Politicians and Textbooks
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD

Both Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan and President Park Geun-hye of South Korea are pushing to have high school history textbooks in their countries rewritten to reflect their political views.

Mr. Abe has instructed the Education Ministry to approve only textbooks that promote patriotism. He is primarily concerned about the World War II era, and wants to shift the focus away from disgraceful chapters in that history. For example, he wants the Korean “comfort women” issue taken out of textbooks, and he wants to downplay the mass killings committed by Japanese troops in Nanking. His critics say he is trying to foster dangerous nationalism by sanitizing Japan’s wartime aggression.

Ms. Park is concerned about the portrayal of Japanese colonialism and the postcolonial South Korean dictatorships in history books. She wants to downplay Korean collaboration with the Japanese colonial authorities and last summer pushed the South Korean Education Ministry to approve a new textbook that says those who worked with the Japanese did so under coercion. (A majority of professionals and elite civil servants today come from families that worked with the Japanese colonizers.) Academics, trade unions and teachers have accused Ms. Park of distorting history.

Mr. Abe and Ms. Park both have personal family histories that make them sensitive to the war and collaboration. After Japan’s defeat in the war, the Allied powers arrested Mr. Abe’s grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, as a suspected class A war criminal. Ms. Park’s father, Park Chung-hee, was an Imperial Japanese Army officer during the colonial era and South Korea’s military dictator from 1962 to 1979. In both countries, these dangerous efforts to revise textbooks threaten to thwart the lessons of history.

紐時：日韓修教科書 很危險

紐約時報十三日發表社論，認為日本首相安倍晉三與南韓總統朴槿惠推動修改歷史教科書反映他們的政治觀點，是危險之舉，有礙兩國記取歷史教訓。

安倍已指示文部省，僅能批准提升愛國主義的教科書。安倍特別關切日本挑起與戰敗的二戰歷史，希望不再聚焦日本的不光彩章節。例如，安倍希望將朝鮮半島「慰安婦」的問題徹底刪除，並淡化日軍的南京大屠殺行徑。批評者表示，漂白侵略歷史，安倍是在建立危險的民族主義。

朴槿惠希望淡化韓人與日本殖民當局的合作關係。去夏，朴槿惠催促教育部通過新教科書。新書指韓人是因日人高壓脅迫，才與日人合作。

安倍與朴槿惠的家庭背景，讓他們對二戰與通敵一事特別敏感。日本戰敗後，盟軍曾以二戰甲級戰犯嫌犯罪名，逮捕安倍的外祖父岸信介。朴槿惠的父親朴正熙於日本殖民時期曾任日軍軍官，1962到1979年是南韓軍事獨裁者。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/14/opinion/politicians-and-textbooks.html

2014-01-14．聯合報．A14．國際．編譯王麗娟