New Japanese textbooks that whitewash Japan’s colonial history and involvement in World War II continue to be criticized by Japanese NGO’s:

Japanese textbooks that exercised the country’s colonial victims for months may have been approved but will hardly be taught anywhere, a group says. Children and Textbooks Japan Network 21 says the history and social studies textbooks, sponsored by the rightwing Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform, will be adopted by no more than 1 percent of middle schools, amounting to about 13,000 copies. According to the group, as of late July, 300 of Japan’s 584 educational districts had decided on their textbooks, and only one — Tochigi Prefecture’s Odawara City — had adopted the offending texts.

“The initial goal of the Society for History Textbook Reform, an adoption rate of 10 percent, has been blocked,” the group said. “In the days ahead, a battle will unfold over the 1 percent line.” No more than 0.039 percent of schools adopted an earlier version of the textbooks in 2001, and they are currently used in mere 21 schools across Japan.

Think about that, the first set of textbooks that caused all this uproar in Korea and China back then is used by only 21 schools, .039% of the population. The newest edition of these textbooks will once again go to less then 1% of the population. It is obvious that attacks on Japan for the use of these textbooks by Korea and China are politically motivated when many Japanese don’t agree with the books to begin with as well.

Japan could of have saved themselves this headache to begin with if the Ministry of Education didn’t approve these textbooks from the start.

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