Japanese Court OKs Censoring of Schoolbooks

Japan’s Supreme Court upheld government censorship of schoolbooks Tuesday, rejecting a landmark lawsuit by a textbook crusader who has waged a 30-year battle against whitewashing of wartime history.

The Supreme Court backed a Tokyo High Court decision seven years ago that defended the Education Ministry’s constitutional right to dictate the contents of schoolbooks.

The crusader, Saburo Ienaga, a now-retired history professor, has filed three suits against the government since the Education Ministry ordered him to delete numerous passages in several editions of his “New History of Japan,” written for high schools.

Ministry censors, who check textbooks written by academics, took offense at Ienaga’s descriptions of the Japanese army’s germ-warfare experiments on prisoners. They also ordered deletion of his account of the Japanese rape of Nanjing.