Tokyo Board OKs Controversial Textbook

An explosion went off near the office of scholars who wrote a textbook that was approved for public schools earlier Tuesday despite criticism of its treatment of Japanese wartime atrocities.

The blast occurred shortly before midnight in a parking lot next to the central Tokyo building where the nationalist scholars who wrote the “New History Textbook” work. It scorched a first-floor window frame, but nobody was injured, a police official said.

Police said no one claimed responsibility for the blast, which came hours after Tokyo’s board of education voted to use the book--the first time it has been approved for public schools.

The textbook will be used in three of the city’s 45 schools for disabled students in the academic year beginning in April, said Yuko Sakai of the Tokyo Office of Education. She said several private schools had approved the book earlier.

The textbook has been criticized in Japan and abroad for not mentioning Japanese World War II atrocities such as germ warfare in China and the 200,000 women forced to work as prostitutes for the wartime military.

South Korea, which bore the brunt of Japanese imperialism as Tokyo’s colony from 1910 until 1945, has protested the book’s publication by freezing all military exchanges with Japan and canceling plans to further open its market to Japanese music, cartoons and video games.

About 500 people opposed to the book demonstrated peacefully against the decision in front of Tokyo City Hall, said Mineo Onuma, a City Hall security official. An association of ethnic Koreans in Japan urged a reversal of the decision.

Supporters of the book say Japanese learn too much already about wartime atrocities and should be taught more about having pride in their country.