Controversial Textbooks Only 1 Percent of High School History Books

Friday, August 19, 2005 Posted: 09:01 AM JST

History and civics tomes put out by the rightist Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform are expected to account for only 1 percent of all texts used in junior high schools nationwide from next spring, reports Asahi Shimbun today. The group had targeted a figure of 10 percent.

The Asahi Shimbun contacted municipal education boards and private junior high schools to find out what books would be used in the new academic year.

The newspaper estimated the ratio of Fusosha textbooks to other works on the same subjects on the basis of student enrollment figures given by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology.

The Asahi Shimbun calculated that 1.2 million books will be used by junior high schools nationwide for each of the two subjects, history and civics. Municipal and other local boards of educations that have either decided which books they are using or are yet finalize their decisions accounted for 800,000 copies, or about 70 percent of the 1.2 million.

Education boards or councils that have publicly disclosed what texts they will adopt represent about 40 percent in terms of the number of copies to be used.

Based on that figure, Fusosha textbooks for history account for about 0.9 percent, and for civics, about 0.6 percent.

Public schools in Otawara, Tochigi Prefecture, and those for students with disabilities in Tokyo have already decided to use both history and civics textbooks published by Fusosha. Tokyo's Suginami Ward will only use Fusosha's history textbook.

According to the education ministry, Fusosha textbooks used at junior high schools accounted for 0.108 percent of books for history and 0.074 percent for civics in fiscal 2005.

Keywords: national_news

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