Group claims responsibility for textbook bomb

By staff and wires

TOKYO, Japan -- A radical left-wing Japanese group has claimed responsibility for an arson attack this week near the office of the authors of a controversial history textbook.

Local media said Friday the group, calling itself the "Revolutionary Army," distributed a letter sent to several Japanese news agencies saying that it planted the bomb in Tuesday's attack.

Police believe the letter was sent from a faction of the ultra-leftist Revolutionary Workers Association. Kyodo News Agency quoted an unidentified police official as saying.

The letter was postmarked Wednesday, a day after the attack.

"Our Revolutionary Army ... launched a revolutionary firebomb attack of anger against the headquarters for the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform," the Associated Press quoted the letter as saying.

The right-wing scholars who penned the "New History Textbook" are members of the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform.

Anger from neighbors

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Neighboring Asian nations, particularly China and the two Koreas, have expressed anger that the textbooks appear to gloss over Japan's wartime atrocities.

They have issued strong protests, but the bomb attack is the first evidence that anger over the textbooks might escalate to violence.

"We must absolutely block the movement to adopt the textbook," press reports quoted the letter as saying.

Local media reported that Tokyo Metropolitan Police had so far refused to comment on the letter, or confirm its authenticity.

The blast occurred shortly before midnight on Tuesday in a parking lot near the building where the scholars work.

The bomb consisted of a plastic tank containing gasoline and a timing device.

The explosion scorched the wall and window frame of the office building but there was no other damage.

Books endorsed

The textbook has been criticized in Japan and abroad for omitting Japanese World War II atrocities, such as germ warfare in China and the 200,000 women forced to work as sex slaves for the wartime military.

Nonetheless on the same day as the blast, the Tokyo metropolitan education board adopted the textbook for use in schools for physically and mentally handicapped students, despite protests from some 500 demonstrators outside calling for the book to be withdrawn.

Other groups took to the streets, marching through the government district in central Tokyo, shouting: "Don't put these textbooks in the hands of our children."

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

They also argue there is scant historical evidence for some of the atrocities Japan is accused of, adding that even if true, such violence is an inevitable part of war.

"I don't think our textbook is flawed," said Toshiaki Shirasawa, textbook department chief at the book's publisher, Fusosha. "It's the textbooks in the past that were wrong."

The book has tapped into a growing mood that Japan has apologized enough for the misdeeds of half a century ago.

Since June, more than 500,000 copies of the book have been sold.

Shrine visit

Despite vocal protests and threats to cut educational and cultural ties the Japanese government had agreed to just two out of 35 revisions demanded by the South Korean government.

Further straining ties with Seoul, as well as Japan's other Asian neighbors, is Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's planned visit next week to a shrine for the war dead.

Koizumi may visit the Yasukuni Shrine on the anniversary of Japan's surrender in World War Two on August 15.

The day is also South Korea's Liberation Day, celebrated to mark the end of Japan's 35-year occupation of the Korean peninsula.

The Associated Press & Reuters contributed to this report.