Introduction
Japan’s school History textbooks are central to teaching and learning, and so have been a battleground for competing ideas about history, national identity, and pedagogical modes needed to develop the next generation. To date, however, there has been no study of the impact of recent substantial changes to Japan’s textbook environment. From 2012 to 2019, conservative nationalist Prime Minister Abe Shinzō headed a powerful coalition government that was predicted to impact textbook content. Under Abe, new school curricula introduced significant changes to History education and other subjects. This study examines the content and pedagogical orientation of leading History textbooks at both junior high and high school levels to ascertain how they have changed, and what the findings indicate about the forces that shape textbooks in Japan, relating this to comparative international studies. The article also considers what the recent development of textbooks implies for teaching and learning in Japanese schools.
History education in schools – purposes and approaches
History education in schools is a vital means for children to learn about the past and how to understand it. There has been much debate about its purposes, and about approaches to teaching and learning.Footnote 1 Two pedagogical orientations have attracted particular attention: “enhancing collective memory” (teaching “the best possible interpretation of the past”), which centers on transmission of knowledge (and often national identity), and a “disciplinary” approach whereby students are taught to think like historians, using tools such as source analysis.Footnote 2 History education specialists acknowledge that “enhancing collective memory” prevails in many countries, but themselves often favor the “disciplinary” approach, not least because it may help students “develop the ability and the disposition to arrive independently at reasonable, informed opinions.”Footnote 3 Barton and Levstik, however, argue that alongside an “analytic stance,” “identification” (with “specific people, events, or institutions in history”) is a vital and inescapable aspect of school History. For them, “some form of identification is necessary for democratic life, because without attachment to community, individuals would be unlikely to take part in the hard work of seeking the common good.”Footnote 4
This view that the purposes of History education are grounded in citizenship is widely shared. Arguing for a “disciplinary” approach, Seixas asserts that “to deny students an education” in “methods for establishing truth” is “to exclude them from participation in contemporary culture,” while Foster argues that “teaching controversial issues in the history classroom … is invaluable in developing critical citizens because it encourages empathy with the actions of people in the past, promotes a respect for other viewpoints, and requires students to marshal and defend an argument based on available evidence.”Footnote 5 Hein and Selden argue that “teaching children to debate controversial issues and question basic premises implies a very different concept of citizen’s rights and responsibilities than does memorization of a sacred text. … Debates about education are always in part about defining citizenship and training children to meet that ideal.”Footnote 6 This article likewise takes the view that examination of History textbooks in contemporary Japan must consider their implications for the development of citizens.
As discussed later, the History curriculum in Japan has mostly conformed to the “enhancing collective memory” orientation in emphasizing acquisition of knowledge and understanding, though tentative steps toward encouraging a “disciplinary” approach have been taken during this century. Studies of History teaching practices in Japanese schools have largely found that lessons center on knowledge transmission and teacher explanation, in line with the pedagogical orientation of the curriculum, though teachers have also been found to stress analysis and moral response with a view to developing future citizens.Footnote 7
History textbooks in postwar Japan
Research on History textbooks worldwide indicates that especially important determinants of textbook content and format include the state, the market, and social pressures (national and international).Footnote 8 These influences can also be seen at work in postwar Japan.
State oversight of textbook content has been crucial throughout Japan’s postwar decades. Under the Allied Occupation (1945–52), textbooks produced by commercial publishers replaced government-produced textbooks; however, textbooks had to undergo government inspection and approval, intended to prevent the return of a pre-1945 ideological cast.Footnote 9 During the 1950s, textbook rejections increased after inspections were tightened by conservative governments unhappy with perceived leftist slants. The author of one rejected textbook, Professor Ienaga Saburō, then launched three lawsuits against the approval process; though these were only partially successful, they have been credited with leading to more transparent and less punitive procedures, and greater latitude for authors and publishers.Footnote 10 Though variation in content and format is limited by the need to conform to the state-determined curriculum, choice among textbooks results in a competitive market.
From the 1970s onward, textbooks increasingly mentioned controversial topics such as colonial oppression and war atrocities. Protests about textbook content from countries in east and south-east Asia pressured Japanese governments to consider such neighbors’ views.Footnote 11 Controversial content peaked in the 1997 junior high school History textbooks, which included relatively extensive accounts of the forced mobilization of colonial subjects, and mentioned so-called “comfort women” coerced into wartime sex servitude. Unhappy nationalist activists reacted by forming the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform (Atarashii Rekishi Kyōkasho o Tsukuru Kai 新しい歴史教科書をつくる会), hereafter Tsukuru Kai, issuing a junior high History textbook reflecting their perspectives in 2001. Tsukuru Kai and their supporters also campaigned for junior high textbook adoption decisions to be taken by boards of education (who are appointed by local mayors with the approval of local assemblies), weakening the influence of teachers over the adoption process.Footnote 12 Very few schools adopted the Tsukuru Kai textbook, but the campaigns induced the publishers of some – though not all – more popular textbooks to reduce coverage of controversial content, showing the effect of social pressure in a market context.Footnote 13
The contemporary context: the second Abe administration and after
The 2012 landslide election victory of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)-Kōmeitō coalition meant a second premiership for LDP leader Abe Shinzō. Abe was a longstanding supporter of a revisionist, nationalistic view of modern Japanese history and History education, through involvement in such bodies as the LDP’s Committee for Historical Investigation, the Diet Member Group for Considering Japan’s Future and History Textbooks, and Nippon Kaigi 日本会議 (Japan Conference).Footnote 14 Nippon Kaigi, an umbrella for a range of conservative groups, was considered a major right-wing campaign force with an estimated 40,000 members nationwide, including hundreds of national and approaching two thousand local legislators.Footnote 15 Abe’s first premiership (2006–2007) had overseen a thoroughgoing revision of the Fundamental Law of Education (Kyōiku kihon-hō 教育基本法), introducing development of “an attitude that respects tradition and culture [and] loves our country and homeland that has fostered them” as a new aim of education.Footnote 16 His return raised alarms among liberals and the Left. Kyōkasho Repōto 教科書レポート, an annual publication of Shuppan Rōren 出版労連 (the Japan Federation of Publishing Workers’ Unions), pointed to leading revisionist nationalists in influential positions and warned of possible measures to increase central curricular control and strengthen the power of local political leaders over education.Footnote 17 In 2014, the same publication criticized revisions to the textbook screening criteria that mandated inclusion of clear statements on absence of consensus about numbers related to events in modern history, and on any “unified opinion of government” or Supreme Court judgment on a matter.Footnote 18 For Kyōkasho Repōto, these revisions threatened to worsen textbook coverage of controversial issues such as the comfort women and the 1937 Nanjing Massacre. Abe consolidated his political dominance with a succession of further election victories that left him the most powerful premier for decades.Footnote 19
Abe’s second administration saw two major revisions to the school curriculum. The first focused on Moral Education, long a conservative preoccupation. In 2013, an Education Rebuilding Council (Kyōiku saisei jikkō kaigi 教育再生実行会議) established by the prime minister recommended that Moral Education change its curricular status from a “domain” to a “subject,” entailing the introduction of government-approved textbooks and formal assessment. The Ministry of Education and Science (MEXT) and its advisory bodies then oversaw Moral Education’s transition to a new status as a “special subject” with textbooks but without examined or graded assessment – effectively, a compromise to address concerns that moral education could be used for ideological indoctrination. On paper, this was a victory for conservatives, but Bamkin argues that in practice, changes to curriculum content, teaching materials, and classroom practice were very limited. This was partly because MEXT’s authority over curriculum processes enabled the Ministry to shape the changes to suit its own agenda of moral education that involved problem-based activities, discussion, and thinking from multiple perspectives, and partly because textbook publishers and teachers held most of the power over the process of creating and using teaching materials.Footnote 20
Second, in 2017–18, there took place the regular once-a-decade revision of the entire school curriculum, undertaken by MEXT and affecting all subjects. The revision promoted student agency and “thinking, judging, and expressive abilities,” within the overall aim of “agentive and dialogic deep learning” (shutai-teki/taiwa-teki de fukai manabi 主体的・対話的で深い学び). This aim was to be pursued through the “viewpoints and approaches” (mikata/kangaekata 見方・考え方) particular to each subject. The high school History curriculum underwent its most substantial change for thirty years with the introduction of a compulsory new Integrated History course, focused on 1850 to the present and stressing an analytical approach, due to MEXT concerns that modern history tended to be neglected in high schools and that problem-solving, research-based study was insufficiently evident.Footnote 21 This in turn required new Integrated History textbooks.
Curricular reform under the second Abe administration was thus not ideologically uniform. Measures inspired by the prime minister himself enacted a conservative agenda by increasing state control over textbook screening and Moral Education. In contrast, the 2017-18 curriculum revision under MEXT auspices appeared pedagogically progressive in promoting students’ thinking for themselves. How have Japan’s History textbooks developed within this environment?Footnote 22
Research questions and methods
This research aims to answer three questions. First, how do leading History textbooks cover topics within Japan’s modern history that are highly controversial or bear strongly on national identity? Second, what pedagogical orientations predominate in these textbooks? Third, how have the second Abe administration and changes under its auspices impacted textbooks? Based on the answers to these questions, the study then considers the implications for our understanding of the reach and limitations of state power over the teaching and learning of History in Japan and beyond.
The primary research method was inspection of the published textbooks, besides other relevant documents, including the applicable courses of study for junior high and high school, teachers’ manuals for the textbooks, and textbook prospectuses submitted by publishers during the textbook screening process.
Secondary education in Japan comprises junior high school (ages 12–15, compulsory) and high school (ages 15–18, non-compulsory but enrolling over 95% of children). At junior high school, all children study History as part of Social Studies; the 2017 curriculum allocates 135 hours to History.Footnote 23 In high school, between 1992 and 2022, only World History was compulsory for all students; according to MEXT data, Japanese History was studied by about 60 percent of students.Footnote 24 However, as noted above, in 2017–18, the curriculum was revised so that Integrated History (combining Japanese and world history), became the only compulsory History course, ensuring that from 2022 all high school students would study some modern Japanese history. The 2018 curriculum allocates 70 hours to Integrated History.Footnote 25
Nine different History textbooks were approved for use in junior high schools in 2025, up from eight between 2006 and 2024. Local textbook adoption committees (often identical to the local board of education) then decide which approved textbook should be used by schools in their area.Footnote 26 In 2024, market share was dominated by textbooks from two publishers, Tokyo Shoseki (52.4%) and Teikoku Shoin (25.1%).Footnote 27 Tokyo Shoseki has long been the market leader, and Teikoku Shoin moved from third to second in market share in 2016 and has since increased its share further; these textbooks were therefore chosen for analysis. The 2025 editions of these textbooks were compared with the four preceding editions, from 2006, 2012, 2016, and 2021.
At high school, decisions about textbook adoption are made at the school level. Textbooks are also more diverse, to cater to the different academic levels at high schools, which operate selective entry. In 2023, there were 12 approved Integrated History textbooks from seven publishers, some producing multiple textbooks for varying academic levels. The three bestselling textbooks in 2023 were chosen for detailed analysis; these were two published by Yamakawa Shuppan (18.4% and 12.4% market share, respectively,) and one from Teikoku Shoin (16.1%).Footnote 28 As Integrated History was a new course, there were no preceding editions for comparison, but the formats of the Integrated History textbooks from Yamakawa Shuppan and Teikoku Shoin were compared with the preceding World History A textbooks from the same publishers.
To answer the research questions, the entirety of each textbook was inspected to gain an understanding of its overall content and layout, and to identify sections dealing with topics that are particularly controversial and/or bear strongly on national identity. The sections identified were then given close reading, and in the case of junior high textbooks, compared with equivalent sections in previous editions of the same textbook – facilitated by the fact that new textbook editions are largely based on their predecessors, with limited changes. The topics identified as particularly controversial or bearing strongly on national identity were Japan’s colonization of and rule over Taiwan and Korea; the period between the Manchurian Incident (1931) and the end of the Asia-Pacific War (1945), including the topics of the Nanjing Massacre and the comfort women; and material relating to the Ryukyus and the Ainu – Ryukyu islanders (Okinawans) and Ainu being ethnic minorities of historical and contemporary significance in the Japanese archipelago.
Junior high school History textbooks: content and format
Junior high textbooks cover Japanese (and some world) history from ancient times to the present, as the curriculum requires. Before 2001, government regulations restricted textbooks to a largely black-and-white A5 page format. The lifting of these size and color restrictions has enabled dramatic increases in pictures, maps, graphs, and similar materials. These now typically cover two-thirds of each page, gathered around a main text that provides the central narrative. In 2025, both textbooks examined here were A3 width and B4 height when opened, with roughly 300 pages each – since the 2006 editions, composed of fewer than 250 pages, each textbook has gradually increased its page numbers. The changes in format have also been stimulated by curricular changes stressing thinking and investigation by students, who can be encouraged by teachers to interrogate the significance of the graphic and textual sources that surround the main text.Footnote 29
Colonialism in Taiwan and Korea
Both market-leading textbooks devote six pages to the period that saw Japan acquire Taiwan and Korea as colonies (1895–1912), placing the events in the context of Great Power struggles and imperialism in East Asia. Both also cover the Korean independence movement of March First 1919 as part of two pages on people’s movements in Asia, including the May Fourth movement in China and the self-determination movement in India.
The 2025 editions of Tokyo Shoseki’s Atarashii Shakai: Rekishi 新しい社会歴史 (New Social Studies: History – hereafter ASR) and Teikoku Shoin’s Shakaika: Chūgakusei no rekishi 社会科中学生の歴史 (Social Studies: History for Junior High Students – hereafter SCR) refer only briefly to the colonization of Taiwan. ASR notes that Taiwanese resistance to Japan was suppressed by military force, and includes a marginal box (introduced in 2016) about engineer Hatta Yoichi, who “contributed to Taiwan’s agricultural development” by dam and watercourse improvements.Footnote 30 Both textbooks write much more, in very similar terms, about the colonization of Korea. ASR notes that the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905) resulted in a new consciousness among Japanese that Japan was a major imperialist power, and a strengthened “sense of superiority over Asian countries.” ASR states that Japan’s victory stimulated national movements in colonies of Western powers, but that “Japan came to interact with Asian peoples as a new imperialist state.” An extract from Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru in a marginal box (introduced 2021 – SCR carried the same extract from 2001) reinforces this point with Nehru’s observation that “it was Korea that first tasted that bitter result.”Footnote 31 Both textbooks state that Koreans resisted Japanese control, that colonial education in Korea restricted the teaching of Korean culture and history, and that Korean farmers lost land and became tenants or emigrated as a result of colonial land surveys; both also include two short poems expressing contrasting feelings about the annexation of Korea by Terauchi Masatake (first governor-general) and renowned poet Ishikawa Takuboku (a feature introduced by SCR in 2006 and by ASR in 2012). Main text wording has changed little since 2006.
Likewise, neither of the textbook’s main texts about the March First Korean independence movement has changed significantly since 2006. Both state that the movement was nationwide but was put down by the Japanese military; neither goes into detail. Both state that thereafter, Japan modified its governance of Korea to allow somewhat greater freedom of expression, but that pro-independence movements continued. However, sources accompanying the main text have become less critical. In the 2006 and 2012 editions, ASR included a box about artist Yanagi Muneyoshi quoting his expression of sympathy for Korean resistance to Japan, while SCR included a box about Yu Kwan-Soon, a girls’ school student who underwent torture and died in prison at 16 after being arrested for participating in the independence movement. These sources disappeared in 2016. In the 2025 editions, ASR provides a translated extract of the March First declaration of independence and a photograph of a relief in a Seoul park portraying the event, while SCR provides a box about Japanese, such as Yanagi Muneyoshi, who valued and promoted Korean ceramics at the time.Footnote 32
Overall, both textbooks provide critical albeit limited details about Japan’s colonization and rule over Korea, but very little about Taiwan. Changes since 2012 have not been unidirectional. ASR has introduced some new critical sources and removed others. SCR has softened its portrayal by replacing a source about the torture of a young Korean activist with one about Japanese-Korean friendship.Footnote 33
From the Wall Street Crash to 1945
Junior high school History textbooks generally treat the period from the 1929 Wall Street Crash to the end of World War Two in one or two sections, totaling about 20 pages. The most controversial events include the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, the forced wartime mobilization of Koreans, Chinese, and others, the comfort women, and the Battle of Okinawa. Notably, revisionists have persistently sought to deny or cast doubt on the role of the Japanese Imperial Army in the perpetration of atrocities.
The 2025 edition of Tokyo Shoseki’s ASR devotes 18 pages to the 1929–1945 period, covering Japanese history along with world history events such as the rise of Nazism and World War Two. The Nanjing Massacre is covered as follows:
The Japanese army occupied the capital, Nanjing, at the end of 1937, and in the process killed (satsugai shimashita 殺害しました) many Chinese people, including prisoners of war and ordinary people, women and children among them (Nanjing Incident).Footnote 34
This is supplemented by a marginal note:
This incident is also called the ‘Great Nanjing Massacre’ (Nankin daigyakusatsu 南京大虐殺). Various studies have been conducted about the number of victims, which is still not settled.Footnote 35
Every edition of ASR from 2012 onward contains identical main text wording, and the wording in the 2006 edition is also very close, though omitting mention of POWs. The marginal statement about inconclusive research on numbers first appeared in 2012.
Teikoku Shoin’s SCR devotes 20 pages to the 1929–1945 period, covering very similar material to ASR. Treatment of the Nanjing Massacre also resembles ASR, though using the passive voice and providing less detail, as follows:
The Japanese army also invaded (shinkō shi 侵攻し) from southern China, occupying Shanghai and the Nationalist capital, Nanjing. At Nanjing, not only soldiers but also many civilians were killed (Nanjing Incident).Footnote 36
Again, there is a marginal note:
This incident was criticised by various foreign countries, but was not made known to the Japanese people until the war ended. Research is continuing about our picture of the whole event, including the number of dead.Footnote 37
Identical wording was found in the 2016 and 2021 editions. SCR’s treatment of this event has become less critical; the earlier 2006 and 2012 editions lacked the marginal note, referred to the event as the “Great Nanjing Massacre” (2006) or “Nanjing Massacre Incident” (Nankin gyakusatsu jiken 南京虐殺事件) (2012) rather than the “Nanjing Incident,” and included reference to women and children among those killed.
Japan’s actions in lands it had colonized or occupied were given only six lines in ASR’s 2006 edition, but this more than doubled from 2012, and the text has remained virtually identical since. Five lines note “imperialization policies” such as “pressure to use Japanese language and worship at shrines, and changing surnames to conform to Japanese styles,” and wartime mobilization such as voluntary military enlistment.Footnote 38 Six pages later, 11 lines of further information is provided about colonies and occupied territories, including that “many Koreans and Chinese were brought to Japan against their will and compelled to labor under wretched conditions in mines and factories” and that in south-east Asia, forced labor and expropriation of resources by the Japanese army led to resistance movements that the army suppressed.Footnote 39
SCR provides somewhat more detail about this topic, concentrating coverage on two facing pages (30 lines).Footnote 40 Most content substantively resembles that in ASR, but also includes information about anti-Japanese resistance in Manchuria. A marginal box contains 16 lines from an Indonesian textbook on the Japanese occupation there. A very similar text (including the marginal box) was contained in all editions from 2012 onward; 2006 was also very similar, but omitted reference to the Greater East Asian Prosperity Sphere and included more detail on Japanese immigration to Manchuria.
ASR has also gradually expanded its coverage of the Battle of Okinawa. Since the 2012 edition, six lines of main text have been devoted to this subject, stating that the Japanese army mobilized secondary school students as soldiers and nursing personnel, and that about one in four Okinawans were killed, including some who were “driven to group suicide by the Japanese army.”Footnote 41 The 2006 edition was substantially similar, but lacked the information about the mobilization of students and the role of the army. A new addition in 2021 was a marginal box with 15 lines about the Himeyuri unit of female students mobilized for nursing care, including the information that of the 222 students, 123 died.Footnote 42 ASR’s treatment of controversial aspects of the Battle of Okinawa has thus expanded since 2006.
Teikoku Shoin’s SCR mentions the Battle of Okinawa only briefly (1.5 lines) in its main text, but also contains a two-page spread as a special “Let’s explore history” feature, including seven photos and more detail than ASR provides about the progress of the battle. The scale of death is illustrated not by an overall figure but by specific instances, such as the fact that 1344 out of 1693 households in one district lost someone. Wording on the role of the army is mostly less direct than in ASR, but it is stated that some people who used “prohibited Ryukyu dialect … were killed (satsugai saretari 殺害されたり) by Japanese soldiers” and one photo caption states that in the cave illustrated, 13 teenagers “were driven to death by means of a hand grenade given them by the Japanese army.”Footnote 43 Very similar content is found in editions from 2006 onward, though condensed on one page before 2016.
Neither ASR nor SCR mentions the comfort women, in common with all but two approved History textbooks published in 2021 and 2025 – the exceptions being published by Yamakawa Shuppan, a new entrant to the junior high History textbook market in 2021, and Manabisha. In 2024, these textbooks gained very small market shares of 1.8% and 0.5%, respectively.Footnote 44 The mention in the Yamakawa textbook takes the form of a brief marginal note,Footnote 45 while the Manabisha textbook provides an extract from the official statement by then Chief Cabinet Secretary Kōno Yōhei in 1993, along with a note that the Japanese government’s view is that no documents have been found that directly show coercion of comfort women by the military or government officials.Footnote 46 SCR did mention comfort women briefly between 1997 and 2012.Footnote 47
Overall, these two textbooks have not dramatically altered their coverage of the most controversial issues of the 1929–1945 period since their 2006 editions. However, treatment of the Nanjing Massacre has become rather less critical, especially in SCR, which in 2016 also removed its previous brief mention of the comfort women. On the other hand, ASR has somewhat increased the quantity and detail of its coverage of colonized and occupied territories, and of the Battle of Okinawa.Footnote 48
The Ryukyus and the Ainu
Topics relating to the Ryukyu Islands and the Ainu people are significant for changing understandings of national identity in Japan. During the 1980s, the Japanese government denied the existence of ethnic minorities in Japan, but recent decades have seen greater openness to ethnic diversity. This has included promotion of a form of multiculturalism (tabunka kyōsei 多文化共生), a New Ainu Law recognizing the Ainu as an Indigenous people in 2019, and the opening of a National Ainu Museum in 2020 – though the perceived shortcomings of these developments have also been criticized, and prejudice, discrimination, and resistance to ethnic diversity remain.Footnote 49 Substantially expanded material relating to the Ryukyus and the Ainu in both SCR and ASR fits within this context.
Teikoku Shoin completely redesigned its SCR textbook in 2001,Footnote 50 including 8.5 pages on the Ryukyus and the Ainu, maintaining this coverage subsequently. Tokyo Shoseki was slower to increase coverage. The 2006 edition of its ASR textbook contained a special “Let’s go deeper” two-page spread on Japan, the Ryukyu kingdom, and the Ainu people from medieval to modern times, but otherwise only three passages (totaling 29 lines) within history to 1945 were devoted to these topics. However, coverage was increased to seven pages in 2012, and maintained subsequently; the 2021 and 2025 editions devote eight pages to the Ryukyus and the Ainu.
Since 2009, revised textbook approval criteria have mandated appreciation of the culture and tradition of Japan.Footnote 51 In response, the textbook prospectuses submitted as part of the approval process by Tokyo Shoseki and Teikoku Shoin represent their coverage of the Ryukyus (and in the case of Teikoku Shoin, the Ainu) as contributing to students’ understanding of Japan’s tradition and culture, and a two-page spread about Ainu culture in the 2021 and 2025 editions of Tokyo Shoseki’s ASR also carries a subheading encouraging students to use this material to think about the diversity of Japan’s culture.Footnote 52 In the context of greater recognition of ethnic diversity in Japan, both textbooks can be said to be participating in a tentative but significant redefinition of national identity to include minority cultures and traditions.
Textbook format and pedagogical orientation
Since 1998, junior high curriculum revisions have moved toward greater emphasis on thinking and investigation. The 1998 curriculum (in effect 2002–2011) reduced hours for History to stress experiential and project learning in the new domain of Integrated Studies. The 2008 curriculum increased hours for History and re-emphasized academic knowledge alongside thinking and expression. The 2017 curriculum, in effect since 2021, maintains hours for History and stresses “agentive and dialogic deep learning” that attempts to balance “knowledge and skills” with “thinking, judging, and expressive abilities.”Footnote 53 Textbook editions have reflected curriculum changes, first by introducing features to aid investigative and experiential learning from 2001,Footnote 54 and later by emphasizing questioning and explanation by students.
The 2025 edition of ASR starts with ten study skills pages that guide students about investigation, report-writing, and presentations. Each lesson section contains at least one task to stimulate explanation or investigation: for example, the task ending the two pages on the Russo-Japanese War is to compare and explain the influence of the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese Wars on Japan and the world.Footnote 55 Each chapter ends with four pages about how to conduct and report further analysis, and the textbook also contains five features about investigating local history.
The 2025 edition of SCR similarly contains an introductory study skills section, a task question for each lesson, and three-page further analysis sections at the end of each chapter. Two-page picture spreads show reconstructions of daily life scenes in twelve periods from ancient times to post-1945, with students being encouraged to compare each period’s picture with its predecessor. Eleven two-page “Explore History” features encourage deeper examination of selected themes, while five “Active History” features present source extracts for students to use in considering debated issues, such as the 1702 Ako Incident involving the “47 ronin,” and the “motherhood protection debate” between three prominent Japanese women during the early twentieth century.
In both these market-leading textbooks, an “enhancing collective memory” pedagogy continues to predominate in the historical narrative of their main text. However, through task questions, study skills sections, and special features, both also encourage a more “disciplinary” approach that involves examination and analysis of historical sources and presentation of explanations and arguments. This shift has developed gradually since 2001 in response to curriculum changes.
Assessing changes to junior high History textbook content since 2012
The market-leading ASR textbook has incrementally increased its coverage of controversial topics since 2012. It has also added materials about ethnic minority cultures in Japan. However, both ASR and SCR have become slightly less critical in their treatment of the Korean March First independence movement and the 1937 Nanjing Massacre. Pedagogically, both textbooks have responded to the 2017 curriculum by increasing emphasis on study skills and analysis. Measured in terms of textbook content about controversial topics, therefore, moves toward a conservative nationalist standpoint since the advent of the second Abe administration in 2012 have been very limited. In certain respects – expanded materials on ethnic minority cultures, and greater emphasis on analysis and explanation – textbook content has become more progressive.
High school Integrated History textbooks: content and format
The new subject of Integrated History has been compulsory for all first-year high school students since 2022. Textbooks cover Japanese and world history from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. As noted above, the three textbooks with the largest market share in 2023 were inspected for this study. The most popular textbook, Yamakawa Shuppan’s Rekishi Sōgō: Kindai kara Gendai e 歴史総合近代から現代へ (Integrated History: From Modern to Contemporary), hereafter RS, was composed of 248 B5 pages and appeared to be aimed at more academic high schools; half or more of a typical page was covered in main text, with fewer graphics than other textbooks. Also popular were Teikoku Shoin’s Meikai Rekishi Sōgō 明解歴史総合 (Clear Integrated History), hereafter MRS, and another Yamakawa textbook, Gendai no Rekishi Sōgō 現代の歴史総合 (Contemporary Integrated History), hereafter GRS, with 205 and 255 A4 pages, respectively. In these, about a third of a typical page was covered by main text, surrounded by materials such as graphics and source extracts, a layout that resembled junior high textbooks and allowed interrogation of sources. How do these three textbooks deal with topics that are controversial or bear strongly on national identity? And what pedagogical orientations do they display?
Colonialism in Taiwan and Korea
All three textbooks present Japanese colonialism and resistance to it relatively briefly (one to two pages) within a wider context of Great Power imperialism and subsequent post-World War One nationalist movements across Asia (eight or nine pages in total).
Of the three textbooks, RS is most dominated by a fact-heavy narrative. The textbook features few sources, such as poems, cartoons, or graphs. The main text explains that land surveys carried out by the Japanese colonial authorities in Korea resulted in many Korean farmers losing land, while the Japanese acquired land. It notes that Great Britain and the United States recognized Japanese control over Korea in return for Japanese support of British and American colonial power in Asia.Footnote 56
Yamakawa’s second textbook, GRS, features a less dense main text narrative than RS and substantially more source materials. Sources relating to Japan’s colonization of Korea include a 1903 New York Times article arguing that Russian control of Korea would threaten Japan’s independence, a 1908 cartoon depicting Itō Hirobumi (Japanese representative in Korea) as a voracious turtle preying on Koreans, and a 1908 photograph of gun-wielding Koreans opposing Japan. The main text makes no mention of Japanese land reforms in Korea, but does state that Japan had become a “full-blown imperialist state” with control of Taiwan, southern Sakhalin, Korea, and rights in Manchuria.Footnote 57 Coverage of the 1919 March First Movement includes a statement by the British Foreign Secretary at the time, contrasting the peaceful demonstrations by Koreans with their brutal handling by Japanese forces.Footnote 58
Teikoku Shoin’s MRS resembles Yamakawa’s GRS in the number and layout of sources. Unlike the Yamakawa textbooks, MRS includes a marginal text and picture box on Korea’s Queen Min, assassinated in 1895 in a plot involving Japanese military figures.Footnote 59 MRS also includes the extract from Nehru critical of Japan’s colonialization of Korea that features in Teikoku Shoin’s junior high textbook; an additional box entitled “The expectations and disappointment of Asian countries” explains how Japan expelled Vietnamese students to avoid provoking France, the colonial power in Indochina, thus “advancing imperialist policies opposed to national independence.”Footnote 60 A marginal note explains Korean farmers’ loss of land to the Japanese as a result of land surveys.
All three textbooks are thus faithful to the subject in closely integrating Japanese and world history in their accounts of colonialism and resistance. Perhaps for this reason, they contain slightly less detail on Japanese colonialism than the leading junior high History textbooks. GRS and MRS contain several sources that facilitate critical analysis by students, whereas RS is dominated by a factual narrative.
From the Wall Street Crash to 1945
All three textbooks deal with this period within a chapter of 10–14 pages, starting with the 1929 Wall Street Crash and consequent Great Depression.
All three textbooks mention the 1937 Nanjing Massacre briefly, using the term “Nanjing Incident.” In RS, it is an example of the “outrages, plunder, and killing of residents and surrendered soldiers” committed by some of the Japanese army in China; a marginal note on the same page states that:
The exact number of dead is unclear, with various views from several thousand to 200,000 or more, but the Chinese government makes it 300,000.Footnote 61
Neither GRS nor MRS includes figures. GRS states that “the Japanese army killed many civilians and prisoners of war” in Nanjing, and MRS states that “the Japanese army killed many residents and prisoners of war, and carried out outrages and plunder.”Footnote 62
Accounts of the treatment of people in lands colonized or occupied by Japan are also brief. RS devotes four lines to “imperialization policies” in Korea and Taiwan, including forced shrine worship and use of the Japanese language; making Koreans use Japanese names is also mentioned in a marginal note.Footnote 63 Two more lines discuss the impressment of Korean and Chinese workers; a marginal note states that:
On every front, “comfort facilities” for the Japanese army were established, and women from Japan, Korea, Taiwan and occupied areas were gathered as comfort women. In some cases they were coerced or brought by deception.Footnote 64
GRS contains similar content, adding mention of forced procurement of resources and mobilization of local labor in South-East Asia (with a photograph and information about the mobilization of labor for the Thai-Burma railway and the many resulting deaths). Source extracts add further information about enforced use of Japanese language and a pledge of allegiance to the Japanese Empire in Korea, as well as forcible mobilization of Koreans to work in Japan from 1939, resulting in a dramatic increase in Japan’s Korean population.Footnote 65 Teikoku Shoin’s MRS devotes almost a page (19 lines) to the topic, describing how movements resisting Japan’s oppressive military rule arose in occupied territories after the impressment of labor or massacre of local people. However, MRS does not mention comfort women.Footnote 66
Coverage of the Battle of Okinawa in MRS condenses the much more extensive coverage in Teikoku Shoin’s junior high textbook, mentioning the large number of Okinawan civilians who died in part as a result of the army’s actions, but without many details.Footnote 67 Treatment in the two Yamakawa textbooks is briefer, but more explicit about the role of the Japanese army. A marginal note in RS states that there were “group suicides of residents that were forced by the Japanese army,” while the main text of GRS states that residents made up most of the dead in Okinawa, that some were “driven to group suicide,” and that “Japanese soldiers killed some residents whom they suspected of being spies.”Footnote 68
The leading Integrated History textbooks thus treat controversial topics within the 1931-1945 period more briefly and in that sense less critically than the leading junior high History textbooks. However, Yamakawa’s textbooks both mention the comfort women (as does the same publisher’s junior high textbook), and its bestselling textbook, RS, provides figures for the Nanjing Massacre. A teacher’s supplementary research book for RS also contains a 32-line entry about “comfort facilities,” which states that while the Japanese government stated in April 2021 that the term “comfort women” (ianfu 慰安婦) should be used, scholars use the terms “military comfort women” (jūgun ianfu 従軍慰安婦) or “Japanese army comfort women” (Nihongun ianfu 日本軍慰安婦). It refers to the work of historian Yoshimi Yoshiaki for estimated numbers.Footnote 69 This provides teachers with further material.
The Ryukyus and the Ainu
All three textbooks contain critical but limited content about the Ryukyus and the Ainu in their main narrative. This includes a brief discussion of their situations in the premodern period. However, Teikoku Shoin’s MRS includes an additional critical analysis page on the treatment of the Ainu as an Indigenous people.
Both RS and GRS note the detrimental effects of a 1875 Russo-Japanese border treaty that divided the Ainu population between the two countries. Both also note that Japan’s development of Hokkaido threatened Ainu livelihoods and failed to respect Ainu traditional culture. Japan’s ending of tribute from the Ryukyus to China, incorporation of the Ryukyus into Japan as Okinawa Prefecture, and Ryukyuan resistance are noted briefly.Footnote 70
MRS notes that the distinctive culture that developed in premodern Ryukyu “has been inherited by the culture of Okinawa Prefecture today,” and observes that “handing on and advancing Ainu culture is being pushed forward in the present.”Footnote 71 Later in the textbook, the incorporation of Ainu people into the nation of Japan is discussed in more detail, within the context of similar treatment of Indigenous peoples worldwide. One text box explains that as the Ainu were “assimilated” as Japanese, their practices and language were prohibited, and “it became difficult for them to maintain their former lives and culture.”Footnote 72
A distinctive feature of MRS is a special activity page asking students to compare issues that arose in the process of incorporating the Ainu into the Japanese nation with the formation of the nation-state of the United States and the treatment of Indigenous people involved. An extract from a 1877 document shows how lands where Ainu dwelt were declared government possessions, available for sale or lease.Footnote 73
MRS thus does more to encourage comparative critical analysis and link Ryukyuan and Ainu history to the present. In comparison, the two Yamakawa textbooks are very limited in their accounts, critical though they are.
Textbook format and pedagogical orientation
Like the 2017 junior high curriculum, the 2018 high school Integrated History curriculum emphasizes “agentive and dialogic deep learning,” with separate sections for “knowledge and skills” and “thinking, judging, and expressive abilities.” This is a major shift in pedagogical orientation at the high school level. The changes are reflected in the Integrated History textbooks, albeit to varying degrees.
Each textbook is composed of pages containing main narrative text, which conventionally form the core of lessons, and pages containing extra features such as theme or topic study. In all three textbooks, the main narrative text is divided into sections (typically three to four pages long in RS and GRS, two pages in MRS). Textbooks start each section with a question to orient students. For example, RS’s section on the end of the 1920s and the Manchurian Incident begins with the question, “Why did these convulsions occur, and what influence did they exert on Japan and international society?”Footnote 74 GRS and MRS also pose initial questions at the start of each section. All textbooks carry additional questions about more detailed matters on each page: such questions are fewer in RS (one or two questions per page) than in GRS or MRS (two or more questions per page). Questions in RS and GRS tend to direct students to extract information from material on the page; in MRS, however, each two-page section ends with a more demanding “explanation” question, such as “Explain your thinking about why Japanese people couldn’t stop the militarists’ advance into Manchuria.”Footnote 75 Predecessor World History A textbooks used before 2022 included far fewer student-directed questions.
In theme and topic study pages, Teikoku Shoin’s MRS promotes analytical learning far more than the Yamakawa textbooks. The latter provides limited sources about a set range of themes and topics and instructs students to consider and question them, but they avoid controversial topics. MRS contains more detailed guidance across 14 pages about how to use historical sources for analysis, discussion, and writing. It encourages students to draw on the full range of materials presented over several chapters, while providing scaffolding with suggested themes and terminology to focus their investigations. Themes such as “equality and disparity” are presented as “perspectives” using which students can deepen their investigations. The activity page on the Ainu and Native Americans, mentioned above, is provided as an example of such an investigation. In addition, five special “Pressing into History” features present topics for deeper investigation, including “How should we assess [Neville] Chamberlain’s policy [at Munich in 1938]?” and “What kind of efforts were necessary to overcome discrimination against Black Americans?”Footnote 76 Among the most interesting of these features is “What should we problematize about the Twenty-One Demands?” examining the demands for predominant power in China made by Japan of the Chinese government in 1915.Footnote 77 These four pages present a range of sources, using which students are asked to consider what views the Twenty-One Demands reflected, how they influenced Japan’s international relationships, and what points about them posed the greatest problems. The choice of this topic is interesting in that while the Twenty-One Demands have not been a focus of textbook controversies, they are nonetheless central to thinking about Japanese relations with China and the world more generally, thus representing a way of encouraging students to think about these historical issues while avoiding controversial flashpoints.
These high school textbooks remain centered on an “enhancing collective memory” approach to history, embodied in a main narrative text. However, they also facilitate a “disciplinary” approach by providing sources for students’ analysis and questions to guide their thinking. MRS goes furthest in this direction and RS least, with GRS in an intermediate position. This represents a significant change from the World History A textbooks that preceded them as compulsory for high school, as though the latter contained many pictures and graphs to illustrate and supplement their expository narratives, they included very few questions to stimulate analysis.
Assessing content and format in Integrated History textbooks
The replacement of World History A by Integrated History as a compulsory course has meant that, for the first time in thirty years, all Japanese high school students study some modern Japanese history. Controversial topics are usually dealt with more briefly in the Integrated History textbooks than in the market-leading junior high History textbooks, partly because integrating Japanese and world history limits space. Nonetheless, the Yamakawa textbooks include details about the Nanjing Massacre and comfort women that few students will have encountered in their junior high History textbooks. Compared to the previous World History A textbooks, the new Integrated History textbooks encourage a more “disciplinary” orientation to the study of History by posing questions for students throughout their main text pages and by introducing special features on source analysis. This responds to the requirements of the 2018 curriculum revision.
Discussion and conclusion
As the above findings show, the bestselling textbooks for compulsory History courses at secondary schools in Japan contain significant albeit limited information about controversial topics related to colonization and war in the country’s modern history. As a rule, the junior high school textbooks provide lengthier treatment than the high school textbooks; however, some high school textbooks provide details about the most controversial topics, the Nanjing Massacre and the comfort women, that are absent from the junior high school textbooks.
The content of the market-leading junior high textbooks has not changed substantially since the advent of the second Abe administration in 2012. Overall, content relating to the March First Korean Independence Movement and the Nanjing Massacre has become somewhat less critical. On the other hand, coverage of the Battle of Okinawa and the Ryukyuan and Ainu ethnic minorities has expanded. This suggests a tentative trend towards embracing a more ethnically diverse Japanese national identity, while being somewhat less open to recognition of Japanese atrocities during colonialism and war. The new Integrated History high school textbooks provide additional opportunities for students to engage with material that is controversial or has resonance for national identity.
At both junior high and high school level, the pedagogical orientation most evident in textbooks is that of “enhancing collective memory,” since their central narratives are implicitly presented as “the best possible interpretation of the past.”Footnote 78 However, textbooks also provide scaffolding for a more “disciplinary” or “analytic” approach, partly by providing a variety of historical data and source material alongside the main narrative, partly by including questions to stimulate student explanation, and partly by provision of features that help students approach historical study analytically. At the junior high level, some of this scaffolding appeared in textbooks as early as 2001, with subsequent developments reflecting the emphases of successive curriculum revisions. At high school, however, it represents an innovation in response to the major curriculum revision of 2018.
What are the implications of these findings for understandings of the processes and determinants of change in History textbooks, and History teaching more broadly? First, it is notable that despite the alarm among liberals and the Left about the threat posed to History education by the second Abe administration, the content of market-leading textbooks did not move markedly in a conservative nationalist direction after 2012. This was despite the 2014 revision of the textbook approval criteria, which made it mandatory to highlight the lack of consensus on controversial numbers and to mention government positions where they exist. Nor have publishers needed to include nationalistic content in order to satisfy the requirement that textbooks develop students’ understanding of Japan’s tradition and culture in accord with the revised Fundamental Law of Education; to achieve this requirement, textbook prospectuses typically point to their (uncontroversial) coverage of artworks, architecture, and historical figures specified in the curriculum.Footnote 79 The lack of change might indicate that Abe and his leading ministers were relatively satisfied with textbooks’ existing mentions of controversial topics, which liberal critics would argue are unsatisfactorily minimal. However, it also suggests the constraints on the Japanese state’s power to enforce change to the details of textbook content, even given a powerful government with an overwhelming parliamentary majority. In a democratic polity where support for strong conservative nationalist positions has been limited if highly vocal, attempts under Abe to enforce highly partisan views could have risked alienating significant numbers of voters, and perhaps even more importantly, the Liberal Democratic Party’s coalition partners, the internationalist Kōmeitō party – an alliance generally seen at the time as electorally indispensable.Footnote 80
Indeed, evidence suggests that political influences on textbook content stem at least as much from local as from national forces. The adoption of textbooks for junior high schools is in the hands of boards of education appointed by local politicians, and it is when boards are filled with sympathetic appointees that revisionist textbooks have increased their market share. The fear that controversial content will lead to textbook non-adoption is a major influence on textbook publishers.Footnote 81 It is also local governments that have pressured high schools not to adopt textbooks to whose content those governments object.Footnote 82 Conversely, local campaigns by liberals and the Left may have been significant in deterring adoption of revisionist textbooks.Footnote 83 Local voices have thus been vital in affecting History textbook content.
Second, the steps toward a “disciplinary” or “analytic” pedagogical orientation suggest the continuing institutional power of MEXT, even under a powerful prime minister with a clear nationalist agenda. Though Abe and like-minded conservatives were able to achieve certain focused educational policy goals relating to Moral Education and the textbook approval criteria, it was MEXT that retained oversight of curriculum revision as a whole; this was likely a crucial factor in enabling MEXT to successfully realize its agenda of advancing critical thinking in the 2017-18 curriculum.Footnote 84 As framed by MEXT officials to the Special Subcommittee for Curriculum Planning (kyōiku katei kikaku tokubetsu bukai 教育課程企画特別部会) in May 2015, problems facing high school History teaching included the limited study of modern Japanese history, especially the first half of the twentieth century, and the extremely restricted use of problem-solving and investigative learning. MEXT officials presented subcommittee members with documents about the History curricula in the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Germany as comparisons, pointing out that in these countries, History education taught investigative methods and stressed development of ability to think historically.Footnote 85 The 2017–18 revisions to the History curriculum reflected these concerns, as did the History textbooks discussed above. Japanese students are now studying more modern Japanese history than for three decades, and high school History textbooks provide significantly more scaffolding for analytic, investigative learning than was previously the case. School History education thus suggests that despite the ascendancy of prime ministerial power under Abe,Footnote 86 the institutionalized power of the bureaucracy cannot be dismissed as a force to be reckoned with in Japanese government.
How can these recent developments in Japan be situated comparatively and theoretically? Like other cases, such as England and the United States, Japan can be seen as a country where the state and the market each plays a crucial role.Footnote 87 State control at the national level is fundamental, since MEXT both sets the History curriculum and approves textbooks that must conform to the curriculum. Furthermore, the selection of junior high textbooks by boards of education appointed by local politicians means that the state plays a highly significant role at the local level too. At the same time, a competitive textbook market means that publishers are sensitive to the demands of those who select and use textbooks. At high school level, this largely means teachers, while at junior high level, boards of education select textbooks, but can often be significantly influenced by the views of expert teachers.Footnote 88 Given that Japan is a liberal democracy, social pressures from campaigners and the general public can also exert significant influence on not only the state – at both national and local levels – but also textbook publishers and teachers, as has been the case in other liberal democracies such as the United States, Italy, and France.Footnote 89 The roles played by diverse actors within the state, the market, and civil society show that as in many comparable countries, power over the curriculum and its enactment in Japan is distributed rather than concentrated.
Moreover, the argument of Seixas that the state should be seen not as “a monolithic agent in the exercise of power” but “a site of struggle over conflicting interests and ideologies” is highly relevant to Japan during this century and especially since 2012, given the evidence outlined above for different and even conflicting agendas within the national state.Footnote 90 While the Abe administration sought to promote nationalistic textbook content through revision of the textbook approval criteria, MEXT aimed to develop critical thinking among students through curriculum revision, influenced not only by international trends in History education but also, more broadly, by global views about what a twenty-first century education should be.Footnote 91 Such a tension is far from unique to Japan. France, Italy, Spain, and Russia are among the countries to have seen similar debates about what kind of History education is desirable.Footnote 92
Finally, what are the implications of these textbook developments for the actuality of teaching and learning in Japan’s schools? As previous research demonstrates, changes in curricula and textbooks are not always reflected in classroom practice.Footnote 93 It has been repeatedly shown that practical constraints can deter History teachers from changing the way they teach, even supposing they wish to change.Footnote 94 Among such constraints are the demands of testing regimes, which in Japan continue to be dominated by assessment of factual knowledge, regardless of current curricular aims.Footnote 95 There is also evidence that teachers in Japan are deterred from in-depth teaching of controversial topics by social pressures, especially the fear of criticism by parents, politicians, or activists.Footnote 96 Changes to teaching and learning practices are therefore likely to be gradual, unless accelerated by substantial alterations in teachers’ practical and sociopolitical contexts. Nonetheless, developments in Japan’s school History textbooks this century have facilitated such changes. How textbooks are actually used in schools, and how students respond to them, are important topics for future research.
Scholarly discussions of History textbooks have often argued that the purposes of History education cannot be divorced from the preparation of students for citizenship. In a democratic polity such as Japan, it is highly desirable that History education enable students to learn valid methods of reasoning and judgment about the past. From this perspective, recent moves towards facilitating “disciplinary” or “analytic” pedagogical orientations are welcome, even if it can be argued that they do not go far enough. A sense of identification with the national community is also likely to retain a significant role in History education, though for this author, only identification that is critical can prepare students adequately for citizenship in a liberal democracy. As in other liberal democracies, how History textbooks in Japan develop will continue to be the subject of contention and struggle.
Competing interests
The author declares none.
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