Earl Kinmonth wrote:

"I would also note that I find it "amusing" when foreigners advise the Japanese government about what it should or should not be doing with approved history textbooks. I try to imagine them telling the Russian Republic not to rehabilitate Stalin, the PRC to come clean on Mao, the ROK to deal with collaboration, or even telling the Texas State Board of Education where to get off. (See http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/jun/21/ho
w-texas-inflicts-bad-textbooks-on-us
for a description of a system that puts the MOE to shame when it comes to politicizing history education.)."

To a significant extent this has been going on for decades. A UNESCO sponsored textbook project from the 1950s brought European countries together to critique each others' textbooks and cooperate in denationalizing them. Japan has been telling the ROK to deal with the issue of collaboration in the context of joint history commissions that have been trying to come up with a common history. That said, it is much harder to pursue cooperation in denationalizing textbooks with great powers such as Russia and the US. Nonetheless, Russia, for example, might find it advantageous to cooperate to some extent with its Eastern European neighbors on the contents of their textbooks in the context of protecting Russian minorities or, for example, dissuading the Baltic states or Poland from stationing US troops or missile defense units.

Paul Midford