Japan to Claim Dokdo in Textbook

Japan’s Yomiuri Shimbun reported Sunday that the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan will specify that Korea’s Dokdo islets belong to Japan in the new teaching guidelines for the middle school textbooks for social studies.

There are a number of middle school and high school textbooks that passed the authorization of the ministry defining Dokdo to be Japanese territory, but no guidelines or handbooks have contained similar expressions.

According to the daily, the publishers of textbooks in Japan revise their textbooks every four years based on the guidelines and the handbooks in order to go through the ministry’s authorization. Thus it is likely that there will be more textbooks arguing that Japan has sovereignty over the islets. The next authorization is scheduled in 2009 for middle school books and 2010 for high school books.

Japan`s Education Ministry explained that though it treats the curriculum guidelines as the standards by which it screens textbooks, it also regards the handbooks, especially the handbooks` explanations about how the curriculums should be understood, as quasi standards.

The Education Ministry drafts the handbooks on the changed guidelines for each textbook every 10 years. It plans to write the handbook to the new guidelines between June and July, which will take effect starting 2012.

Some teachers also use the handbook as guidelines when teaching classes.

It is said that the ministry publicized the guidelines in March but did not include any expressions related to Dokdo, fearing turbulent consequences in Korea-Japan relations with President Lee Myung-bak’s planned visit to Tokyo in April.

This led Japan’s right-wing faction and some members of the Liberal Democratic Party to speak out that “the government under Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda gave up on the territorial issue.”

“The Education Ministry decided to reincorporate the statement that Japan has sovereignty over the islets into the handbook as the latest round of events on the two countries` diplomatic agenda has been completed,” the newspaper said.

Regarding the change, an official of the Korean government said, “We are checking the facts about the matter through diplomatic routes. If the newspaper report is found to be true, the government will take necessary actions.”