일본근대검정교과서의 고대 한반도관련기술 분석: ‘소학교역사교과서’를 중심으로

Abstract

Current Japanese history textbooks present insufficient historical description and exclude historical facts such as the Korean comfort women drafted into the Japanese forces and the Nanjing Massacre. With an emphasis on the concept of a Divine Land (神國) and the resulting confusion with historical facts created by stressing mythology, Japan avoids its war responsibilities and its modern textbooks comprise an emperor-centered ideology, including the full text of the Imperial Rescript on Education (敎育勅語). In general, such descriptions support a Japanese emperor-centered view of history, an imperialistic view of history, historical view of opinionated cultural supremacy, and hero elitism, namely an androcentric view of history. Modern Japan, as part of the Meiji Era modernization, declared the School System Decree (學制令) in August 1872, under which a school system was established to provide all citizens an elementary school education, an integral component of Japan's nation building. Therefore, there is a need to examine the changes in and contexts surrounding modern Japanese textbooks since the implementation of the School System Decree. Although studies have examined the textbooks in terms of institutional history, few analyses of the actual textbooks were found. For that reason, this study attempts to directly analyze the contents of the authorized textbooks from modern Japan's initial textbook system. As a result, it demonstrates that the origin of the problems with Japanese history textbooks can be identified through an actual analysis of Japanese history textbooks from the Meiji Era (1868~1912).