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Tense diplomatic relations recently marked the relationship between China and Japan, regarding the revision by Japan of the contents of social science educational textbooks for Japanese high schools. In the textbooks, the 1937 massacre of the civilian population in Nanking by the occupying Chinese army is described as “an incident”. According to a report in Le Monde (1) the word “invasion” is never mentioned when dealing with the “Great Asian War” which Japan conducted from the 1930’s.
This recent exercise in dissimulation is not an isolated case mounted on the head of a pin by a few newspapers looking for circulation. On the contrary, it illustrates the recurrent hostage taking of the truth at the service of nationalistic socialization through indoctrination. The idea, dear to Kant, of a universal history from a ”cosmopolitical” point of view continues, to paraphrase the philosopher, to knock against the influence of particular ends conforming to the personal desires of their authors, and often to the prejudice of others.
In this perspective, the teaching of history obedient to political and social requirements: “Societies principally expect the knowledge of the past to instruct them about their own history, to strengthen the feeling of their originality, when they don’t ask the historian to create it from whole cloth, while maintaining the founding myths. (2)
But “every individual has the right to know his past as well as the right to disavow it”, affirms the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe (3) while adding that citizens have the right to learn a history that is not manipulated and that the State should therefore assure this right and encourage an appropriate scientific approach, without religious or political deformation, of all that is taught. Can’t one attribute the successive failures of peace, at least in part, to ethnocentrism raised to its paroxysm? The fact that educational textbooks still contain presentations biased against crimes against humanity, writes Fernando Reimers, reminds us eloquently how much remains for us to do to allow UNESCO to complete in all its dimensions the mission enunciated in the first lines of its constitutive Act: “Wars having birth in the spirit of man, it is in the spirit of man that the defense of peace must be raised.” (4)
NOTES
(1) Le Monde. « Des manuels scolaires japonais scandalisent la région ». 6 avril 2005.
http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3210,36-635878@51-633376,0.html
(2) International Bureau of Education (1999). “Learning to live together thanks to the teaching of history and geography. Final report of the Colloquium. http://www.ibe.unesco.org/International/Publications/
FreePublications/andre.htm
(3) Recommandation 1283 of 1996 relative à l’histoire et à l’apprentissage de l’histoire en Europe. http://eurochild.gla.ac.uk/francais/CoE/
Recommandations/CoE_Rec1283(FR).htm
(4) “War, education and peace “, Perspectives, XXXIII. BIE, March 2003. http://www.ibe.unesco.org/International/Publications/Prospects/
ProspectsTablesOfContent/pr125tcf.htm
Image : « La version commerciale diffusée à 700.000 exemplaires du manuel négationniste. On peut lire, en bas: "Nous voulons être jugés par la Nation" ». from the Website amnistia.net
http://www.amnistia.net/news/articles/negdoss/japnega/japmanu.htm
