that Japanese imperial army massacred 30 millions Chinese at Nanjing. Chinese government regarded this response as improvement.



But I don't think so. Both Chinese government and Japanese publishers are wrong. There are reasons we must not disregard.



First, even though there is a Japanese official document which reported a corps put about 7,000 chinese people to death and another corps seems to did it, it is indeterminable that 30 millions.



Second, we must not teach false informations and must teach in academic way, namely objective view. We must teach only facts. We can't say "30 millions" is fact in this way.



Thus, We can say the publishers should describe that "Japanese imperial army massacred at least about 7,000 people at Nanjin, and Chinese government argue that the number is 30 millions. The number may be more than we confirmed. However, we can't attest the correct number.". The real problem is that Japanese publisher don't value academic way.



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Sometimes I see news that Chinese and Korean government and their people argue Japanese government don't teach about fact of the war and cite some text books written by radical right-wing as evidence. However, they don't need to worry about it because there are other major text books as Japan is a country of freedom of opinion. Because Chinese and Korean governments raise only extreme ones, we think both governments politically utilize those to divert their people's discontent to their government.



I took the photo at Houonji in Morioka city, Tohoku district.