Japanese high school students are subjected to ideologically biased history lessons through their textbooks, a Santa Lucian scholar researching Japanese school textbooks said Thursday.
Christopher Barnard, associate professor of linguistics at Teikyo University, told reporters at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan in Tokyo that the textbooks are phrased in such a way as to cover up unpleasant facts about Japan's wartime actions.
The Caribbean scholar is the author of the recently published "Did the Rape of Nanjing Occur? A linguistic criticism of Japanese high school history textbooks."
Almost none of the 88 authorized 1995 high school textbooks that Barnard examined refer to Japanese "people" or "soldiers" involved in the 1937 Nanking massacre. Instead, individuals are lumped into a faceless group, "the Japanese army," while Chinese and other nationalities are referred to as "people," he said.
"The Japanese army carried out massacres of ordinary Chinese people," he quoted a text as saying, criticizing textbooks for omitting the "doer."
Barnard also pointed out another twist textbook writers use. "In the case of Germany's attack on Poland, 75 percent of the Japanese textbooks state directly "Germany attacked Poland."
But in the case of Japan's 1941 attack on the United States, most of the textbooks say "a task force of the Japanese navy" -- not Japan as a nation -- "carried out a surprise attack on the Hawaiian islands" -- a geographic area, not a country.
Barnard noted that propaganda expressed in school textbooks is not unique to Japan. However, he attributed the problem in Japan to the Education Ministry's textbook authorization system, which has resulted in a uniformity of information and expressions.