JAPAN WATCH : Truth in Textbooks

Japan’s continuing failure to come to terms with its past is worrying its Asian neighbors and disappointing its allies everywhere. What Tokyo has achieved economically is undercut by its traditional reluctance to accept responsibility publicly for Japanese aggression and atrocities during the 1930s and 1940s.

Tokyo only recently acknowledged the forced wartime enlistment of thousands of women--many of them Korean--as “comfort women” in Japanese army brothels. Japan’s Ministry of Education traditionally has censored textbooks. “Japan History--New,” a ministry-approved textbook used by more than half of high schools in Japan, provides no detailed information about atrocities committed by the Japanese. No mention is made of widespread maltreatment of prisoners of war. Say what you want about Germany’s role in World War II, but Germany today deserves credit for making great efforts to face up to its past.

On Tuesday, Japan’s Supreme Court upheld government censorship of schoolbooks, defending the Ministry of Education’s constitutional right to dictate the contents of schoolbooks. A retired history professor had filed lawsuits challenging the ministry order to delete descriptions of the Japanese army’s germ warfare experiment on prisoners and his account of the Japanese rape of Nanjing.

Japan cannot whitewash its past from the national or international conscience. The attempt to do so only fuels skepticism about Japan, which wants and expects to be respected as a great world player. Fair enough. But a great nation cannot deny its past.