Ahead of the 70th anniversary of Japan’s world war two surrender on August 15, the Financial Times analysed history textbooks and visited national memorials in China, Japan and South Korea. The FT also invited prominent academics to review the textbook translations and share their assessments. Perhaps surprisingly considering the region’s bitter disputes over history, particularly with regard to Japan’s wartime record, the textbooks were not as factually distorted as many had expected.
“There are plenty of things that are emotionally larded and in some cases presented with a certain level of spin,” says Rana Mitter, University of Oxford Sinologist. “But overall they were less outside the bounds of what historians would consider reasonable than I had expected.” Japanese textbooks, for example, acknowledged the Rape of Nanking and the Imperial Army’s use of sex slaves, or “comfort women”. Meanwhile, information about the cultural revolution contained in Chinese texts far exceeds that tolerated in public discourse and exhibitions.
April 17 1895 The Treaty of Shimonoseki ended the First Sino-Japanese war of 1894-95, during which Meiji Japan routed China’s Qing dynasty. The treaty forced the Qing to cede Taiwan to Japan, which would govern the island until the end of the second world war, and pay an indemnity of 200m taels of silver — equivalent to about $3.7bn today — and 2.5 times the Qing’s annual revenues.