The sudden appearance of the Nanjing Incident in Japanese textbooks in 1949 cannot be explained without the influence of a major media narrative.
This essay traces how a serialized work in a leading newspaper reshaped postwar historical education.

May 10, 2016

The following is a continuation of the previous chapter.
All emphasis in the text is mine.

“After that, similar descriptions began to appear in textbooks from other publishers, and eventually extended to high school Japanese history textbooks as well.”

Tokinoya Shigeru, who served as a textbook examiner at the Ministry of Education (now the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology), recalled this in his own book.

The year 1949 came three years after the Asahi Shimbun series Travels in China by former Asahi reporter Katsuichi Honda, and two years after its publication as a bestselling book.

Kanji Katsuoka of the Postwar Education History Research Center at Meisei University, who examined descriptions of the Nanjing Incident in history textbooks, explains:

“Considering that it usually takes one to two years from writing to textbook authorization, it is inconceivable that the sudden appearance of the Nanjing Incident in textbooks in 1949 occurred without the influence of the Asahi Shimbun’s Travels in China.”

The influence of Travels in China appeared even more clearly in teacher’s manuals that accompanied textbooks.

For example, the teacher’s guide for Jikkyo Publishing’s high school Japanese history textbook (for textbooks approved in 1986) strongly recommended Honda’s works, stating:
“Regarding the Japanese army’s atrocities in China, Katsuichi Honda’s Travels in China and The Japanese Army in China are essential reading.
The photographs in the latter are particularly useful as teaching materials.”

The Japanese Army in China is a companion volume to Travels in China and contains numerous photographs presented as evidence of atrocities by the former Japanese army.

The images include corpses of women with exposed internal organs and charred remains—photographs so gruesome that one instinctively turns away—yet even there, the strong influence of Chinese propaganda (political messaging) is unmistakable.

(Honorifics omitted)

To be continued.