By Jen-ching Kao On September 26, 2007, the largest protest in Okinawa took place since 1972, when the island was returned to Japan by the United States. The rally was against the government’s order to textbook publishers to modify sections which said that the Japanese army distributed hand grenades to the island’s residents and commanded them to kill themselves instead of surrendering to the US army. This fact was supported by historical research and by testimony from the victims’ relatives. The controversies were triggered by the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform, composed of right-wing scholars, and the publication of Atarashii Rekishi Kyokasho or New History Textbook, which was published in 2000, in order to soften the image of Japan’s brutal wartime conduct. Large-scale demonstrations were organized in major cities in China and Korea, raging against indirect descriptions or omission in the New History Textbook of several historical events during WWII, such as comfort women and the Nanjing massacre. They also protested contemporary issues including the prime minister’s visits to the Yasukuni shrine and delimitations in the East China Sea. Similar cases have appeared in the textbooks of other countries, both democratic and non-democratic. In March 2006, for example, a lawsuit was brought by the Hindu American Foundation against the Board of Education in California, because certain textbooks on ancient South Asian history for sixth-grade students promoted anti-Hindu sentiments by employing a number of statements which were considered frivolous or biased toward the role of Hindu women, the caste system, and theories of migration. In Taiwan, high school and middle school history textbooks used to be published by the National Institute of Compilation and Translation, an organization established and run by the government. History textbooks in Taiwan used to mention only the Cairo Declaration, the document which legitimizes the Nationalist Party’s rule over Taiwan. But after 2000, when the Democratic Progressive Party came into power, textbooks were no longer written and published by solely the Institute. Private publishers and writers were now allowed to compose textbooks as long as they had been examined and endorsed by the Ministry of Education. As a result, most of the history textbooks available today contain a longer chapter about Taiwan’s legal status and its historical development, such as the fact that the Cairo Declaration is not legally binding, and that the 1951 Treaty of San Francisco did not specify the successor of Japan’s waived rights in Taiwan. They also covered the Taiwan Relations Act and the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2758. Although this additional information provides students the rationale for why the government is now striving for an independent Taiwan, what students read is still partial and prejudiced. For example, none of these textbooks mentions the statement made by Dean Acheson about the legal status of Taiwan after the Potsdam Declaration, and none mentions the story behind the Treaty of Taipei. The message to readers in Japan’s New History Textbook clearly states that “We must continue to learn, with humility, from other nations. But we must not forget that by blithely placing foreign nations on a pedestal, we risk turning into a spineless nation with no spirit of independence.” The authors of every textbook have their own agenda, whether personal or favoring the powerful. In the passage about the attack on Pearl Harbor, the New History Textbook never calls it a “surprise attack.” Instead, it has been described as a justifiable military success: “On December 8, 1941, the Japanese Navy bombed Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, inflicting damage that destroyed most of the U.S. Pacific Fleet … Japan declared war on the U.S. and Great Britain, maintaining that this was a war for survival and self-defense … The U.S. government told the American people that the assault was a cowardly act, calling it a ‘sneak attack.’” How history is interpreted and conveyed to readers is usually determined by those who are dominant, whether they are aware of it or not. They can be the government, the majority, the prevailing culture, or a convincing school of thought. In China’s history textbook for middle school students, the Great War is depicted as “an unjust war of exploitation brought by imperialism,” while the Second World War, on the contrary, was “the victory of a war against fascism, which diminished the power of imperial states and liberalized the working class, laborers, and oppressed nations worldwide.” In one textbook for six-graders in California, The Ancient South Asian World, old Hindu tales are written with euphemistic mockery: “The Brahmins sometimes made fun of the Dasa and said that they spoke as if they had no noses. (Pinch your nose and see what you would sound like.)”; “The monkey king Hanuman loved Rama so much that it is said that he is present every time the Ramayana is told. So look around—see any monkeys?” 12-year-old Californian children are thus told to imitate what Dasa sounded like and to look for monkeys in class, simply because there is no majority of Hindu students in any European or American classroom. As a result, students are educated in South Asian history through the perspective of a dominant ethnicity, religion, and culture. As we have been educated in Taiwan, where everyone is required to submit “one correct answer” to every question posed on the test sheets throughout grade school, high school, and sometimes even in university, textbooks are likely to become juggernauts in what we believe to be true. Without enough latitude granted by our education system to think independently, our perception of facts, reality, or the truth, is susceptible to manipulation. Mencius encouraged his students to be skeptical about what they read in books 2300 years ago, and his maxim is printed in all our textbooks. With the convenience and accessibility of modern technology and libraries in the 21st century, we are definitely privileged to cast doubt on what we read, hear, or see. a
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May 2024
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