By Jeff Kingston, director of Asian Studies, Temple University Japan “Global understanding does not come cheaply. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government has budgeted ¥70 billion — yes, that’s more than $500 million — to help get the word out about…
19 U.S.-based Historians, members of the American Historical Association, issued a collective statement entitled “Standing with Historians of Japan,” strongly condemning PM Abe’s recent efforts to revise depictions of ‘comfort women’ in a history textbook published by McGraw-Hill (“Tradition & Encounters:…
Analysis of current “recrudescence of self-righteous nationalism under PM Abe Shinzo,” by Jeff Kingston (Director of Asian Studies at Temple University Japan) and other scholars.
Article from the New York Times, October 12, 2014: By Michael Fitzpatrick TOKYO — Japan’s simultaneous embrace of nationalism and cosmopolitanism is generating ambiguous signals from its education policy makers. They are rewriting textbooks along what they call “patriotic” lines, alienating…