Most public junior high schools in Japan have decided not to use a controversial history textbook compiled by nationalist historians that critics say glosses over Japan's wartime atrocities, a nongovernmental organization monitoring the issue said Thursday.
According to a survey by Children and Textbooks Japan Network 21, none of the education boards from the nation's 542 public school districts had adopted the textbook by the Wednesday deadline.
The Tokyo Metropolitan Government and Ehime Prefecture education boards, however, chose to adopt the contentious history textbook for use by disabled and chronically ill children in six public schools, according to the NGO. Several privately run schools also chose to use the text.
The Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform, which hoped to achieve a share of 10 percent for its history textbooks, failed to capture even 0.1 percent, the NGO said Thursday.
Local education boards have chosen textbooks to be used in elementary and junior high schools for the next academic year from among candidate texts screened and approved by the education ministry. The selection period for textbooks ended Wednesday.