Japanese textbooks

Etymologically, "history" means "one who sees or knows," and, in Latin or Greek, "learning by inquiry." That is, "history" is a subject for those who are not content with what they have learned, and think they have to know more. Let me tell you Japanese people has got a biggest information about what happened around Japan from 1900 to 1945 because they've been required to face up to what their grandfathers did during the war, and have had to ask themselves, "why has Japan been blamed for what it did during the period?"

We know invasion is so bad, and if our grandfathers did it to the Koreans and Chineses we ought to feel sorry for that, as our grandfathers would do so. But we cannot help starting with "but...". Because our survey on many records and reports about the war, available to us now, has compelled us to wonder why only Japan has been criticized so bitterly as to be called the evilest country that had ever existed in the history of the Earth. Japan was bad, indeed, to colonize Korea and assault China, and to make the surprise attack on the American army at the Pearl Harbor. But let me ask you if other countries including China did not do anything harmful or cheating during that period. Our survey reveals the war was not so simple. The situation was so complicated. The textbooks to be adopted in Japanese school, called nationalistic in some medias in the world, referred to what other countries did during the war, to describe the world as it was, so I don't think it is trying to legitimate what Japan did during the war. It just wanted to give children as accurate an description of the world in the first half of the 20th century as possible.