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Human Chain Formed in Tokyo to Protest Controversial History Textbook
Some 300 people from Japan and several of its Asian neighbors such as China and South Korea formed a human chain around the Japanese Education Ministry in Tokyo on Monday to protest its approval of a controversial Japanese history textbook in April.
The protesters, including women drafted as sex slaves by the Japanese military before and during World War II, carried banners reading, "Don't glorify war!" and shouted out, "Stop distorted interpretation of history."
The demonstration was part of a two-day meeting in Tokyo organized by Japanese civic groups to dissuade local education boards from adopting the textbook for use in junior high schools from April next year.
The textbook, authored by a group of Japanese nationalist historians, glosses over Japan's military aggression before and during World War II.
In April, the Japanese government approved the textbook for classroom use from April next year after a number of revisions were made to it. Local education boards across Japan are to decide by August 15 whether to choose it from among several government- authorized books for use in local public schools.
Later in the day, the demonstrators were joined by 1,200 others at the Asian Solidarity Conference on Textbook Issues in Japan.
About 30 representatives from five Asian countries and Taiwan attended the two-day meeting, subtitled "No! to the Distorted History Textbook."
The participants adopted a statement before the end of the conference, demanding the Japanese government agree to demands for revisions to the textbook made by China and South Korea.
They also pledged in the statement to continue protests against the textbook as well as to deepen cooperation among Asian citizens in the study of history, historical education and joint creation of history textbooks.
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