Photo/Illutration Passages were deleted from history textbooks used by cram school operator Sundai Yobigakko. (Provided by source)

A private-sector operator of cram schools has deleted history textbook passages about the Nanking Massacre and the Takeshima islets after coming under fire on social media and being questioned by a ruling party lawmaker.

Sundai Yobigakko, which runs preparatory schools for students taking university entrance exams, removed the two passages in late August.

Such cram schools are outside of government supervision and can use whatever textbooks they want. At least one education expert said the deletions raise concerns about future threats to freedom of thought and expression.

In Sundai Yobigakko’s modern Japanese history textbooks, a reference to the Nanking Massacre of 1937 said more than 100,000 Chinese residents, surrendering soldiers and prisoners of war were killed.

Another passage regarding the disputed Takeshima islets said Japan named them after incorporating the Dokdo islands during the Russo-Japanese war.

Dokdo is the name South Korea uses for the islands.

Although South Korea now effectively controls those islands, the official Japanese position is that they have long been Japanese territory, and that Seoul has never presented clear evidence that it ever controlled the islets before Japan effectively took control of them in 1905.

There are wide discrepancies among Japanese scholars about the number of deaths in the Nanking Massacre, with some saying about 20,000 died, while others go as high as 200,000.

According to Surugadai Gakuen, which operates Sundai Yobigakko along with a slew of other educational institutions for students of all age brackets, an image of a page from the history textbook regarding Takeshima was posted on Twitter on Aug. 29. That led to a flood of tweets criticizing the passage.

Two days later, an official connected with Hiroshi Yamada, an Upper House member of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, called Surugadai Gakuen and wanted to know if the image included in the initial tweet was accurate.

That same day, company officials decided to delete the two passages and ordered all branches that use the textbooks to do so.

A company official called Yamada’s office and said the passages had been deleted.

However, company officials also said Yamada never asked for the deletion or correction. They stressed that decision was made because of the many critical tweets.

The Asahi Shimbun asked Yamada’s office why the lawmaker felt the passages were problematic. The office responded that the Takeshima passage was not in line with the official government position.

Regarding the Nanking Massacre, the office said the passage should have stated the various estimates for the number of deaths.

An executive of a rival cram school operator expressed surprise at the “defiant” nature of the two passages, especially in light of the fact that there was a very low possibility such topics would appear on the entrance exams.

But Teruyuki Hirota, a professor of the sociology of education at Nihon University, said the deletion was another example of a company bending to outside pressure and conforming with the majority opinion.

He pointed out that because cram schools were outside the framework of public education, there should be no problem if they teach items not included in the approved school curriculum or use textbooks not screened by government bodies.

“The fact that Sundai deleted the passages can be considered excessive conformity in response to attacks and criticism over the internet,” Hirota said. “If such conformity should spread to other areas outside of public education, it would mean a threat to the freedom of expression and thought. That would be a major problem.”

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