A junior high-school history textbook edited under the direction of a nationalist group, the Japanese Society for Textbook Reform, continues to stir controversy both here and abroad. The textbook recently received the green light from the Education and Science Ministry after the editors accepted all of the 137 changes requested by the censors. However, China and South Korea are still dissatisfied with the revised version.

Professor Nobukatsu Fujioka of the University of Tokyo, with whom I am acquainted, is an executive member of the group. I was once interviewed by him for an education magazine, after serving as an election observer in Cambodia in 1993. At that time, Fujioka blamed the Japanese media for disparaging the election, which had been conducted with the full cooperation of the international community. I agreed with him completely. Two years later, however, I found myself at odds with him over a different issue: Japan's wartime history. Fujioka criticized those who acknowledged Japanese acts of aggression for holding a "masochistic" view of history.

In the case of the textbook at issue, the uncensored version included a sentence that read: "It is difficult to distinguish wars in terms of right or wrong. . . . Wars are waged as a measure of last resort when nations in a clash of national interests find it impossible to settle their problems politically." The statement revealed a flimsy view of history that treated war as a kind of game. No wonder the censors requested a revision.