The Japan-China Friendship Association on Thursday protested against a decision of the local education authority in east Japan city Otawara to adopt a subreptitious history textbook that whitewashes Japan's aggression war against its Asian neighbors.

The association urged the education board of Otawara, Tochigi Prefecture, to retract the decision made Wednesday which plans to use the notorious textbook at a total of 12 municipal junior high schools, with a combined 2,300 students, for four years from the next school year starting April 1, 2006.

Otawara became the first municipal government in Japan to adopt history and civics studies textbooks compiled by the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform and published by Fusosha Publishing Inc.

The textbook denies Japan's militarism past and Japanese army's atrocities on Asian people, the association noted in a protest statement, saying the textbook distorts history and whitewashes Japan's aggression war as "a war of liberating Asia."

"It hurts deadly hearts of people in China, South Korea and other Asian countries which suffered from Japan's aggression atrocities. It also isolates Japan from the international community," the association said. "Adoption of the textbook is intolerable."

The textbook is also strongly criticized on its description that Takeshima and Senkaku Islands (China's Diaoyu Islands) are Japan's traditional territories. The textbook says South Korea illegally occupies Takeshima, which is called Tok-to in South Korea.

With militaristic content, the history textbook is also controversial in Japan and has been adopted only by a small number of public junior high schools run by the Tokyo metropolitan and Ehime prefectural governments and some private schools.

In the first edition, approved in 2001, the textbook's actual adoption rate was merely at a mere 0.04 percent.

Source: Xinhua