Textbook publishers have devoted less space to Japan's history of wartime aggression in Asian countries in their drafts of new textbooks submitted to the Education Ministry for screening, ministry sources said.
Fewer textbook publishers have included accounts of wartime sex slavery and the number of casualties in the 1937 Nanjing Massacre in new drafts of junior high school history textbooks, the sources said Saturday.
Only three of the eight publishers that made submissions mentioned the issue of wartime sexual slavery in their draft textbooks, which would be used beginning in the 2002-2003 school year.