Conservative education minister Hakubun Shimomura said he wants to fundamentally change Japan's postwar school system to teach children about the nation's historical traditions and culture.

Shimomura played a key role in drafting the Liberal Democratic Party's rightwing policy platform for the Dec. 16 general election, which the LDP won by a landslide, and hawkish Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and LDP members view educational reform as high up on their to-do list.

In its campaign pledges, the LDP claimed that many textbooks used in Japanese schools take "a self-deprecating view of history" and vowed to revise the screening process, which stipulates the need to takes into account the feelings of neighboring parts of Asia when deciding on the content of such books.