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Japanese vice education minister wants sex slave history erased from textbooks
April 1, 2005
Tokyo - A senior Japanese government official said Thursday a word related to
Japan's sex slavery practices in World War II should be removed from middle
school history textbooks.
His remarks came as the Japanese government is censoring a very controversial
textbook which is alleged to glorify Japan's atrocities in that war, and are
expected to incur heavy criticismsfrom neighboring nations.
"Considering the children's growth and development stage, it isnot appropriate
to include the word 'comfort women' in junior highschool textbooks," senior
vice education minister Hakubun Shimomura told a House of Councilors committee,
Kyodo News reported.
The word "comfort women" refers to women whom the Japanese troops enslaved
sexually in the war in the Asian nations.
"Comfort women existed at that time, that I do not deny," Shimomura said.
"(But) words describing forced labor (taken from occupied territories) and
comfort women for the military were not used at that time. It is inappropriate
to use in textbooks such terms that have not been used."
Japan's right-wing activists are desperately seeking government's sanction of
the latest history book which justifies Japan invasion.
Japan's view on that history has been the major stumbling blockfor developing
friendship with neighboring countries.
The vice minister echoed the acclamation of education minister Nariaki Nakayama
last November that it was very pleasing to see the self-abusing description
disappearing from history textbooks.
The vice minister also is an ardent supporter of the committee which compiles
the textbook.
Japan screens textbooks every four years. The pervious edition of the
criticized textbook suffered a extreme low adoption of 0.1 percent across
Japan. If the latest edition is approved, the editors want to push the adoption
to 130,000 copies, or 10 percentof all textbooks, in next spring.
Xinhua
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The
end of apology
2-17-2005
Comfort
womens' fund to be dissolved in 2007
1-25-2005
Military
record of 'comfort woman' unearthed
1-13-2005
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