SDHF Newsletter No.415 School history text books Wrong descriptions
School history textbook that do not write facts about the Second Sino-Japanese War
By Moteki Hiromichi, Deputy Chairman, Japan Society for History Textbook Reform
October 18, 2024
How the Second Sino-Japanese War is illustrated in the history textbooks, which will be used from April 2015 concerning two important points?
The first point is the Marco Bridge incident, which triggered the Second Sino-Japanese war. The textbook published by Rokyo Shoseki, Teikoku Syoin, Kyouiku Syuppan, Yamakawa Syuppan and Nihon Bunkyo Shuppan write with nearly same that Japanese and Chinese armies clashed without mentioning which side attacked first and then the incident grew into a bigger conflict.
Ikuhosha and Reiwa Shoseki, unlike above six publishers, writes the Japanese military “was shot someone unknown,” but does not at all “from which side.”
In fact, there is extremely powerful evidence regarding “which side opened fire.” It is a “cease fire agreement,” exchanged by Japanese army(5600) and China’s 29th army(10,000) on July 11. The agreement No.1 states; The representative of 29th Army express regret to the Japanese military, punishes the one in charge and declares with responsibility that the incident like this shall never occur again in future.
In spite of the fact that such powerful evidence exists, publisherd do not refere to this agreement at all but write ambiguously that “The Chinese Army and Japanese Army clashed,” as if pot of the blue. I gist, they neglect the most important “cease-fire agreement” only because they wanted to assert that “the perpetrator was the Japanese Army” intending to escalate the conflict into a total war.
In fact, the description of Jiyu-sha used mention the cease-fire agreement but did not put the original text of this agreement. They were afraid if they had pu it, the textbook would surely fail accreditation of the China conscious Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. In the revised textbook this time, they put this agreement in the column of the textbook with firm belief that it is perfectly adequate to put the solid fact. Fortunately, the textbook passed the accreditation and historical fact revealing the truth about the Marco Bridge incident is duly presented in a junior high school text book.
Next, what is wrong is that “each of the publishers write about the reason why the war expanded as if the war escalated in a natural course or there were expansionists in the Japanese Government and urged by the military and civilian supporters of the expansion policy, war was expanded into a total war.
Here, the very important fact is decisively overlooked. It is the fact that mass murder was committed by the Chinese Army on July 29 (Tongzhou munity), as Frederic Vincent Willians put, “to be recorded in history as the worst mass slaughter ever committed since the ancient time to this day.” As calls “to punish China the outrageous” rose across Japan, the Japanese government made an epoch-making peace plan (Funatsu Peace Plan) on August 5. The government subdued the voices that demanded “Punish China the Outrageous” and maintained the non-expansion policy.
Based on this peace plan, the first negotiation was held on August 9. However, on the evening on that day, First Lieutenant Oyama of Navl Land Forces and Private First Class Saito were brutally killed in Shanghai. This atrocity was committed by a power willing to prevent the peace-making efforts. According to the book Mao: the Unknown Story written by Ms. Jung Chang, the muder incident was ordered by Commander Zhang Zhi^Zhong of Nanking and Shanghai defense Army, a crypto-Communist Party member. Four days later, the 30,000-strong Regulat Chinese Army hiding in the demilitarized zone in Shanghai started a total attack on the 4,500-strong Japanese Navy Land force stationed in Shanghai to protect 30,000 Japanese civilians. This was the decisive expansion of war plotted by the Chinese side.
URL: https://www.sdh-fact.com/essay-article/2249/
PDF: https://www.sdh-fact.com/CL/SchoolE.pdf
MOTEKI Hiromichi, Chairman
Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact