The Japan Fieldwork Workshop invites you to a special lecture

Japanese Colonialism and the Asia-Pacific War in Japan's Junior High History Textbooks 1992-2010:
Changing Representations and their Causes'

Dr. Peter Cave

Lecturer in Japanese Studies, University of Manchester, and JSPS Invited Research Fellow, Kyoto University

Tuesday, November 15th, 2011
6:30-8pm

Sophia University, Yotsuya Campus
Bldg. 10, room 301
Access: http://www.fla.sophia.ac.jp/about/location

Lecture in English (Japanese discussion welcome) Free and open to all; no registration necessary

Abstract:
This presentation examines changes between 1992 and 2010 in Japanese junior high school history textbooks'
representations of Imperial Japan's colonialism and aggression in Asia. Following a trend to increase textbook material on Japan's wartime aggression in the mid-1990s, after 2000 publishers approached this topic in contrasting ways, some expanding and some reducing their coverage, with dramatically varying results in terms of market share. I argue that publishers'
decisions on content were related to their market position, and to changes in local textbook adoption procedures that have increased the decision-making power of appointed boards of education at the expense of teachers. With the introduction of new textbook approval criteria requiring textbooks' conformity with the patriotic emphases of the revised Fundamental Law on Education of 2006, the content of future textbooks will clearly be strongly influenced by both approval and adoption processes.

--
David H. Slater, Ph.D.
Faculty of Liberal Arts
Sophia University, Tokyo