Language, Ideology and Japanese History Textbooks

Christopher Barnard

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• eBook ISBN: 9781134429271
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The Japanese history textbook debate is one that keeps making the news, particularly with reference to claims that Japan has never 'apologised properly' for its actions between 1931 and 1945, and that it is one of the few liberal, democratic countries in which textbooks are controlled and authorised by the central government. There are frequent protests, both from within Japan and from overseas, that a biased, nationalistic history is taught in Japanese schools. This is the first time that all the authorised textbooks currently in use have been analysed using a critical discourse that is anchored firmly in the theory of 'language within society', elucidating the meanings and associated ideologies created by the language of the textbooks.

1 Introduction

The history problem in Japan

‘The war’, from a European or North American perspective generally refers to the Second World War, lasting from 1939 to 1945 or, in the case of the war against Japan, the Pacific War phase of the Second World War, from 1941 to 1945. However, Japan was at war for a much longer period of time, and the war against the Western Allies (the United States, Britain, the Netherlands, Australia, etc.) was but a small part of what, in Japan, is sometimes referred to as the Fifteen Years War. This is conventionally dated from the time of the Mukden Incident of 18 September 1931 (which then became part of the wider Manchurian Incident), in which elements within the Japanese army, (perhaps acting independently of the Japanese government (Hata 1983: 309–311), or perhaps acting with either its tacit or reluctant consent (Bix 2000: 231, 232; Ienaga 1978: 58–65)), stationed in the Japanese leasehold of Kwantung and, by treaty arrangement, in other parts of North-East China, faked a sabotage attempt on the Japanese-owned South Manchurian Railway. This gave the army a pretext to take over all of Manchuria. The establishment of the Japanese-controlled puppet state of Manchuria, and the subsequent expansion and escalation of the war against China (described by the Japanese government and press at the time as being a series of ‘incidents’) soon followed.

The war against the Western Allies is, of course, dated from 8 December 1941 (Japan time), when Japanese forces attacked Britain in Malaya and the United States at Pearl Harbor. The Asia-Pacific War (used in this book to refer to the war against both China and the Western Allies) came to a conclusion with Japan's surrender to the Allies on 2 September 1945.

Whereas in Germany there is a reasonably clear national consensus on the kind of war it was that Germany fought, this is less so in Japan (Buruma 1994: 9, 10), where war responsibility was not as rigorously pursued as in the case of Germany (Fujiwara 1999: 241). There is a small, but vocal and influential, segment of Japanese society, led by politicians, journalists, certain publishing and media groups, academics, and patriotic organizations who hold views that generally go under the label of ‘revisionist’ (T. Yoshida 2000: 71) regarding what kind of war it was that Japan fought from 1931 to 1945, or from 1941 to 1945. The events of the war are themselves subject to fierce debate — and no event more so than the Rape of Nanking, concerning which there is a vast scholarly and popular literature. Did the Rape of Nanking really occur, or is it a complete fabrication, or at least an exaggeration, both by the Chinese after the war and the Allies at the Tokyo war crimes trials (i.e. the International Military Tribunal for the Far East)?

In recent years the debate regarding the war and Japan's role in it has intensified, with the revisionists becoming more and more vocal (see Fujiwara 1999: 240–249; McCormack 2000), and with their views being given increasing prominence by the press and broadcast media. Key topics of debate include whether or not the war Japan fought was one of aggressive territorial expansion, or whether it was, on the other hand, a war that was unselfishly fought by Japan in order to liberate fellow Asians from Western imperialism and white colonialism. Did Japan have no choice but to fight this war for its national self-preservation since economic sanctions were being implemented against it by, most importantly, the United States? Does Japan owe its present prosperity to those who laid down their lives for their country?

As readers may have noticed, these questions themselves have already confused different aspects of the Asia-Pacific War, since, for example, even if Japan had been fighting a war of colonial liberation, this could only date from, at the earliest, the time of Japan's more or less forcible entry into the southern part of Vietnam, then part of Vichy-controlled French Indochina, in 1941. This lack of distinction between the different phases of the war that Japan fought from 1931 to 1945 was, and is, a common feature of the debate. The revisionist case becomes easier to argue if there is a blurring of the distinction between the China phase of the war (clearly a war of aggression) and the war against the Western Allies (arguably a war of colonial liberation, provided the nature of Japanese rule in the conquered territories and the atrocities against the peoples of Asia and the Pacific are overlooked).

In 1995, Okuno Seisuke, a member of the House of Representatives (the lower house of parliament) and a former Minister of Education, made the comment that, ‘It is America and Britain that carried out a war of aggression. It is America and Britain that we fought, not Asia’ (Asahi Shimbun, 17 March 1995). The Pacific War lasted a mere three years and eight months, and American and British (including Empire and Commonwealth) deaths totalled approximately 300,000. Asian deaths amounted to millions. Okuno's position is not tenable. In fact, it is nothing more than an example of forgetting about the Chinese phase of the Asia-Pacific War, as well as forgetting about Japanese actions against the inhabitants of South-East Asia and the Pacific during the Pacific War itself.

Okuno's statement is but one example of the common tendency of important politicians to state opinions about the righteousness of the war that Japan fought and thereby cause a storm of protest, both in Japan and, most particularly, in China and South Korea. Such politicians are often, but by no means always, made to retract their statements, and if they hold a cabinet post or some such important position are forced to resign or are dismissed from their posts (McCormack 1996: 227–229; T. Yoshida, 2000: 109). In 1995, the Asahi Shimbun, one of Japan's leading national newspapers, gave a summary of, then recent, questionable statements made by certain politicians (Asahi Shimbun, 1 January 1995). For example, in May 1994, the Minister of Justice, Nagano Shigeto, said that the Nanking Incident (i.e. the Rape of Nanking) was a fabrication, and later amended this by saying it was an exaggeration. Hashimoto Ryuutaroo, then Minister of Trade and Industry, and later Prime Minister of Japan, is quoted as saying:

Limiting ourselves only to the Second World War [i.e. the Pacific War phase of the Second World War, CB], it is true that one aspect of it was that of Japan fighting the United States, fighting Britain, and fighting the Netherlands, and it is a fact that Japan waged war, but when it comes to whether it was a war of aggression, I still have my doubts about this. … For Japan at that time, it is a fact that, while not intending to fight with the people of those areas, it made many parts of the Pacific into battlefields. [… Tooji no Nihon toshite, sono chiiki no katagata o aite toshite tatakatte iru tsumori wa nai mama ni, Taiheiyoo no kaku chiiki o senjoo to shita jijitsu ga aru.]

As well as the confusion or lack of discrimination between the different phases of the war that Japan fought, another common position of the revisionists, as shown by Hashimoto's words quoted above, is to adopt what may be called the ‘accidental involvement theory of Asian suffering’: Japan was fighting against the Western imperialists, but unfortunately some Asians were killed in this war.

This accidental involvement theory does not bear up to even casual examination. To take just one specific case, Dear and Foot (1995: 179) report a possible death toll of 12,000 Allied prisoners-of-war on the Burma-Thailand Railway, built by the Japanese in order to move troops and supplies from Thailand to the Burma front. The death toll of labourers conscripted from within Thailand and the surrounding areas is estimated to be about 90,000. Other authors give similar figures (e.g. Daws 1994: 221; Hicks 1994: 132). Nevertheless, for anyone arguing that Japan's war was primarily a war of colonial liberation, the accidental involvement theory, provided it is not examined in any detail, conveniently clouds the issue.

The confusion, or indeed ignorance, of the different phases of the war that Japan fought is not limited to Japan. As mentioned above, the view in the Western mind is that the war that Japan fought was from 1941 to 1945. The war that started in 1931 disappears from history and historiography, as pointed out by Dower (1999: 27):

Asian contributions to defeating the Emperor's soldiers and sailors were displaced in an all-consuming focus on the American victory in the ‘Pacific War.’ By this same process of vaporization, the crimes that had been committed against Asian people through colonization as well as war were all the more easily put out of mind.

But as we will see, the crimes that were committed against Asian people is an issue that has come back to haunt Japan in the last ten or fifteen years.

In 1995, on the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the war, in an attempt to bring some kind of closure to the war, the House of Representatives (i.e. the lower house of parliament) passed what had originally been intended to be an apology, or at least an expression of remorse, for Japanese actions during the war. After much bitter debate and political machinations, this eventually became a watered-down ‘Resolution to Renew the Determination for Peace on the Basis of Lessons Learned from History’, which pleased no one, least of all those who were seeking a clear statement of Japanese responsibility for wartime actions and some kind of apology. In part, this resolution contained the following paragraph (translation by the secretariat of the House of Representatives):

Solemnly reflecting upon many instances of colonial rule and acts of aggression in the modern history of the world, and recognizing that Japan carried out those acts in the past, inflicting pain and suffering upon the peoples of other countries, especially in Asia, the Members of this House express a sense of deep remorse.

This was widely seen as nothing more than an attempt to obfuscate the specific acts and especially violent nature of Japanese aggression, and the attendant atrocities, by lumping them together with a generalized aggression and colonial rule. A further controversy regarding the resolution concerned to what extent the word ‘remorse’ (hansei no nen) implied an apology, and whether ‘remorse’ was a suitable translation of the Japanese expression. It was argued by some that the English translation was ‘adjusted’ so that it would be more acceptable internationally, while the original Japanese would be more acceptable to certain groups within Japan.

At about the same time, a spate of resolutions were passed by prefectural assemblies (a prefecture in Japan being a unit of regional government comparable to an English county or French département). However, in many cases, far from being a recognition of the aggressive nature of Japan's military actions, or being a clear apology, these resolutions were, on the contrary, often a reaffirmation of the righteousness of the war. As of 23 March 1995, 17 prefectural assemblies in Japan had passed such resolutions. The contents of these resolutions were varied, but they are summed up by Miura (1995) as generally having the following points in common:

a) The fallen laid down their lives for the safety of their country and to protect their loved ones and their birthplaces.

b) The fallen laid the foundations for today's peace and prosperity.

c) The resolutions incorporated an expression of condolences by the assembly for the hardship caused to many people in Asian countries by the turmoil of war.

According to Miura (1995), these resolutions represent a view of history that is far from reality. For example, the first point above gives the impression that Japan was being actually invaded by a foreign army and the Japanese soldiers rose up to fight against this invasion. The second point seeks to invest the war with some deep significance and moral righteousness, but this, even if it were true or could be causally proved, would imply that Japan owes its present prosperity and peace to the deaths of three million Japanese and perhaps twenty million other Asians. Finally, the third point is expressed in such a way as to suggest that Asians became indirectly and accidentally involved in the ‘turmoil’ of war (presumably without Japanese soldiers committing any aggressive actions against them), and suffered the consequences of it — an example of the accidental involvement theory mentioned above.

Another characteristic of such resolutions was the way they illogically linked the modern Japanese ‘peace-state’ (which in the post-war constitution renounced the right of belligerency of the state) to the expression of thanks and condolences to the Japanese soldiers who died in the war in order to give the impression, without actually saying so in so many words, that these soldiers laid down their lives in order to bring peace to the world. Part of the resolution of Ehime prefecture (Asahi Shimbun, 1 Oct. 1994) read as follows: ‘The assembly expresses thanks and condolences to those who fell in the war and pledges to build everlasting peace’.

Underlying the discourse of Japan's actions in the war and questions of responsibility for these actions, but unstated by all but the brave and rash, is the role of the former Emperor, Hirohito. Not to try him as a war criminal, or even summon him as a witness, at the Tokyo war crimes trials, meant that his role could never be investigated or clarified, and that even today to publicly suggest, more than ten years after his death, that he must bear at least some responsibility for the war is to put one's life at risk from certain fanatical sections of Japanese society.

The continuing position of Hirohito as head of state up to 1947 and then, according to article 1 of the post-war constitution, as the symbol of the people and the unity of the nation up to the time of his death in 1989, meant that the post-war Japanese state had a high level of continuity with that of the pre-war and wartime state. The Japanese state did not collapse at the time of the Japanese defeat, as the German state did with its defeat; Japanese bureaucrats, government officials, and politicians went back to work the next day, and in very many cases continued in their jobs under, and after, the Allied occupation. The Allied occupation authorities did not replace the Japanese bureaucracy, but worked through it, issuing suggestions, directives, and ord...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The Rape of Nanking: processes and participants
• 3 The attacks by Germany and Japan: the ideology of irresponsibility
• 4 The surrenders of Germany and Japan: the ideology of face-protection
• 5 Conclusion: locating the findings in a wider context
• Works cited
• Index