Thanks for your reply, Peter.
> Sven says that Abe
> has a record of influencing textbook content. No. He
and other LDP and
> allied figures might have a record of trying to
influence content.
They are all members of the same committees to discuss history textbooks, so whether it is eventually Abe himself putting pressure on publishers (as he has done
recently) or whether he asks allied figures to do so, is secondary in this context, I think. As I have pointed out in my book "Politics, Memory and Public Opinion", the emergence of the Tsukuru-kai was to a large degree the result of politicians pushing a certain agenda - and actually Abe Shinzo played a central part in the prehistory of the Tsukurukai from a very early stage... But obviously, he was not alone.

> But in this case, such
> attempts failed. Why? For various reasons, perhaps,
but
> one may have been the public opposition that Sven notes. As I wrote,
> this is not the 1960s - it is just no longer that easy for
> nationalists to get their
way.
Actually, the "request" concerning Okinawa was not withdrawn until after Abe resigned. His administration sat out the protests and therefore, the Abe administration (or Abe himself) probably did not think of this as a failure (rather betrayal). I didnt mean to say that things are easy. Rather, the main argument in my book and other writings was that strong opposition from civil society prevented the tsukurukai textbook from spreading further. But I think the Abe administration will probably push the agenda of influencing history education stronger than any previous government (which is also why he included people like Shimomura et al. in the cabinet and gave Takaichi Sanae, one of the notorious historical revisionists in the LDP, the position she has). In the Okinawa case, Abe has shown that he is ready to do this even against public opinion. Of course, what is going to happen after he resigns, has to be seen...
>
> It is a complex story and from an anti-nationalist point of view, I
> think it's a more hopeful story than has been recognised.
I hope you are right. But apart from Teikoku Shoin, most textbooks that included passages on war crimes etc., lost market shares since around 2000, while Tokyo Shoseki (which does not) increased its share.
Additionally, after the tsukurukai book came out, most of the publishers deleted, for example, mention of the comfort women, while almost all had included the issue in the editions published in the late 1990s. So, the adoption system does not necessarily play a positive role. It did, however, allow civil society groups to influence the decisions on the local level (adoption committees). This resulted, as mentioned above, in civil society preventing the tsukurukai book from being adopted in a significant number of municipalities. The main question is how much pressure politicians will be able to put on the adoption committees. Mayors have done this successfully, as you mentioned, in Yokohama, and in Suginami before, and it is likely that something similar will happen in Osaka, Nagoya, and maybe other places in the near future.

Re. the importance of textbooks: I remember an opinion poll by NHK with a number of questions on history, and one of them was concerning the question how the historical views of people are being shaped. Possible answers were history textbooks, history classes, museums, books, TV, movies, internet etc., and history textbooks and history classes ranked quite high, while museums, internet etc. were almost negligible. I think historical novels also did relatively well. Probably the Shiba Ryotaro factor. If anybody is interested, i can look up the numbers.

best,
Sven