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Reining in the revisionists

It all seemed a chilling reminder that 1984 was less than two years away. In an effort worthy of Orwell's Ministry of Truth, experts from the Japanese Ministry of Education had set out to soften references in high school history textbooks to Japan's aggression before and during World War II. The Japanese invasion of China in 1937, for example, became a mere "advance." Passages describing the fall of Nanking seemed to suggest that Japanese atrocities had been provoked by stiff Chinese resistance, and the Korean national uprising against Japanese colonial rule in 1919 was "mob violence."

Outraged, Japan's Korean and Chinese neighbors demanded a total revision of the contentious texts. Reflecting his country's traditional antagonism to Japan, a South Korean Cabinet minister asked, "Perhaps the Japanese are not capable of thinking like human beings?" At home, Prime Minister Zenko Suzuki was attacked by political opponents as well as within his own Cabinet for allowing the changes to be made.

Finally last week the government proposed a solution that it hoped would end the textbook battle without damaging Suzuki's chances of re-election to the presidency of his Liberal Democratic Party in November. A spokesman promised that future texts would reflect the "basic understanding between Japan and the respective governments," and stated that Japan was "deeply aware" that it had "inflicted great suffering and injury on the peoples of Korea, China and the other countries of Asia."

Such a public confession of national guilt seemed to be exactly what angry Koreans and Chinese wanted most to hear, but, in fact, the Suzuki compromise offered more conciliatory words than deeds. An official spokesman conceded that it was already too late to prevent publication of the offending schoolbooks. Instead, the government promised to distribute a newsletter to schools that would begin using the 1.3 million textbooks next spring, setting out new guidelines for interpretation of the past. Japan's angry neighbors will have to wait until 1985 for more substantive revisions in the Japanese revisionism.

Although the Suzuki solution fell far short of their earlier demands, neither China nor South Korea seemed willing last week to risk lucrative trade ties with Tokyo for the sake of setting the record straight. China's Foreign Ministry summoned Japan's ambassador to demand an earlier revision, even while officials in Peking sent word to Suzuki through informal channels that he was still welcome to visit China this fall for the tenth anniversary of the normalization of ties between the two countries.

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