Postwar History Education in Japan and the Germanys : Guilty Lessons

How did East and West Germany and Japan reconstitute national identity after World War II? Did all three experience parallel reactions to national trauma and reconstruction? History education shaped how these nations reconceived their national identities. Because the content of history education was controlled by different actors, history education materials framed national identity in very different ways. In Japan, where the curriculum was controlled by bureaucrats bent on maintaining their purported neutrality, materials focused on the empirical building blocks of history (who? where? what?) at the expense of discussions of historical responsibility. In East Germany, where party cadres controlled the curriculum, students were taught that World War II was a capitalist aberration. In (West) Germany, where teachers controlled the curriculum, students were taught the lessons of shame and then regeneration after historians turned away from grand national narratives. This book shows that constructions of national identity are not easily malleable on the basis of moral and political concerns only, but that they are subject to institutional constraints and opportunities. In an age when post-conflict reconstruction and reconciliation has become a major focus of international policies, the analysis offers important implications for the parallel revision of portrayals of national history and the institutional reconstruction of policy-making regimes. Education, Politics & IR, Sociology & Social Policy Book Cover 1 Title 8 Copyright 9 Contents 10 Tables 13 Acknowledgments 14 1 The Determinants of Portrayals of the Nation in History Education 18 2 The Re-Nationalization of History in East German Education 36 3 Rationalizing Portrayals of the Nation in (West) German History Education 78 4 Japanese Bureaucrats and Empiricist Textbook Historiography 119 5 Portrayals of the Nation in Japanese and German History Education Explained 174 Appendix A: Curricula 187 Appendix B: Textbooks 190 Notes 197 Bibliography 215 Index 237 History education is the official version of modern national identities. This book is a remarkable unveiling of how three countries changed their portrayal of history after disastrous defeat in World War II. The book traces these portrayals through extensive, over-time middle school history textbook and curriculum analyses.