Stanford University

Divided Memories: History Textbooks and the War in Asia

An international conference will be convened on February 11-12, 2008 at Stanford University at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center to examine the role of high school history textbooks in the formation of historical memory regarding the events of the Sino-Japanese and Pacific wars and their outcome. Shorenstein APARC researchers have looked at the treatment of those events, in the period from 1931-1951, in the most widely circulated high school history textbooks (national and world history), including those used in college preparatory course, in China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the United States. Translations of those textbooks into English have been prepared for use by historians and other scholars, allowing a comparative study of how historical memory is being shaped in the school systems.

The conference will have three main goals: first it will ask historians to comment and analyze the treatment of history in those textbooks, comparing it to accepted historical understanding. Second, it will look at the process of textbook writing and revision – in some cases (China and Taiwan particularly), the main textbooks have undergone significant revision recently and our data set includes the old and new versions of history textbooks in use in schools. Third, the conference will examine how the formation of divided memories impacts international relations in East Asia and between the United States and Asia and how this effort to understand this process may aid the goal of reconciliation.

The proceedings of this conference will be the basis of an edited volume, including comparative excerpts from the textbooks themselves, to be published by an academic press in the United States and hopefully in Asia as well. Participants will be asked to prepare a written paper for presentation and for publication.

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Daniel and Nancy Okimoto Conference Room

Gi-Wook Shin Speaker
Mark Peattie Speaker
Li Weike Director, History Department Speaker People's Education Press, Beijing
Hsin-Huan Michael Hsaio Center for Asia-Pacific Area Studies Speaker Academica Sinica
Peter Duus Department of History Speaker Stanford University
Tohmatsu Haruo Speaker Tamagawa University
Chung Jae-Jung Speaker City University of Seoul
Mitani Hiroshi Speaker Tokyo University
Chen Qi Speaker People's Education Publishing House, China
Chou Liang-kai Speaker Feng Chia University, Taiwan
Kim Do-Hyung Speaker Yonsei University
Bert Bower Speaker Teachers' Curriculum Institute, California
Daniel C. Sneider Speaker
Daniel Chirot Speaker University of Washington
Park Soon-Won Speaker George Mason University
Gary Mukai Speaker
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On October 14, at a special Commonwealth Club of California event in San Francisco, CDDRL Director Michael McFaul will debate former CIA Director James Woolsey on international security and how it factors into each presidential campaign's plans for the country. McFaul is a foreign policy advisor to Sen. Barack Obama; Woolsey is an advisor to Sen. John McCain.
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Divided Memories: History Textbooks and the War in Asia

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The Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University, the Center for Pacific and Asian Studies at The University of Tokyo and the Department of Area Studies at The University of Tokyo will present a 3 part discussion comparing the formation of divided memories in Japan, China, South Korea, Taiwan and the United States.

The aim of this research is that it puts Japanese textbooks in a comparative framework, and changes the nature of the dialogue about these issues as a result. We will NOT focus on Japanese textbooks per se but rather on the comparative analysis.

Part 1. Comparative Analysis of High School History textbooks in China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the United States

  • Professor Gi-Wook Shin (Director, Shorenstein APARC): an overview of our project
  • Professor Peter Duus (Stanford University): the comparative analysis of historical narratives presented in the textbooks of China, Japan and the U.S.
  • Professor Jae-Jung Chung (The University of Seoul) : the comparative analysis of textbooks in South Korea and Japan
  • Dr. Weike Li (Editor, Peoples Education Press, Beijing): on Chinese textbooks
  • Professor Haruo Tohmatsu (Tamagawa University): the comparative analysis of Japanese textbooks with other textbooks

Part 2. Textbooks as an International Relations issue

  • Dr. Daniel Sneider (Shorenstein APARC): the history of textbooks as an international issue and the different approaches to solving it
  • Professor Hiroshi Mitani (The University of Tokyo): the personal experiences with Sino-Japanese and Korean-Japanese historical Dialogue
  • Professor Shinichi Kitaoka (The University of Tokyo, former ambassador to UN): the experience of official joint committee between Japan and China

Part 3. General Discussions

  • Professor Tatsuhiko Tsukiashi (The University of Tokyo, Korean history)
  • Professor Shin Kawashima (The University of Tokyo, Chinese history)

The University of Tokyo
Komaba Hall 1F, 18th bldg.

Gi-Wook Shin Speaker
Daniel C. Sneider Speaker
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He is the author of several articles on post-civil war democratization, resource curse, electoral clientelism and experimental methods in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, American Political Science Review, World Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Constitutional Political Economy, Political Africaine and Afrique Contemporaine.

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Leonard Wantchekon Professor of Politics and Economics Speaker New York University
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Daniel Ziblatt Assoc. Prof. of Government and Social Studies Speaker Harvard University
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