A bill to revise the law governing how school textbooks are chosen cleared the Upper House on Wednesday, obliging boards of education to follow decisions by their municipalities' regional councils over the selection of common textbooks for local schools.
The move comes in the wake of the refusal since 2011 of the board of education in the town of Taketomi, Okinawa Prefecture, to use a conservative civics textbook at its junior high schools despite the regional council and the central government ordering its use.
The revised law, to be enforced from April 1, 2015, and applied to the selection of textbooks for elementary and junior high schools from the 2016 academic year, obliges municipalities to form a council that selects common textbooks for use in the region.