How It Will Play in Tokyo.(what Japan teaches students about its role in World War II)(Brief Article)

From the very start, the makers of "Pearl Harbor" were worried about offending Japanese viewers. A line in the script describing-- accurately--how the Japanese executed a couple of downed American pilots as war criminals was cut. And the "Pearl Harbor" that opens in Tokyo on July 14 will be a little different from the one that the rest of the world sees: the term "dirty Japs," heard in American theaters, has been shortened to just "Japs," and two other epithets have been softened. Indeed, in Japan the film is being marketed as a love story, not a war movie--no accident, considering the country accounted for 20 percent of "Titanic's" total profits. "That's what everybody feels will sell the picture," says producer Jerry Bruckheimer.

Hollywood's angst over depicting the attack on Pearl Harbor for the Japanese is nothing compared with Tokyo's. For decades the country has agonized over how--and how much--to teach students about Japan's role in World War II. On one side of the debate are Japanese educators--and some veterans--who believe children should learn the truth about all of Japan's wartime deeds, including the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, the use of Korean "comfort women" and the Nanjing massacre. On the other side are the government and right-wing groups, which believe Japan, like other nations, has the right to teach a nationalist version of history. "Each nation has its own perception of history," says the 1996 declaration of the right-wing Society for History Textbook Reforms.

The message that filters down to classrooms is still ambivalent. Currently there are seven government-approved history texts used in Japanese classrooms, all of which describe Pearl Harbor as a surprise attack and detail Japanese aggression in Asia during the war (though some fail to mention the Korean women forced to provide sex to Japanese soldiers). But a book approved in April by Japan's Ministry of Education omits the fact that Pearl Harbor was a sneak attack, and even goes so far as to give the event subtle praise. As the text describes it, "The Navy task force air-raided the U.S. Pacific Fleet based at Pearl Harbor. The ships went down one by one, and the planes went up in flames. They made brilliant military achievements. The incidents were reported into the night, whipping up the Japanese public's fighting spirits..." The book's authors make no apologies for their nationalist bent. "Past textbooks ...