It is now a commonplace to define changes in Japanese politics and society as turning to the right. It would be hard to challenge that view given the trends that can be viewed from outside Japan, such as the attempt by conservative politicians to render the "peace constitution" powerless and comments by certain cabinet members glorifying the war of aggression or colonial rule. In the meantime, the argument that Japan's silent majority is merely not actively fighting the plot by conservative politicians to steer the country to the right, and that it is in not sympathetic to that effort, is in a way convincing.
In the midst of the current situation there is news showing that good sense is clearly alive and well in Japan. The history textbook authored by far-right elements and published by Fusosha Publishing has been chosen at far fewer schools than had been feared. As of the end of July 300 out of 584 school districts had completed the textbook selection process, and only one district had chosen Fusosha's problematic textbook. Yoshifumi Tawara of "Children and Textbooks Japan Network 21," a civic group campaigning against the textbook says he expects the struggle to be over a selection rate of within one percent, up until the end of August.
One of the reasons the organized efforts by extreme-rightist elements to have the textbook adopted at 10 percent of the country's school districts is doing so poorly has been to a considerable degree because of the allied campaign by East Asian civic groups. In May, scholars from Korea, China, and Japan succeeded in publishing History that Opens the Future, the world's first jointly authored history textbook. Korean civic groups collected donations and ran advertisements in Japanese media appealing for a rejection of the Fusosha's textbooks. However, the campaign was mainly powered by Japanese civic activists engaging in persistent work in the area of that country's education. We encourage them to put on a good fight and let down their guard, until the very end.
The Hankyoreh, 5 August 2005.
[Translations by Seoul Selection (PMS)]
[Editorial] The Amazing Work of Japan's Civil Society |
