It surfaced in August that the Matsue City board of education in Shimane Prefecture had severely limited students' access to the 10-volume manga series "Hadashi no Gen" ("Barefoot Gen"), a best-selling antiwar and antinuclear weapons classic. Although the board eventually withdrew its decision and the decision was not directly related to teachers' teaching activities in classrooms, boards of education in other areas have intervened in the process of schools' decision directly related to the content of education in classrooms — the selection of Japanese history textbooks.
Boards of education should refrain from such intervention and respect the autonomy of schools and teachers in the selection of teaching materials unless the materials selected violate laws.
The common element between the "Hadashi no Gen" incident and the history textbook incidents is the perception of Japan's 20th century wars. In the "Hadashi no Gen" incident, the Matsue board of education in December 2012 told the city's elementary and junior high schools to remove the manga series from library shelves and to require students to get permission from teachers to read it.