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Tension rises over Japanese history textbooks

Former Japanese prime minister Ryutaro Hashimoto was set to meet Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) yesterday amid renewed anger in China and South Korea at Tokyo's wartime past.

Hashimoto is part of a delegation of China-Japan friendship groups hoping to improve relations also frayed by a dispute over how to develop energy resources in disputed waters.

But as he arrived, the Japanese government was under fire in Beijing and Seoul over the education ministry's call for school textbooks to be revised to underline Japan's claim to islands claimed by both its neighbors.

The ministry, announcing the results of its annual review of textbooks, said on Wednesday it had ordered publishers to add Japan's claim to two sets of islands that Tokyo disputes with China and South Korea.

"Since the textbooks will be used in our country's education, they need to be correctly stated from our country's viewpoint," Education Minister Kenji Kosaka said.

The education ministry also changed references to the notorious 1937 massacre in the occupied Chinese city of Nanjing.

China says some 300,000 civilians were killed. US-led trials of Japanese war criminals documented 140,000 victims.

The ministry allowed references to the 300,000 figure but ordered textbooks to state that the death toll is contested.

In South Korea, about 60 members of the Korean Federation of Teachers' Association rallied near the Japanese embassy.

"You can try to distort history textbooks, but you can't change history," the protesters chanted as riot police barred them from getting close to the mission.

Seoul disputes Tokyo's claim to a set of islands known in Korea as Tokto and in Japan as Takeshima.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang (秦剛) repeated on Thursday Beijing's stance that the Diaoyutai islands in the East China Sea "have been Chinese territory since ancient times." Tokyo claims them as the Senkakus.

A similar row over a Japanese history book, which critics said whitewashed wartime atrocities, sparked protests across China last April when thousands stoned Japanese government buildings and businesses.
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