that being said-- i am posting the critical analysis i wrote for my basic-overview class below. it has to do with textbook controversy in the asia-pacific and is in response to 4 lengthy articles we had to read. the "goal" of the paper was to show we understood the main points/insights and then to process them, looking at them critically and analyzing what we read (surprising right? who knew that's what a critical analysis was?!?!) don't be concerned if you don't understand the particulars--if you choose to read it.
ALSO: THE BELOW PAPER IS MY INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY. please please please do not plagiarize it. i will cry tears of molten lava and that will hurt....
In Censoring History: Citizenship and Memory in Japan, Germany and the United States, the editors Laura Hein and Mark Selden have grappled with the task of amassing articles that explore the key issues surrounding historical textbook controversy. Their main premise, that “schools and textbooks...transmit ideas of citizenship and both the idealized past and the promised future of the community,”[i], is explored throughout their introductory essay. This premise is explained through four main themes: nationalism and identity, international relations, rights and responsibilities of the citizen, and creating an informed/active citizenry through education. Using these themes, I will analyze and critique the essays by Gerow, Nozaki/Inokuchi and Masalski found in later chapters of Censoring History.
The first two themes, nationalism/ identity and international relations, are interrelated. Hein and Selden identify the first as “a relationship between citizens and the state, often centering on recognition (or denial) of ethnic, linguistic, and religious differences,”[ii]. The latter takes that relationship and posits how the rest of the global community views this identity. In many cases, nationalism can create an ideology that polarizes the international community, as seen in the ongoing revisionism in Japanese texts. As recently as 2005, violent anti-Japanese protests erupted in China over Japan's “glossing over” of its war record in textbooks.[iii] It can also lead to isolationism in a hegemonic atmosphere where foreign perspectives are barely acknowledged, as often is the case in US texts[iv] .
The rights and responsibilities of a citizen differ from the educational process of creating an informed citizen: the former questions the state-imposed views of history on its people – as I will further explore in my analysis of “Japanese Education, Nationalism, and Ienaga Saburo's Textbook Lawsuits”, by Y. Nozaki and H. Inokuchi. The latter is what K.W. Masalski argues, “we should be teaching....teaching that history is a process, an argument,”[v] in order to help students actively participate in forming history narratives.
In “Consuming Asia, Consuming Japan: The New Neo-nationalist Revisionism in Japan”, the third essay in Censoring History, author Aaron Gerow examines the themes of nationalism/ identity and rights/ responsibilities as a product of Capitalist commodity. Gerow uses the controversial text of Fujioka Nobukatsu , History not Taught in Textbooks (Kyokasho go oshienai rekishi), as well as film, to explore the dangers of “non-identity” and creating neo-nationalism.
Early in his arguments, Gerow puts forth that History not Taught in Textbooks “can best be explained only by analyzing the book as a cultural...even literary text, one that intersects with a variety of other texts, from the historical to the fictional, from the printed to the televisual,”[vi]. By doing this, neo-national reconstruction can be understood as motivated by consumer desires to create a Japanese group identity, which Fujioka's textbook claims has become lost. Much of this national identity was lost along with Japan's position of “democratic front against Communism in Asia”[vii] with the end of the Cold War.
Gerow outlines Fujioka's idea that suppressing Japanese pride by highlighting its brutal war atrocities, resulted in the youth generation rarely choosing Japanese heroes to identify with, building its identity and culture instead on international icons[viii]. Fujioka also strongly believed that the school systems' main responsibility was to develop Japanese citizens/subjects rather than individuals, and should not “impart knowledge that may make children question or feel ashamed of their Japanese identity,”[ix].
Gerow finds support for Fujioka's ideology in two popular Japanese commodities: manga (Kobayashi's “On War”) and film- using Iwai Shunji's Swallowtail Butterfly as a main example. The 1996 film is “seen to represent both the border-crossing, fluid identities...of Japanese youth that reactionary educators find so disturbing,”[x]. But for all its imagery of trans-national identity, it ultimately embodies the weakening/loss of national Self-- while it seems to celebrate internationalism; its underlying subversive message is that foreign influence is necessary when National identity is lost. This sense of hopelessness has been re-imaged in the form of hikikomori culture[xi] which is highlighted in films such Tokyo![xii].
While Gerow's article explores a variety of media to support his arguments, there is little actual reference to Fujioka's History not Taught, which he uses as his main anchor. Without any excerpts from the controversial texts, the reader is left to accept Gerow's position as reflective of Fujioka's writings, without being able to explore the writings themselves. This makes for a very unstable premise. Also, while Gerow does propose, early-on, that the historical revisionism of Fujioka can only be fully understood when juxtaposed with other “consumer based” texts ( fiction, historical, televisual, etc.) it is not until over half way through the essay that the main “intersecting text” is introduced. This makes for a jumpy-feeling article and, in my opinion, lacks continuity. In contrast, the article which follows (“Japanese Education, Nationalism, and Ienaga Saburo's Textbook Lawsuits” by Y. Nozaki and H. Inokuchi), gives a coherent, historical account of the rights and responsibilities of citizenship within the greater framework of building national identity.
In their essay, Nozaki and Inokuchi take the historical account of Professor Ienaga Saburo's textbook lawsuits and build a case that “forming an oppositional narrative and identity...changes the way people [or citizens] see the world and themselves,”[xiii]. They begin with the point that educational textbooks are an effective means with which to promote national narratives and can then be used to make and form national identity[xiv]. Professor Ienaga's thirty-year battle against “state-authorized censorship” grew out of his belief in, and brought to the forefront, the struggle of nation-shaping vs. the people's educational rights and freedoms.
This battle began with the SCAP-issued 'suggestion' that Japanese history textbooks be rewritten in order to de-glorify a militaristic past. Since, at the time, all textbooks had to be state authored, the Ministry of Education developed three principles on which to base their historical context: no propaganda, no forms of ultra-nationalism and inclusion of 'ordinary person's accomplishments', downplaying the emperor’s achievements[xv]. With the passing of the Fundamental Law of Education by the Diet in 1947, it was now possible for non-state-authored textbooks to be used. However, Ienaga's textbook, Shin Nihonshi, was rejected for reasons given by the ministry which disturbed him- including giving too much space to the Pacific War and “the depiction of Japan as politically subordinate to China [which] would cause students to suffer a sense of inferiority,”[xvi].
Professor Ienaga saw this type of screening as unconstitutional censorship in direct opposition to Article 10 of the Fundamental Law of Education: “‘Education shall not be subject to improper control, but it shall be directly responsible to the whole people',”[xvii]. By bringing his case to court, he raised awareness of previously unchallenged state-dictates in the general public. While Ienaga's goals of demonstrating the unconstitutionality of the screening process, and thereby banning its practice, was never fully legally recognized, the authors maintain that the court's decision will 'limit the scope of textbook censorship in the future,”[xviii]( p 119). Ienaga's struggle to create a more balanced textbook brought the bias of textbook-selecting to the attention of the Japanese media and people, even traveling beyond the national borders.
The insights gained through Nozaki and Inokuchi's essay help produce a fuller understanding of the textbook controversy. Its linear, historical-timeline approach and utilization of court cases, allow the reader to easily understand the immediate historical context. However, when read without the counter-balance of Fujioka's ultra-nationalistic revisionism, the essay becomes too one-sided. Without first understanding the severity of nationalist (patriotic) curricula, which over the years Japan has stressed [xix], Professor Ienaga's battle for citizen's rights within national identity loses scope.
The final essay in Censoring History, melds together the four main themes of Hein and Selden. Kathleen Woods Masalski uses her personal experience of teaching history to create a historiographical approach of transforming texts and creating a more informed, active citizenry through education. In “Teaching Democracy, Teaching War: American and Japanese Educators Teach the Pacific War,” Masalski revisits the ideas presented by Hein and Selden and further challenges the reader to see history textbooks as “ 'nationalistic histories....written not to explore but to instruct- to tell children what their elders want them to know about their history',”[xx].
Masalski asks the reader to challenge textbooks through a variety of methods of deconstruction, fully outlined on pages 261 and 262. By engaging in this trans-formative view, she argues that “questioning and debating 'received truth,' as in textbooks, is where the citizenship really develops, not from the content of the national story passed down,”[xxi] . Masalski is in a unique position, in that, she has first-hand, anecdotal “evidence” to promote her theory. Taken from both her position as a teacher and as part of an international, academic institute, the guidelines and principles she highlights are all very effect tools in the historiographical process. In particular, the “five forms of nationalistic bias”: bias by inertia, omission, cumulative implication, in the use of language and by unconscious falsification, shed great light on how textbooks can easily promote national agenda in the first place[xxii].
Finally, Masalski returns the reader to an important observation made by Hein and Selden: What does all of this mean for America? As of publication, other nations have not challenged “American textbook narratives of this [Pacific] and subsequent wars,”[xxiii] and how will “we as a nation react if and when 'outsiders' challenge our textbook narrative,”[xxiv]. Will we attempt an ultra-nationalistic view like Fujioka in an attempt to keep patriotic pride? Or will we address the questions rationally like Professor Ienaga in the face of potential challenge? Perhaps, taking a cue from Masalski, a balance between the two can be reached, realizing that “history is not what's in the textbook but a process of argument,”[xxv] with room for national identity within the greater context of international citizenship.
I found it particularly poignant that Masalski's essay is the final one in the collection Censoring History, as a sort of culmination of how best to address issues of grappling with and writing history. While it is possible to contest her support (being as it is first-hand experience), I believe the over-all arch of essays collected by Hein and Selden can only find answers through historiographical approaches. In particular, her side-by-side comparison of Pacific War textbooks[xxvi] illustrates the need for discernment when addressing historical texts.
Through this analysis, I have shown that nationalism/identity, international relations, rights and responsibilities of the citizen, and the creation of an informed/active citizenry through education play significant roles in challenging textbook censorship and controversy. While “knowledge is power”, it is ultimately up to the individual to accept the responsibility to challenge “whose knowledge ought to be represented in textbooks and taught in schools,”[xxvii].
[i] Laura Hein and Mark Selden, “The Lessons of War, Global Power, and Social Change,” in Censoring History: Citizenship and Memory in Japan, Germany, and the United States, ed. Laura Hein and Mark Selden (M.E.Sharpe, Inc., New York, 2000), 3.
[iii] “Timeline: Japan”, BBC News, 16 September 2009, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/1261918.stm.
[v] Kathleen Woods Masalski, “Teaching Democracy, Teaching War: American and Japanese Educators Teach the Pacific War”, in Censoring History: Citizenship and Memory in Japan, Germany, and the United States, ed. Laura Hein and Mark Selden (M.E.Sharpe, Inc., New York, 2000), 285.
[vi] Aaron Gerow, “Consuming Asia, Consuming Japan: The New Neonationalist Revisionism in Japan”, in Censoring History: Citizenship and Memory in Japan, Germany, and the United States, ed. Laura Hein and Mark Selden (M.E.Sharpe, Inc., New York, 2000), 77.
[xi] Hikikomori: Japanese term to refer to the phenomenon of reclusive individuals who have chosen to withdraw from social life seeking extreme degrees of isolation. http://en.wikipeida.org/wiki/hikikomori.
[xiii] Nozaki Yoshiko and Inokuchi Hiromitsu, “Japanese Education, Nationalism, and Ienaga Saburo's Textbook Lawsuits”, in Censoring History: Citizenship and Memory in Japan, Germany, and the United States, ed. Laura Hein and Mark Selden (M.E.Sharpe, Inc., New York, 2000), 122.
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