In the latest salvo in an ongoing battle over history, a group of 50 Japanese scholars has chided the author of a U.S. textbook and his backers in academia for "factual errors" that the group claims no Japanese scholar would support.

In a letter in the December edition of Perspectives on History, a scholarly journal published by the American Historical Association, the group defends a government move to request revisions to a high school history textbook published by U.S. publisher McGraw-Hill.

The book contains a section covering the "comfort women" issue, which the group dissects. The move is a rebuttal to a March statement by 20 American historians slamming a push to "censor history" by the administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.