Since the violent anti-Japan demonstrations in China last month, Japanese legislators in Tokyo have been ringing up their embassy in Beijing to ask why Chinese people dislike their country so much.So the embassy has collected 10 Chinese school textbooks, to be faxed to the lawmakers, who believe state-mandated texts may offer hints about Chinese views on Japan.
The anti-Japanese demonstrations in China themselves were sparked off by Japanese history textbooks, which, the Chinese think, whitewash Japan’s 1931-45 occupation of China. Now the Japanese embassy is not happy with what it has seen in Chinese books. Chinese high school students learn that “a crisis in the world capitalist economy” sparked the invasion of northeast China in 1931. Japan used the northern China economy and local workforce as “service for the invading Japanese.”