The Suginami Ward board of education adopted a history textbook Friday that critics say distorts history and gives light treatment of Japan's wartime atrocities.
Suginami Ward is the third municipality this year, after Otawara, Tochigi Prefecture, and Tokyo, to adopt the contentious junior high text, which was compiled by members of the nationalist Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform and published by Fuso Publishing Inc.
The adoption paves the way for the textbook to be used by the roughly 6,400 students who will attend the ward's 23 junior high schools for the next four years, starting in April, the ward said.