"John Yamamoto-Wilson" <john@rarebooksinjapan.com> wrote in message news:<be8ppl$2d7rv$1@ID-169501.news.dfncis.de>...
> masayuki yoshida wrote:
> 
> > What you and Eric want to say in this thread may be so simple that I
> > will rephrase as follows:  Contemporary Japanese should learn what
> > their own nation did as an invader during the war times.
> 
> Well, I won't deny that that is part of it. But I am shocked at how little
> aware my students sometimes appear to be of *any* environment apart from the
> one they are themselves living in, be it life in modern Mexico or life in
> Edo-period Japan.
> 
> > However, how
> > to teach history is not so simple.  If you tell us what of Japanese
> > war history you want to teach Japanese students, it would be
> > appreciated.
> 
> I remember some Japanese girls coming to me (as their teacher) when I was
> working in a language school in the UK years ago. They were very upset
> because a little boy had spat at them and called them "dirty Japs" and said,
> "Please tell us who hates us because of history". I guess if Japanese
> children could get that kind of information as a standard component of their
> education that would be empowering for them.

Last week I watched an English film 'All or nothing' (Japanese title:
Jinsei wa tokidoki hare) in Hibiya, Tokyo.  I knew that British boys
of the working class spit at and say 'F**k off!' even to their
parents.

By the way, I think it should be wrong for Brits to say 'dirty Japs',
because Brits hardly take a bath or shower.  ;-)
 
> In that case, I got a retired army major to come and talk to them, and he
> went through the basics of WWII in a very kind and non-judgmental way,
> including an explanation of the fact that many local lads in that area were
> in a regiment that ended up as prisoners of war of the Japanese. You may
> remember that even the Emperor did not understand, when he went to England,
> why about a thousand old men turned their backs on him in the procession
> through London.

I guess that the Emperor knew such a stupid demonstration and its
meaninglessness.
 
> By the way, I don't think it's only Japan where there is a lack of
> appropriate information about things one would imagine would form the basis
> of an education in the modern world. In this newsgroup we've heard about the
> Texan schoolteacher who thought Spanish was the national language of Canada
> and there've been reports of Japanese returning from the United States being
> asked by schoolchildren things like, "Do you have television?"
> 
> Being from the UK myself, I doubt that all that many British schoolchildren
> realise that (for example) the conflict in Northern Ireland resulted mainly
> from the British policy of giving Protestants incentives to go and live in
> Ireland (not to mention laws depriving the Catholics of the right to own
> land or receive an education), much less that faraway conflicts like the one
> in Sri Lanka might have anything to do with British colonial policies.
> However, information is available, and well-informed people will know what
> the issues are, whereas in fjlij we've seen intelligent Japanese people, who
> are quite well-informed in other areas, bring up things like Britain's
> occupation of Burma (Myanmar) in apparent ignorance of Japan's occupation of
> that country (http://tinyurl.com/g4u7, scroll down to the end).

Let me ask you a question, John. Which do you think was a more
villainous nation as a collonialist, Japan or Britain?

Masayuki