Photo/Illutration Yamakawa Shuppansha Ltd. revised its textbook segment regarding Koreans brought to work in Japan. (The Asahi Shimbun)

Senior high school textbooks for social studies were revised in several places to match the government’s view, including the removal of references implying that all wartime Korean laborers were forcibly brought to Japan.

The education ministry released the results of this year’s textbook screening on March 29 and found 14 instances in 12 textbooks submitted by six companies as not being in line with the government stance as of April 2021.

All six companies revised those segments or added an explanatory note.

The textbooks will be used in geography-history and civics classes for second- and third-year senior high school students from the 2023 school year.

The government last year, in response to a written question from Nobuyuki Baba, a Nippon Ishin (Japan Innovation Party) Lower House member, said it was “inappropriate” to describe workers from the Korean Peninsula before and during World War II as having been “forcibly brought” to Japan.

Based on that view, textbook publishers were told to remove wording that gave the impression that all Korean workers were forced to come to Japan.

An education ministry official said Koreans took many different routes to reach Japan during that period.

The government stance approved in 2021 also said that references to “comfort women” in textbooks should not include any indication that the imperial Japanese military was involved in any portion of the operations.

One reason for the record 14 opinions attached by the screening committee was that the textbooks were mostly completed by the time of the government response to Baba’s inquiry in April 2021.

When textbook screening standards were revised in 2014 during the administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, a provision was added that said when a unified government stance made through a Cabinet decision existed, it should be used as the basis for what is written in geography-history and civics textbooks.

The response to Baba became the official stance, and some textbook companies had to change such expressions as “forcibly brought” to “recruited” or “mobilized.”

The word “many” was added before “Koreans forcibly brought to factories and mines” in one textbook to avoid the impression that all Korean workers were forced to come to Japan.

One textbook editor expressed concerns that future volumes would have more wording that match the government view.

“In order to receive approval, we will have to make revisions in line with what the screening committee said,” the editor said.

One company may have found a way around being forced to revise its textbooks.

The original wording in a history textbook of Hiroshima-based Daiichi Gakushusha Corp. was that “many Koreans were forcibly brought to work” in Japan.

The screening committee issued a dissenting view about that passage. But rather than rewrite the segment, the company added a note to the side of the same page that referred to the government view issued in April 2021 along with wording, “There is research that records many instances of the workers being virtually forced to come” to Japan.

An education ministry official said that as long as the government view was included, there was no problem if other conflicting views were also included.

Tokyo Shoseki Co. received a dissenting view about its comfort women description. It also made no change to the original but added wording about the 2021 Cabinet decision.

The original entry quoted from the 1993 statement issued in the name of Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono that clearly stated that the Japanese military was involved in various aspects of the comfort stations.

The Kono Statement was the first formal apology by the government to the former comfort women.

(This article was compiled from reports by Norihiko Kuwabara, Yukihito Takahama, Hajime Ueno and Michinori Ishidaira.)

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