Japanese education, nationalism, and Ienaga Saburo's court challenges

Ienaga Saburo's 32 yr court challenge of the Japanese government's textbook censorship came to an end in August 1997. The Supreme Court handed down its decision on his third lawsuit, finding that on several accounts Ienaga had been wronged by the government's textbook screening proces. While the decision was something less than a total victory for Ienaga, an opinion delivered by the chief justice clearly indicated tht school textbooks should include descriptions of the suffering of Japan's neighbors as a result of past Japanese aggression and that such inclusion is a positive educational consideration. This article situates Ienaga's fights against the state's dissemination of an ultranationalist and imperialist view of history in the context of Japan's postwar ideological struggle. It presents a chronology of Ienaga's court battles and argues that the struggle over the nation's past is the struggle over its future.