How is WW2 taught in Japan?

18 comments

1. Were you expecting WW2 to be taught in Japan from an American or European perspective?

2. I saw this post on the other forum and it literally got some responses from Japanese people who went through public education in Japan who said they did learn about all of it. They said something about it being taught unbiased, just cold hard facts. Judging from your comment, though, sounds like you want a more inflammatory response? But this forum is mostly for foreigners teaching in Japan. We mostly stick to English, but there are some math or science teachers. Why would we know rather than people who actually attended history class?

3. Hello, I’m not an expert by a long way here so take this all with a massive ocean of salt. I work as an ALT like a lot of people here but the history teacher did let me glance through the junior high textbook once. I’ve also had a conversation about this with my Japanese teacher (as in the person who teaches me Japanese outside of school). Their parents were teachers.

   It is taught and obviously the focus is the Pacific theatre. The textbooks we have start with the “Asian Cooperation Sphere” that Japan was tried to establish. It doesn’t go into much details but our textbook does mention Nanking very briefly (though, being junior high, it might be a little early for them to get into the weeds on that one). There is also a small part about Stalin, Churchill and FDR with a nice picture of them at the conference of Yalta too. The biggest focus is about the atomic bombs and the aftermath of them. Then it goes off into the post war economic miracle. There is a bit more to it that’s what I remember.

   It’s worth noting that, like most textbooks, they are bought from companies by the city so you’re going to get varied results depending on which textbook you get. Also, there is a lot of other history to cover. Obviously a lot of Japanese history but also some world history, specifically the industrial revolution.

   So hope that’s something for you and a second reminder that I am a guy who read the books and talked to a teacher. Hope that somewhat helped though.

   As for your remarks on shame. It’s more about face I feel. The leading party for most of the post war period has been a right wing one that isn’t keen on admitting to mistakes of the past. There’s also a lot of nepotism, some politicians like Abe were related to class a war criminals.

   However in the broader public, people are aware. I did hear that NHK broadcast a documentary about 731 squad. My local newspaper also did a piece about the local POW camp and most people were shocked to know of it’s existence. Books about all the subjects you’d suspect are available from the library. Also, at least from personal experience, anti-Semitism is taken seriously at schools. One of my students made a tik-tok pretending to be Hitler and the hammer can down hard on them for that. That being said, general knowledge of the conflict is a lot lower in my experience than other countries (but it’s not exactly like I’m bringing it up every conversation with my Japanese friends and co-workers).

   Anyway, those are my rambling observations, hope that helps you.

4. I had a JHS student do a presentation that mentioned unit 731 so my school at least was teaching it. And JHS is pretty young for that kind of heavy topic.

5. My wife and her friends dont really know anything about ww2, apart from how it ends. Its going to depend a lot on age, location, etc. I guess. As for something as sick as unit 731, its definitely something that all young people should learn about imo, not just japanese. Tbh, i didnt know that much about it until i was well into my late 20s.

6. All my Japanese friends who I’ve talked to about it (a bunch of us happened to meet up in Hiroshima once, where the subject came up) have a pretty balanced viewpoint about it.

   The consensus was that horrible things were done in the past, including by Japan and its people, and we should learn from it instead of erasing it.

   Sorry if you were looking for a more controversial take on it…

7. It’s hard to generalize because different schools use different textbooks and different textbooks take different editorial approaches and different teachers approach their different textbooks in different ways. We hear in the news about every textbook that hides Imperial Japanese wrongdoing in the war, and rightly so. Just recently IIRC there was a MEXT-approved textbook that implied that mass civilian casualties in the Battle of Okinawa were caused by US soldiers’ victory and totally ignored the fact that Japanese military leaders urged Okinawans to commit suicide by misrepresenting how US soldiers treated civilians in conquered territory.

   But no news stories ever come out about textbooks that teach the war honestly, or teachers who approach the war honestly. Combine that with the common habit of internet commentators to treat Japan like a monolith where no one ever is different from any other Japanese person in any way, and you’re just not likely to get good information by asking the public. The only way to really get a good answer here is to systematically research school social studies departments across Japan.

   Something that does alarm me a bit – Japanese history courses tend to heavily emphasize the memorization of facts and put way less emphasis on interpretation or evaluating sources critically. So at schools I’ve been at, when the topic of war in general comes up in my English classes, students tend to have an attitude that war is bad and injustices happen in war born out of each side’s drive to win the war – a sentiment I don’t bring up but I am happy to see. But when war comes up in the context of WWII (often entirely initiated by students after studying it in history class), if students interpret the war in any way, the interpretation tends to be that war is bad because if you start a war you might lose it – which is shockingly myopic and self-centered. I definitely am not saying that this attitude is common across Japan. I haven’t been at every school. But I have seen it multiple times and I also see the approach to teaching/testing history and right wing institutions like the Yamato Museum and Yasukuni’s Yushukan ~~Museum~~ *Militaristic Revisionism Theme Park* pushing people toward that interpretation.

8. I was made to attend a school assembly during which they showed the whole school Grave of the Fireflies. During the last 5 minutes, they let me go early. Glad they noticed…

9. I think they skim over the bad parts talk about the crane girl, and Anne Frank

10. This is anecdotal from talking with Japanese friends, but still:

    Wordly open-minded folk tend not to get their information from school, as the curriculum teaches things factually and at a surface level. My understanding is that the lens is more “This happened.” and less “We did this. / We let this happen.”

    People generally don’t know the extent of the absolute horror their forebears and the Empire inflicted on the Pacific Theatre. Beyond WW2, they also don’t know much about Japan’s colonial past both domestically and abroad.

    Outside-looking-in, Japanese people and Japanese school teachers more specifically, tend to avoid asking the hard questions and engaging in uncomfortable self-reflection. You rarely hear anyone saying anything bad about Japan. Blame can always be shifted and there’s always some “whataboutism” you can pull out of your arse when issues like comfort women are pointed out.

    –

    If you get the chance, sit in on a history class and see for yourself. I intend to do the same.

11. I think you’ve got a pretty good amount of responses here and from the other thread. The only thing I’ll add is: people on the internet are fucking *weird* when it comes to Japan’s military history. Any reddit post or Twitter thread is about 5 minutes away from mentioning “yeah and Unit 731 amirite” as if Unit 731 was one of the main offenses forces in every battle in the Pacific as opposed to the reality of Unit 731 being a biological warfare unit which mainly operated in China. That’s it. One group of sick fucks in China when the scope of the Pacific war encompassed millions of Japanese soldiers. I think that fixation on the really gruesome parts of Japan’s military history by people on the internet says more about them, the internet commenter, than it does about the history education that Japanese students receive in school.

12. My take will probably be unpopular but I feel it is fine how they learn about it. They learn what happened as an overview of the event but I think that Americans/Europeans wants them to learn how bad they were and to feel remorse instead. While people claim they should go in depth about atrocities they committed for “critical thinking” , it feels like they just want them to “pay” for what they did.

    The fact is that the Japanese society of today is completely different since they went from a militaristic Empire to an democratic peaceful society. This generation and the one before feel detached and can’t really identify with how it was due to the huge differences.

    But they do learn about it and most of time accurately. Some curriculums are a bit biased however, so it can depends from a place to another. I never met someone that denied what happened during WW2 but most prefer talking about other things that are more relevant to how they know Japan (post imperial rule).

13. Ahaha, you should see our history books in France. No word about our colonization and war crimes.

    [I think the NHK made a big documentary about Unit 731.](https://news.cgtn.com/news/796b544d7a677a6333566d54/index.html)

    Unthinkable in France.

14. I worked in Japanese schools, and how they learn about WW2 in Japan reminded me of how growing up in the deeply conservative South we learned about the Civil War and slavery….in other words, not great and contains a lot of brushing over of atrocities, conservative talking points, and half truths.

    Please note, that it will vary based on school though, just like it does everywhere.

15. I would also keep in mind that Australia doesn’t teach school kids well about the colonial genocide and war of invasion.

    English speaking children are not taught well about the wholesale firebombing of most every Japanese city except Kyoto (over one hundred thousand people burnt to death in Tokyo in one night).
    That the same kind of slaughter happened to people in Germany with whole cities set on fire while people slept.
    That UN forces razed Korea to the ground twice in 3 years.
    That more than three times the bomb load of the entire WW2 was dropped on Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia (And Laos and Cambodia were not even at war).
    In all these cases civilians were the primary casualties and these acts are likely war crimes by definition – but will never be prosecuted because they were committed by the most powerful nations.

    Our societies are reticent to teach the truth when the truth is not flattering, no matter which society that is.

16. Bold of you to assume they teach it at all. [/jokingbutnotreally]

17. The textbooks I’ve seen my students use are accurate for what they *do* teach, but rather lacking in detail and sometimes troubling in what they choose to omit.

    The whole thing in the South Pacific goes something like “Japan took advantage of the war in Europe to take many islands that had been the colonies of European powers. Locals often welcomed them as liberators at first, but the Japanese military was really after their resources and didn’t treat them very well, leading many to resent them. They were later pushed out by the advancing Americans or forced to retreat as they could no longer support their presence in such far-flung garrisons.”

    Now, none of that is *wrong*, but it skips over a whole lot of brutality on the part of the IJA.

18. From what I could see and what my Japanese friends are telling me, overall it looks like this:

    1. There was a big war in the Pacific and Asia (why, who, how, noboby clearly knows)
    2. Americans dropped 2 nukes.
    3. War ended.
    4. Japan is a victim in WW2 and today everyone is our friend! (except China and N/S Korea but they are soooo mean)

    No hard questions are asked, no one is responsible for anything, things just “happened”.

    Compared with Germany and the Denazification, Japan didn’t do much about its imperial past. And it really shows today.