History Education and International Relations: A Case Study of Diplomatic Disputes over Japanese Textbooks (review)

In this book, based largely on the author's dissertation at the London School of Economics and Political Science, Mutsumi Hirano sets out to construct a conceptual framework by examining both the national and international implications of history education (pp. vii, 12). She defines the term "history education" strictly as "the teaching of history in primary and secondary schools" (p. 3). Hirano attempts to analyze the content of teaching, namely, what is taught in schools or at least what the state guidelines require students to learn (pp. 3-4). Thus, the term "education," according to her defini-tion, excludes individual learning outside schools, whether from literature, comic books, television programs, or personal stories.

According to Hirano's framework of analysis, history education within a state develops through three phases: "the initial stage of government influence," "the activities under government influence," and "the formation of public dispositions" (p. 4). After elaborating this model, Hirano examines the interaction between forces in both the domestic and external environments, which she calls the "Wider Context." Her three-phase framework is designed to be applicable to all nation-states of different political systems from authoritarian to democratic regimes. In order to investigate what theoretical links, if any, might exist between history education and international relations, Hirano chose Japan's textbook disputes in the 1980s as her case study.

Her analysis of the interplay between history education and international affairs is explored in the following chapters. Chapter 2 examines the potential power relationship between the government and the public in the educational environment. Hirano's methodology assumes that the government is the most essential factor that influences history education, an influence it exercises through intermediaries such as historians and history writing (both academic and popular), as well as schools and teachers.

Hirano's focus in chapter 3 is on the consequences of history education. In particular, she discusses two potential outcomes of history education. The first of these is the formation of views about both one's home state and foreign states—national identity, national pride, national consciousness—and of stereotypes about foreign states and peoples (pp. 56-59). The other is what students learn from the past. Hirano argues that two obstacles that could prevent students from learning lessons from the past are the limited scope and depth of the conception of the past and the potential pitfalls at each stage of recognizing, analyzing, and interpreting particular events (pp. 64-67). In this chapter, Hirano discusses the interplay between the domestic and external environments in order to underscore interactions across state boundaries.

While chapters 2 and 3 detail components of the theoretical framework for analyzing the connections between history education and international affairs, the following three chapters focus on Japan, its educational system, and the disputes over Japanese history textbooks in 1982 and 1986. Chapter 4 consists of three sections: an outline of history education in Japan from the Meiji period to the 1970s, a discussion of the national history curriculum guidelines in the 1980s, and a short summary of the textbook screening system and the selection of textbooks in the 1980s. Hirano concludes that "history education in Japan has indicated a recurrent, if not consistent, pattern of nationalistic and self-serving inclination" (p. 110).

In chapter 5, Hirano examines the disputes over Japanese history textbooks in 1982 and 1986. She argues that there are four ways in which these disputes are significant for understanding the relationship between history education and international affairs. First, the disputes revealed how the Japanese government intervened indirectly in decisions regarding the content of teaching. Second, they highlighted the consequences of history education in Japan, as foreign criticisms and pressures led the government and the people to respond. Third, they exposed the concerns of foreign governments regarding the implications of history education in Japan, particularly its influences on young Japanese. Fourth, they fostered bilateral research on the history of...