Tokyo police raid anti-textbook HQ

TOKYO, Japan -- Police have raided the headquarters of a Japanese ultra-leftist faction in connection with last week's bomb attack on the office of nationalist history textbook authors.

The group, the Revolutionary Army, claimed responsibility in a letter sent to Japanese media outlets last week.

It planted a bomb to protest at a controversial school history text that has been criticized for whitewashing Japanese atrocities before and during World War II, the group said.

The group is being investigated on charges of alleged arson in relation to the attack, a Tokyo police spokesman said on condition of anonymity.

Police believe the group, a faction of the Revolutionary Workers Association, mailed the letter a day after the attack last Tuesday, Japanese media reported.

School use

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The blast at the Tokyo office occurred hours after the city's board of education endorsed the book for use at schools for the first time.

Nobody was injured in the attack, but a first-floor window frame was scorched.

The textbook, among eight approved by the education ministry, has been criticized at home and abroad for omitting, among other things, Japan's use of germ warfare in China and the 200,000 women forced to work as sex slaves.

Neighboring Asian nations who consider themselves victims of Japan's wartime aggression, particularly China and the two Koreas, say the text tries to justify Japan's invasion of much of Asia in the first half of the 20th century.

South Korea, which suffered as Tokyo's colony from 1910 until 1945, has already showed its anger by freezing military exchanges and canceling plans to open its market to Japanese music, cartoons and video games.

But the bomb attack is the first evidence that anger over the text is escalating to violence.

Pride in country

Japanese has resisted mounting pressure to change the text, with the government agreeing to just two out of 35 revisions demanded by the South Korean government.

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

Further straining ties with Seoul, as well as Japan's other Asian neighbors, is Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's planned visit to a shrine honoring Japan's 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.

But protesters in Japan are pressuring Koizumi not to visit the shrine.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.