Japan stands firm over history textbook

Koizumi says no to history textbook revision

By Staff and wire reports

TOKYO, Japan -- Japan's firm stance on not revising its history textbooks continues to annoy China and South Korea, which maintain that the facts on wartime atrocities should be corrected.

Japan's new Prime Minister, Junichiro Koizumi, said: "While we cannot make revisions, we will listen sincerely to such criticism and respond sincerely."

China's state media outlet, the People's Daily, commented that Koizumi's controversial decision to pay homage at the Yasukuni Shrine is also something that makes people worry about the dangerous tendency in his understanding of history.

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The media also said Japan's history textbook "advocates imperialism, and whitewashes and denies Japan's history of aggression."

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South Korean has decided to postpone joint military exercises with Tokyo in protest.

An official of the Chinese Foreign Ministry in Beijing called in an official of the Japanese embassy on Wednesday to demand changes to one textbook.

"The textbook, through history-distorting facts, tries to deny the aggressive nature of the war, mentioning only lightly and even trying to conceal the crimes committed by its militarists," the official was quoted in the People's Daily.

Vice Foreign Minister Wang Yi pointed out the major mistakes in the textbook to Japanese Ambassador Koreshige Anami.

Koizumi said: "I would like to come up with wisdom to find a way to understand and respect each other's positions so as to improve ties between Japan and China."

World Cup

Seoul has decided to postpone joint military exercises with Tokyo in protest.

A group of South Korean lawmakers have applied for a court injunction in Japan to halt the sale of one book, to be circulated next year for use by children aged 13 to 15.

The South Korean Ambassador to Japan, Choi Sang-ryong, urged Japan to take action to resolve the the extbook issue so that the two countries could successfully co-host next year's World Cup soccer finals.

"One must not erase or distort confirmed facts," Choi told a Tokyo seminar. "We should overcome this textbook issue . . . to make the World Cup a success."

"The South Korean side has never raised the issue of the past. The issue emerged in the process of screening history textbooks," he said. "This does not constitute our interference in Japan's internal affairs."

Wartime scars

Japan has said the textbook does not represent the government's official view of history.

But Seoul says the book justifies Japan's invasion of much of Asia in the early 20th century and fails to explain the plight of more than 100,000 "comfort women," most of them from the Korean peninsula, forced to provide sex to Japanese troops during World War Two.

Seoul objected to Japan's justification of its 1910-1945 occupation of the Korean peninsula as being necessary for stability.

South Korea argues that the textbook instead highlights the benefits of the Japanese colonial period in Korea -- the development of railways and manufacturing industries.

"All the descriptions China has demanded be revised are points that had already been revised in response to the ministry's instructions. We have used sufficient caution on those points," Kyodo news agency quoted an official as saying.

The Education Ministry insisted on revisions before approving the text, and has said that the textbooks cannot be revised further unless they contain factual errors.