Japanese Civic Group Also Says "History Textbooks Are Wrong... Actually a Step Backward"

Japanese civic groups also voiced opposition to the results of the Japanese elementary school textbook review, which asserted sovereignty over Dokdo and diluted the coerciveness of Korean conscription.

On the 12th, the civic group ‘Children and Textbooks National Network 21’ issued a statement saying, “Among the three elementary school social studies textbook publishers, two have actually regressed in their descriptions.”

The group pointed out the column titled ‘War and the People of Joseon’ included in the 6th-grade social studies textbook by Tokyo Shoseki. They criticized, “The sentence in the main text stating ‘many Koreans and Chinese were forcibly taken’ was changed to ‘were mobilized forcibly,’” and added, “Like Tokyo Shoseki’s high school textbooks, the term ‘abduction’ was not used, and instead ‘mobilization’ was uniformly applied.”

[Image source=Yonhap News]

They also noted that the caption for the photo of Korean soldiers in the column was changed from ‘Young Koreans who became soldiers’ to ‘Young Koreans who volunteered to become soldiers,’ pointing out that “this could lead to the misunderstanding that young Koreans voluntarily and independently chose to become soldiers.”

The group explained, “According to research conducted so far in Korea and Japan, what is called ‘volunteering’ was in fact carried out forcibly through various means, and the number of conscripted soldiers reached 18,000,” adding, “Moreover, Japan went further and implemented conscription in 1944, resulting in about 230,000 Koreans becoming Japanese soldiers.”

Regarding another publisher, Kyoiku Shuppan, the group pointed out, “This shows that the coerciveness of textbook description changes based on historical revisionism still remains.”

The group reported, “Kyoiku Shuppan removed the word ‘conscripted’ from the phrase ‘conscripted as Japanese soldiers and sent to the battlefield.’”

They also confirmed that patriotism education was prominently emphasized not only in Japanese history textbooks but also in moral education textbooks.

According to the group, in moral education textbooks, the sentence that appeared as a question in a story about appreciating traditional crafts, “There are things that have been treasured throughout Japan since ancient times, so let’s investigate them,” was revised to “What are Japan’s strengths? How can we further develop those strengths?” and passed the review.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.