Education minister Hakubun Shimomura on March 14 invoked a provision of the Local Autonomy Law to directly demand that the town of Taketomi, Okinawa Prefecture, change its earlier decision not to use a civics textbook for junior high schools chosen by a school textbook selection council for the Yaeyama Islands area, where the town is located.

Whatever reasons the education ministry may cite for its latest action, it is clear that the Abe administration wants to have the town use a conservative textbook chosen by the council. This is the first time that the central government has invoked the law to make a direct demand to a municipality calling for a change in its administrative decision.

The ministry says that the town's decision runs counter to the law on the free distribution of public school textbooks, which states that the same school textbooks should be adopted by municipalities within a defined textbook selection zone. But the Taketomi board of education made the decision to use a different, nonconservative textbook on the strength of the law on local education administration, which stipulates that the power to select school textbooks lies with each board of education. As such, it did nothing wrong. Because there is no confusion in the education scene in the town, the ministry's move only constitutes interference in the autonomy of the town and townspeople. The timing of the education ministry's demand that the town change its decision on the textbook selection is likely to cause problems for the town's schools. The demand came in the middle of March, just about two weeks before the start of the new school year on April 1.