Kevin Gowen <kgowenNOSPAM@myfastmail.com> wrote in message
news:beoh22$7bti3$1@ID-105084.news.uni-berlin.de...
> Richard Thieme wrote:
> > Kevin Gowen <kgowenNOSPAM@myfastmail.com> wrote in message
> > news:beii0l$5ioc5$1@ID-105084.news.dfncis.de...
> >> Scott Reynolds wrote:
> >>> In any case, I don't think we can hold America up as a model to be
> >>> copied. Both because the two countries' educational systems are
> >>> different and because, frankly, the US education system does not
> >>> seem to
> >>> be doing a very good job of nurturing critical thinkers with a good
> >>> grasp of history, if recent events are any guide.
> >>
> >> Indeed. It's a good thing we have people like Ann Coulter to write
> >> books that debunk the leftist myths about Joe McCarthy that have
> >> been drummed into the heads of two generations of American students.
> >
> > Just for the heck of it, what communists did McCarthy actually expose?
>
> T.A. Bisson
> Mary Jane Keeney
> Cedric Belfrage
> Solomon Adler
> Franz Neumann
> Leonard Mins
> Gustavo Duran
> William Remington

I'll look them up.

>
> See the Venona Intercepts and Coulter's _Treason_ for more.
>
> >>> I think the education ministry's textbook review and selection
> >>> system has had problems in the past, but that things seem to have
> >>> improved since. My big problem with them right now has less to do
> >>> with ideology and more to do with competence. Have you seen the
> >>> English texts currently in use in junior high schools? My son's
> >>> textbook, for example,
> >>> contains outright errors and gross inconsistences that make me
> >>> wonder how it ever passed the review in the first place. The
> >>> reviewing system,
> >>> after all, is *supposed* to weed out errors. But it is clearly
> >>> failing in this mission. I wouldn't be surprised if the history
> >>> textbooks are full of mistakes as well.
> >>
> >> I have the Tsukuru Kai's history book on my bookshelf. I've only
> >> read the section on WWII, and its errors go without saying. Now
> >> you've got me thinking that I should read it straight through to see
> >> if there are other bumbles.
> >>
> >
> > Could you state some of these errors?
> >
> > Please state some of these errors.
>

Before I get into it please understand that I am open to finding errors in
that book. I have a copy, and I would have to say that my only objection was
errors of omission rather than commission (what they didn't say rather than
what they did).

> Here's one for now, from page 277, second full paragraph:
> 日本の戦争目的は、自存自衛とアジアを欧米の支配から解放し、そして、『大東亜
共
> 栄圏』を建設することであると宣言した。
> This, quite simply, is bullshit.

Hmmm. Are you sure that you are not simply misreading the と宣言した? That
applies to the whole sentence you know. Indeed liberation of Asia from the
Western powers was a stated goal of the Japanese government. They did
declare this and it is all through their propaganda of the period. To what
extent the senior officers believed it (and even if they did whether they
could have carried it out in the face of more imperialistic junior
officers), is an entirely different question.

>
> Oh! This is also choice, from page 277, first full paragraph.
> これは、数百年にわたる白人の植民地支配にあえいでいた、

This may well be true. There certainly was little in the way of local
resistance when Japan first attacked Malaya, Java and Singapore.

> 現地の人々の協力があっ
> てこその勝利だった。　

This is way overstated (I mean the "があってこそ" part), I admit the があっ
てこそ should have been corrected.

As far as cooperation (or collaboration depending on your perspective) look
up Sukarno, the Laurel family in the Philippines, Chandra Bose, or even to a
much lesser extent, Lee Kuan Yew

http://www.freegk.com/politics/lee_kaun.php

Born to a middle-class Straits Chinese family, Lee worked as a translator
for the Komei news agency during the Japanese occupation of Singapore.

For Laurel see:

http://www.op.gov.ph/museum/pres_laurel.asp

It seems difficult to me to believe that if collaboration was so unpopular
in the Philippines, Laurel could have continued in public service after the
war, but then the Philippines is a country that I don't pretend to
understand.

I hope I don't have to give you links to Sukarno



> この日本の緒戦の勝利は、東南アジアやインドの多くの人々
> に独立への夢と勇気を育んだ。

Again I see this as true. Lots of people have commented on it. The fact that
the Western powers could be beaten and beaten decisively did indeed
encourage the anticolonialists.

Here is one site from Singapore:

http://www.knowledgenet.com.sg/singapore/shf/e_journal/articles/EJV1ART003.h
tm

"What were much more important were the psychological, social and political
changes that had come about during the three years and eight months. A new
era in the history of Malaya had dawned, and, although the Japanese had
failed to establish the "New Order", they had successfully undermined the
status quo.

The greatest disaster to British arms lowered British prestige in the eyes
of the people. The rapidity at which Malaya was lost was shocking, while the
impregnability of the Fortress had always been loudly boasted of. This was
aggravated by the unbecoming behavior of some of the troops re-occupying
Malaya who indulged in such things as corruption, illegal commandeering of
property and gun-play against unarmed civilians. Moreover, the authorities
were not free from making mistakes in the business of punishing Japanese
co-operators and awarding faithful allies. Many collaborators became useful
again in the returning regime. On the other hand, many pro-British Chinese,
who remained loyal during the Occupation, found themselves unrewarded by the
returning British. They became bitter and frustrated. Propaganda of loyalty
to the British Empire such as frequently voiced before the war through such
bodies as the Straits Chinese British Association came to an end. Says L.A.
Mills, "In the East more than in the West, if the prestige of the ruling
government is affected its authority is undermined."
___________________________________



>
> It's 4:30 am here so I am about to sleep, but those are two choice
excerpts.
> If you want to read someone who has addressed errors of fact and
methodology
> in the book's treatment of WWII as well as other events in Japanese
history,
> I suggest Ethan Segal's paper, "Rethinking History Education and the
> Japanese Textbook Controversy".

I'll take a look at it. I hope he isn't another case of someone with low
level language skills working off of a bad translation and relying on either
radical marxists, or Chinese and Korean sources to tell him what he thinks
the Japanese must be saying in their textbooks. I have read too many of them
to be able to get past the first line of misquotation.

Regards,

Richard Thieme