Chinese historians Wednesday urged Japan to truthfully face its history of invading other Asian countries during World War II.
During a symposium hosted by the Society for the Study of Korean History under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), the historians slammed the Japanese government for its approval of new history textbooks for middle schools, which, revised by nationalist historians, whitewash Japan's wartime atrocities against many Asian countries.
Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology approved in early April the use of eight new history books, despite angry protests from Asian countries.
Jiang Mengshan, president of the society, said that the revision of the history books is another serious political event after the previous two incidents on textbooks in the 1950s and 80s.
The textbooks describe Japan's invasion of Asian countries as an "advance." It also skims over the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which historians say at least 300,000 Chinese civilians were slaughtered, and calls it an "incident" in which "many" Chinese were killed.
Only one of the eight books mentioned sex slaves, who were brutally taken out of China, the Korean Peninsula and other Asian countries by the Japanese military forces during the war.
Tang Zhongnan, a professor at the CASS Institute of World History, said that the nature of the textbook issue is that Japan doesn’t seem to be able to squarely face its history of invasion. Japanese rightists took any opportunity to revise the textbooks in order to gloss over the aggression and trauma suffered by many Asian countries.
However, a total of 899 Japanese scholars did denounce the proposed use of the textbook in 2002.
Accurate historical perspective and some sincere soul-searching from the Japanese would help improve relations with China and other Asian countries, Tang said.
Professor Xu Yong, deputy director of the Institute of North East Asian Studies at Beijing University, said that Japan must not use the fallacious history textbook to mislead the Japanese young generation.
(Xinhua 05/09/2001)
