Ⅰ. Generalization

East Asia is becoming more and more borderless in every dimension; politics, economy, culture. After China was affiliated with WTO, the largest trade partner for Japan is no longer the USA but China. It is still a fresh memory that Japan has experienced Korean culture movement and it is not difficult to find “哈日族(young Chinese people being crazy about Japanese dramas and fashion)” in China.

However, as often described as “政冷経熱 (hot in economy but cold in politics）”, the trust in the nation level has not been built. There are certain obstacles that hinder China, Japan, and Korea from acquiring the vision in which the three countries can enjoy bright future. But what is the most critical one? What is the issue we have to face to build up the real partnership between the three countries? In my opinion, that is the “history”.

The problems such as “Yasukuni”, “Comfort Women” are now discussed not only in the three countries, but also in the USA or Canada. We can say that historical issues in the three countries are no longer regional topics in Asia. A few years ago, Japan made an effort to be a permanent member of the UN Security Council. Which countries oppose that idea the most? China and Korea did. Why? There might be some political reasons to avoid the relative political presence compared to Japan. However the very reason that they claimed is that Japan had not sincerely facing its history. That suggests that the reason is persuasive.

“EASCHE” was a really challenge. The students from the three countries look deeply into the historical textbooks of each country, and tried to find out the historical perspective. There are three reasons that we selected textbooks as the clues. First, “history” is usually a compulsory subject in the three countries and the historical perspective of people are based on history classes with textbooks. Second, textbooks reflect the historical perspectives of each government to some extent and it has much to do with historical problems among the governments. Third, even though people do not know clearly about textbooks of the other countries, people has strong doubt that the textbooks of the other countries reflect “truth” or “fairness”.

To build up the historical perspective that the three countries can share, it is required to share the common evaluation of the very basic facts. It is true that we sometimes have to compromise to “the greatest common divisor”. However, I believe it is meaningful that the largest common has not a small number of the articles of the common divisor.

This report is the track of what the students from the three countries could have achieved and how they could have built up trust among the three countries.

II. The Characteristics of Each Country’s Textbook

1. Japanese Textbook

In the EASCHE discussion, Japanese textbook was generally perceived as being “dry, monotonous, objective, as they only introduce the name of incidents without subjective interpretation”, and thus “is absent of human emotion, compared to those of other countries”. On the other hand, it was also pointed out that “the objective of history education in Japan is to pass on its cultural legacy as knowledge” and “thus, memorization of key historical terms becomes crucial in its teaching styles”.

As a historical explanation for the above observation, it is useful to point out the contract of pre-war Japanese education. In fact, there used to be a subject called Shushin (修身) in every pre-WWII Japan, which was designed to enhance nationalism among students and as a result, was used as a media to lead the whole nation into intense militarism and the war. Nowadays, any sort of specific political ideology or historical interpretation is carefully avoided in Japanese classroom, mainly due to the regret of past failure and general allergy towards it.

All in all, observing from the textbook, Japanese objective of history education is set as an “introduction to historical study”. Many Japanese history professors mentioned that, post 20th century history —especially after 満州事変(Manchu-incidents)—are rarely asked in college entrance exam, as they are academically, rather than politically, controversial. The authors of the textbooks care very much to spare the appropriate space for each period to learn history academically.

Thus, we can conclude that the primary purpose of Japanese history education is to equip students with “historian’s mindset” and knowledge background without getting influenced by any specific ideology.

2. Chinese Textbook

On the other hand, the Chinese history textbook was largely perceived as being “intense, emotional with provocative pictures and word use”, and “obvious that how the Chinese are interpreting each incidents”.

Fundamentally, the “past” and the “present” are not regarded as separate periods. Rather, they require you to consciously evaluate the history with the present values and ideologies.

In the textbook, the “great righteousness” from historical point of view were mentioned and evaluated in every war and the diplomatic incidents. From there, we can fully observe that they are proud of Chinese history being intensely related to the world history in any period of time.

Thus, we can conclude that primary purpose of Chinese history education is to equip students to think of the present issues as one of Chinese while taking pride in the fact to be born as Chinese.

3. Korean Textbook

In terms of focusing on patriotic pride, Korean textbook resembles that of Chinese. However, it can be also described as a “regional history of Korean peninsula”. For example, the 東学農民運動　(Donghak Peasant Movement), which was one of the most important trigger of the First Sino-Japanese war, was, however, mentioned completely independent from the Sino-Japanese war in the textbook. Also, any description of World War I was absent from the 20th century chapter. The objective of the Korean textbook is interestingly persistent on putting weight on whatever happened in Korean peninsula around any period.

Rather than covering historical events chronically, it breaks each period down into four themes: “Politics” “Economy” “Society”, and “Culture”. Then, the book takes analytical approach on each subject, trying to reach academic conclusion, which rather resembles that of Japanese.

Thus, Korean history education emphasize on patriotic pride towards Korean legacy and Korean peninsula, while also putting weight on academic side of the historical studies.

III. For a “Unified Textbook”

We dealt with nine topics; Sino-Japan War, Japan-Russia War, “Amalgamation” of Japan and Korea, May 4th movement and March 1st movement, “Comfort Women”, “Nanjing Massacre”, “731 corps”, “Battle in Okinawa”, and “Atomic Bomb”. We were divided into three groups and here I would mention the three topics-Sino-Japan War, Japan-Russia War, and “Nanjing Massacre” in which I joined discussion as a section leader.

We had three steps to make the unified textbook. First, we checked what incidents are written in textbook of each country. Second, we distinct those into three categories- the events we should include in the body, events we should include in supplementation, and events we should cut. Third, we carefully looked for the proper description of each event to share common evaluation. We had the “body” part and “supplementation” part since evaluations of some events (especially issues related with territorial problems) are sometimes very controversial, but we agreed that we cannot exclude. When we cannot totally agree with some important and controversial issues, we had the same amount of space to explain each country’s point of view.

1. Sino-Japan War

To our surprise, there are a few differences in the facts written in the textbooks between China and Japan. Chinese textbook stressed the point that Japan had strong motivation to cause the war against China while China had domestic reasons (ex. Birthday Ceremony for the mother of the emperor, 西太后) to avoid the war. And Chinese textbook praise some brave civilians to give up their lives for the country.

On the other hand, Korean textbook focuses more on the 東学農民運動　(Donghak Peasant Movement) rather than the Sino-Japan War itself and regard it as the positive sign that Korean people made some actions to break through the hardships of the country. That is why they call it “movement” unlike Chinese and Japanese textbooks call it “revolt” against the Korean government. Korean students explain that recently the Korean people changed the recognition of it and refrain from calling it “revolt”. We agreed to write it as “Donghak Peasant Movement (Donghak Peasant Revolt”) to show both of the perspectives since it was called “revolt” when it actually happened.

Thus we put the basic facts in order from the textbooks of China and Japan and then complement the Korean perspective for the “movement”.

2. Japan-Russia War

Japan-Russia War is the war between Russia and Japan to take initiative in the Korean Peninsula. Japanese textbook focused the background that Russia wanted to have “an ice-free harbor” with its “going south policy” and Japan thought it is crucial to keep the area in the control of Japan. Korean textbook shows the anger against both of the countries while expressing the irritation toward the Korean government at that time since it could not make effective policies. Chinese textbook points out the fact that the battle fields were the territories of China and many of the victims are Chinese people.

Some Japanese students suggest that we include the analysis of the Japanese textbook that the Japan-Russia is the first war in modern time that non-white people beat white people and many peoples under colonial control of Western countries heard the news delightedly. Gandhi was one of them and it was one of the trigger for Turkish Constitutional Revolution. But Korean and Chinese students insist that Korean and Chinese people are the victims of the war and they cannot accept the word “delightedly”. But we reached the same recognition that the war urged Asian people to have modernization.

I heard that when EU made its unified textbook of history, France insisted that they should focus on the fact that Napoleon played the great role to spread the idea of democracy but some countries stressed the point that he is the “invader” for their homelands. When there are two or more sides of the truth, people tend to focus on the points they care more.

Thus we agreed to mention that Japan-Russia War urged Asian people to have modernization and the influence reached to Vietnam, India, even to Turkey while pointing out the fact many of the victims were Chinese and Korean people.

3. “Nanjing Massacre”

The reason we did not use “Nanjing Great Massacre” but “Nanjing Massacre” is to clearly express our common understanding that the heart of the matter is not the number of the victims but the fact that a considerable number of innocent civilians were killed by army. Though the Chinese government and Japanese government have not agreed on “the number” and the number has been the main topic of the issue.

We also focused on the “education” in Japanese army to force them to kill people without hesitation. When the whole country builds the system to execute the war process, there is the risk that people lose the sense of humanity and only care about beating enemies.

We picked up the how Chinese prime minister 周恩来 made the effort to overcome the hatred between the two countries and treat Japanese prisoners of war. We have to face the past pains and faults and forgive the others to create the future together.

Ⅳ. Conclusion

In EASCHE, there were plenty of chances to talk about historical issues. Though I have participated in events such as HPAIR, OVAL, LEAF, and so on and had opportunities to talk about them privately, it was my first time to discuss the issue in a conference style. It was also first time to look the Chinese and Korean textbooks of history, though I saw the translations.

It is true that students from each country made some compromises to make “a unified textbook” but it is crucial that we succeeded in making one.

The impact of what we have done might be very limited to East Asia now. However, what I believe in is that each member of us or the reader of this report would contribute somehow to create the mutual trust among the Asian countries in the future.

Written by Hideaki Shiraishi, VP of EASCHE
Class of 2011 University of Tokyo School of Law

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