Tokyo split over use of controversial history textbook

Tokyo school board members are considering using a history textbook at middle schools for disabled students that critics say glosses over Japan's wartime atrocities, officials said Tuesday.

If approved, Tokyo would be the first to pick the book, one of eight approved by the government in April.

The text would be used by 1,641 handicapped students at 47 schools in the next academic year beginning April 1, 2002, said Yoshie Naito, a spokeswoman for Tokyo's prefectural (state) board of education. The board postponed a final decision on the book after failing to reach agreement last week.

"Members were evenly divided and could not decide," Naito said, adding that they will meet again Thursday to make the final decision.

She denied reports Tuesday that the board of education had voted to adopt the book for use in 26 of the schools for students with chronic illnesses and mental disabilities.

The book, called the "New History Textbook," was written by a group of nationalist scholars who deny Japan committed some historically documented atrocities before and during World War II.

Separately, Tokyo's Setagaya Ward will decide next week whether to use the text in the district's ordinary schools, ward official Mitsuhiro Matsushita said Tuesday.

The book's publisher in June took the unusual step of marketing the text at public bookstores in an attempt to boost its appeal. The book has since sold 515,000 copies but has yet to catch on with the nation's schools.

As the Aug. 15 book selection deadline approaches, school authorities are voicing concerns about the book and its impact on Japan's relations with its neighbors.

Earlier this month, a school district in Tochigi, northeast of Tokyo, reversed its earlier decision to use the book.

So far, about one­quarter of Japan's 542 public school districts have rejected the book, according to opponents. Fusosha, the publisher, has also expressed pessimism over the book's prospects.

The authors and their supporters had no immediate comment Tuesday.

The history text has angered many Asian countries, particularly China and South Korea, for softening or deleting major events in Tokyo's bloody conquest of much of East and Southeast Asia in the first half of the 20th century.

South Korea, which Japan ruled as a colony from 1910­1945, has frozen all military exchanges with Japan and canceled plans to further open its market to Japanese music tapes, cartoons and video games.

The book does not mention allegations of germ warfare by Japan in China, ignores the 200,000 women forced to work as prostitutes for Imperial troops, and gives no death toll for the 1937 "Rape of Nanking," when Japanese invaders killed at least 100,000 people.

"I'm appalled by Tokyo's mentality to consider the book especially for handicapped students," said Yayori Matsui, a civil group leader campaigning against the book. "It's an insult to the children who need to face peace and friendship more than anyone else."

The authors and the publisher made minor revisions in July, but Japan's government has rejected revision demands from Seoul and Beijing, arguing it cannot impose changes on what it considers a matter of historical interpretation.