| This dissertation concerns the postwar Japanese struggle over its "official history" as represented in school textbooks. In particular, it focuses on Saburo lenaga's three textbook lawsuits, first filed in 1965 and concluded in August of 1997, that challenged the state's de facto censorship of textbooks. It also considers several major issues in the field of curriculum studies, including the question "Whose knowledge ought to be represented in schools?" Recent developments in critical, poststructual, and feminist theories inform us of the ideological nature of knowledge and urge us to investigate various kinds of knowledge production processes. The present study brings together historiographies of postwar Japanese education and cultural politics surrounding it to document the processes and struggles through which certain kinds of knowledge were---and others were not---selected, legitimized as school knowledge, and so became public truth.; Research on Japanese education has tended to stress a strong state control over schools that are seen as orderly and harmonious. Close examination of the textbook controversies reveals that the struggle carried out over many years has been far more complicated and adversarial, involving multiple "games of truths." While the state has been a powerful player, others have also figured significantly. In particular, in the game of historical truth, crucial roles have been played by science and its experts (mainly "history" and "historians" in this case) and by the progressive social forces that have worked at making public marginalized voices, such as those of the Chinese and Okinawan victims of the Asia-Pacific War. Although the changes in the textbooks indicate that the progressives have gained ground, the most recent controversy over the issue of "comfort women" also shows the strength of the counter-offensive launched by the nationalists. The study suggests that while hegemony in a given society can sometimes be achieved and maintained by the state's single-handed imposition of its ideologies, it always needs to be sustained by complex, heterogeneous cultural practices, and that, conversely, a counter-hegemonic project requires flexible and diverse strategies. |
