The treatment of Japanese imperialism in Japanese history textbooks has been highly publicised and criticised by China and Korea, and has been a sensitive sticking point in relations. While revisionist Japanese history textbooks are worth a post or two, there is plenty of analysis available (Wikipedia has a nice write up, for example).

But what is less well known and receives much less attention is the changing coverage of the same time period in Chinese textbooks. These changes have arguably more impact on the Japan-China relationship than the Japanese textbooks.

Chinese history textbooks were revised after the 2005 riots to tone down the anti-Japanese rhetoric. The Danwei blog reproduces an article from the Phoenix Weekly:

In previous history texts, the anti-Japanese War and the war of liberation each received a separate chapter, totalling 49 pages. The new edition puts them together, with only 28 pages between the two. . .

The same piece then goes on a rant from the perspective of a teacher with a nationalist bent:

Against the current rise of the right wing’s power in Japan and its distortion of historical facts and denial of an invasive war, a middle school teacher said, “This looks bad, if we shrink this period of history in the textbooks, how will we commemorate history? Can we ask Japan to learn from historical facts again?”

Why did the Chinese curriculum tone down the anti-Japanese section in the history textbooks? The anti-Japan protests in 2005 got out of hand for the Chinese government. What started as permission for a small scale protest got out of hand with emails and text messages spreading faster and wider than the authorities had anticipated. Although billed as a protest against Japan’s Yasukuni shrine visits and increased revisionist rhetoric from Japan, the protest quickly became a vehicle to protest against anything and everything as it was one of the only windows open to voice political grievances in China. The protesters were both blue collar and white collar workers and spanned both young and old.

China as a nation had made their point to the Japanese and the situation had almost got out of hand in China.

The protests marked a turning point in the Japan-China relationship. The Chinese narrative portraying Japan had changed and the events brought a new recognition in Japan of how fragile the relationship with neighbour was.