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Chief cabinet secretary says government apology for replacing ﾔaggressionﾕ with ﾔadvanceﾕ was mistake

Chief Cabinet Secretary Abe Shinzo stated that there is no such fact that the government ordered textbook editors to replace ﾒaggressionﾓ with ﾒadvanceﾓ in history textbooks on a Fuji TV program aired on April 2.

Abe said, ﾒIt was a serious mistake for the then chief cabinet secretary to apologize to China and Korea in 1982 for instructing a rewrite.ﾓ
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Abe was speaking about Chief Cabinet Secretary Miyazawa Kiichiﾕs statement on August 26, 1982 that promised to correct the inappropriate history textbook, referring to the remorse for the wartime past expressed by the Japanese government in two communiques Japan issued with the Republic of Korea in 1965 and with China in 1972.
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The Miyazawa statement said, ﾒFrom the perspective of building friendship and goodwill with neighboring countries, Japan will pay due attention to these criticisms and make corrections as the governmentﾕs responsibility.ﾓ

It is a serious matter that an incumbent chief cabinet secretary has denied the promise which Japan had made to its Asian neighbors. The Abe statement amounts to throwing away the governmentﾕs remorse for the war of aggression and will put up a major obstacle to friendly relations between Japan and its neighbor nations.

Abeﾕs assertion negating the government role in forcing history textbooks to be rewritten is not anything new. It has been advocated for many years by right-wing media such as the monthly ﾒShokun!ﾓ and the Sankei Shimbun.

However, the fact is that ever since the 1950s, the government revised the guidelines for school teaching and ordered textbook companies and writers to describe Japanﾕs past ﾒaggressionﾓ against China as an ﾒadvanceﾓ into China to gloss over the war of aggression.

In the 1980s, the education ministry demanded that the March 1, 1919 Independence Movement of Korea be described as a ﾒriotﾓ and ordered editors to delete the description of the history of forcibly bringing Koreans to Japan for forced labor.

Although Abe insists that the media falsely reported that the government had ordered the rewrite, it is clear that textbook publishers exercised self-restraint at the governmentﾕs urging. The problem is the Liberal Democratic Partyﾕs attitude of glossing over the historical fact of the Japanese war of aggression.

In dealing with the dispute over Yasukuni Shrine and other historical questions, the Japanese government must immediately stop justifying the war of aggression and implement its promise to get its stated remorse over Japanﾕs ﾒcolonial rule and aggressionﾓ to other Asian countries to be sincerely reflected in textbooks.
- Akahata, April 6, 2006