A group of historians from Japan, China and South Korea has been seeking a common stance on the region's history in the wake of controversy over recently approved Japanese history textbooks that some say justify Japan's wartime aggression.
While the historians are aware of the difficulty of interpreting history in a manner that satisfies all sides, they claim they are taking a cool approach to the problem and are distancing themselves from political considerations.
The Society for East Asian History, a Tokyo-based group of academics mainly from Japan, China and South Korea, has been working since 1996 toward publishing a transnational supplementary history text.