I'm afraid the Ehime man & his provincial comrades were not as successful as liberals & leftists in other prefectures:
***** New York Times 16 August 2001
Most Japanese School Districts Reject Disputed History Textbook
By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
TOKYO, Aug. 15 -- Local Japanese school districts have overwhelmingly rejected a history textbook accused of glossing over the nation's wartime atrocities, two surveys of the districts showed today.
"Our survey shows 98 percent of education boards in the 542 public school districts are not going to adopt the textbook," said Ayako Okino, a member of the Children and Textbooks Japan Network 21, a civic group.
Separately, the Japanese Broadcasting Corporation reported that its own nationwide poll showed that 532 of the 542 public school districts said they would not use the textbook, with the remaining 10 districts refusing to disclose their decision.
Local education boards had to decide by today which books to use starting next April. No official tally was available today.
"It might be too much to say we declare victory but this is a result stemming from campaigning by civic movements," Ms. Okino said, adding that her group had organized 1,000 lecture meetings to lobby against the book.
"We must not use such a book for teaching children who carry the future on their shoulders," she said.
The textbook was written by the avowedly nationalist Society for History Textbook Reform, which is made up of historians who assert Japan has become overly self-critical in assessing its past.
In April, the central government authorized the book for use in junior high schools and has rejected calls from Asian neighbors, notably China and South Korea, to revise what those countries see as distortions of history.
The textbook plays down events such as the 1937 Nanjing massacre in China and the use of hundreds of thousands of Asian women as sex slaves by Japanese troops.
It also steers clear of the word "invasion" in reference to Japan's military occupation of other Asian countries in the first half of the 20th century.
Instead, it asserts that the "advance southwards of the Japanese Imperial Army also gave the impetus to Asian countries to achieve independence earlier" from their European colonial masters.
Three public schools for 70 mentally handicapped and chronically ill students in Tokyo, as well as four public schools for five mentally ill and blind pupils in the southwestern prefecture of Ehime are, however, planning to use the book, along with several private schools.
Opponents of the textbook have criticized the decisions in Tokyo and Ehime as politically influenced.
Tokyo's governor, the nationalist author Shintaro Ishihara, has publicly stated his support for the textbook, as has Ehime's governor, Moriyuki Kato.
Yukio Wani, a former schoolteacher campaigning against the textbook, said while he appreciated that an overwhelming majority of schools were rejecting the book, it was "still very regrettable that the book has been adopted for handicapped children, even if their number is small."
Tokyo and Ehime "forced the book upon handicapped children, who are already prone to social discrimination," he said.
"We should not use a book that is denounced by people in the rest of Asia and could lead us down a mistaken path again," he said.
He also noted the book was criticized by women's groups for "sexist" descriptions. *****
Yoshie