The selection period for textbooks to be used starting in April in elementary and junior high schools across Japan draws to a close today, but the past months saw the selection procedure draw fire along with some of the texts on view.
Much debate centered on whether to use a contentious history textbook written by nationalist historians that critics, including China and South Korea, slammed as warping history and glossing over Japan's wartime atrocities.
The textbook, compiled by the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform and published by Fuso Publishing Inc., did not fare well in the selection process. While some private schools said they would use it, most public institutions, other than six schools for disabled children in Tokyo and Ehime Prefecture, appear to have chosen alternate texts.