TOKYO, July 19 (Xinhua) — The Japanese authorities’s 2025 Defense White Paper, which was launched not too long ago, as soon as once more exaggerates the “security threats surrounding Japan.” Meanwhile, for the primary time, the protection ministry this 12 months distributed a youngsters’s model of the annual report back to elementary colleges nationwide, fueling widespread concern.
According to NBC Nagasaki Broadcasting, a personal broadcaster in Nagasaki Prefecture, the Japanese Ministry of Defense has distributed some 6,100 copies of the kids’s model to 2,400 elementary colleges nationwide.
According to the protection ministry web site, the kids’s model of the protection white paper consists of 4 sections. In the primary part “Why the Self-Defense Forces are necessary,” the publication emphasizes that “deterrence” is of important significance for stopping wars.
The second part, “What is happening in Japan’s surrounding areas,” portrays some neighboring nations as “military threats,” claiming that “the region where Japan is located is not safe.”
The third part, “What should Japan do,” additional explains why Japan wants to extend its protection spending and improve its protection capabilities, mentioning that the so-called “counterattack capability” is the important thing to strengthening its protection, whereas the fourth part introduces the catastrophe aid features of the Self-Defense Forces.
An on-line model of the kids version, primarily based on the Defense White Paper revealed yearly, has been launched on the Internet by the protection ministry since 2021, however this 12 months marked the primary time that it has been made within the type of a ebook and despatched to elementary colleges.
The transfer has raised issues amongst folks from all walks of life in Japan as it’s believed that elementary faculty college students haven’t but absolutely developed their impartial pondering abilities, and colleges needs to be locations that foster values resembling respect, peace, kindness and variety, relatively than locations to create crises and incite hostility.
Ukeru Magosaki, a former Japanese international ministry official, informed Xinhua that “school education has a significant influence on the formation of students’ ideas. If this trend (of ‘threat theory’ entering schools) continues, it will foster belligerence and hostility toward foreign countries among the younger generation,” noting it’s a regrettable phenomenon.
Japanese historian Atsushi Kouketsu believes that instilling in youngsters the notion {that a} neighboring nation is a “threat” will trigger them to develop prejudice in opposition to that nation, thereby weakening their curiosity and curiosity in studying about that nation.
“What is important is to foster an awareness of understanding and respect and deepen a sense of friendship and goodwill through exchanges and learning of historical and cultural knowledge,” mentioned Kouketsu in an interview with Xinhua.
“The children’s version of the Defense White Paper is the most inappropriate textbook.” Koketsu emphasised that to domesticate historic consciousness, one should first study the proper historic info.
This 12 months marks the eightieth anniversary of the victory of the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War, which is a chance for Japan to deeply mirror on its historic tasks, students mentioned. However, in recent times, Japan has been continuously making strikes within the compilation of textbooks.
The right-wing forces have ceaselessly advocated denying the Nanjing Massacre, selectively ignoring the germ warfare, downplaying the historical past of aggression and glorifying the battle of aggression. A collection of strikes have allowed historic revisionism to distort the historic views of Japanese college students.
The introduction of the kids’s model of the protection white paper into elementary colleges makes folks much more anxious that the Japanese authorities is additional pushing for a “rightward shift” within the schooling sector and even all the nation.
Japanese fashionable and up to date historical past scholar Ryuji Ishida informed Xinhua that on account of historic causes, the Japanese Self-Defense Forces have their uniqueness, and if the accountability for the battle of aggression is disregarded, it will likely be inconceivable to precisely perceive the Self-Defense Forces.
However, the Japanese authorities has been trying to take away these historic constraints, and this development has unfold to the sphere of schooling, Ishida mentioned, “This children’s version of the ‘Defense White Paper’ downplays the historical background and only allows children to understand the ‘positive’ side of the Self-Defense Forces, which is an act that undermines postwar (peace) efforts.”
According to native media studies, civil teams together with the Nagasaki Prefecture chapter of the New Japan Women’s Association on Tuesday submitted a request to the Nagasaki Prefecture Board of Education, hoping that the protection ministry’s distribution of the kids’s model of the “Defense White Paper” to elementary colleges can be withdrawn.
They argued that the Japanese authorities, disregarding the truth that youngsters are within the means of rising up, is forcibly instilling its personal viewpoints into them, which is an unacceptable conduct.