[Ronin4hire]

Upon coming to Japan one of the things I was a little bit wary of was the Japanese view of history. So much so that I avoid talk of history altogether with Japanese people unless they are REALLY close friends.

This wariness was born out of a lot of things that I had heard about the Japanese education. In particular that there are huge omissions in high school textbooks when it comes to some of the terrible things that occurred or they are justified and revised.

Right now Im reading a book about Japanese history textbooks and it turns out that such textbooks make up only 1-2 percent of textbooks published.... furthermore a lot of schools REJECT these sorts of textbooks. The book does take up some issues regarding language surrounding these incidents in some of the textbooks (the way in which the army is distanced from Japan using language for example) but these issues, while perhaps interesting to a linguist or a social science major, are hardly issues which would cause international concern, nor issues that are limited to Japan only.

When you see all the fuss that is drummed up in Korea and China about these textbooks you have to wonder... what are the Korean and Chinese media saying to the Korean and Chinese population?

Also I find it a bit hypocritical that China in particular get bothered about historical revision when they themselves have been occupying and colonizing Tibet since the 1950s (Tibet actually established themselves as independent in the early 20th century however they themselves never thought of themselves as "Chinese" rather to the Chinese they were on the periphery of their civilization in the same way that what is now modern day Korea was.) yet claim that Tibet is a part of China.