The Japanese people's understanding of the Fifteen Years War (1931-1945) is still problematic. The problem of the war was commonly solved by transferring responsibility for the war to an obscure subject called the State, and by offering financial compensation to those who were directly affected. However, there has been no in-depth discussion of…

In the last two decades, the issue of comfort women--the women and girls who were forced into sex slavery for the Japanese army before and during WWII--has risen to global attention. Tens of thousands of comfort women (the average estimate is anywhere between 80,000 and 200,000) were confined at comfort stations managed by the Japanese Imperial…

For more than a decade, the world history course taught in the public high schools of Texas has provided the only comprehensive overview of the story of humanity to millions of students, most of whom are of Mexican descent. The Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills curriculum standard for world history has been foundational for textbook selection,…

This paper discusses the Japanese history textbook controversy over "comfort women" to tease out insights that help globalize the existing theoretical discussion of politics of school knowledge. I begin by documenting how the domestic struggles over Japanese history textbooks are empowered and dis empowered by the regional and…

The sheer amount of American children's and young adult literature, boasting an outpouring of 5,000 titles every year, often amazes a person who is new to this field. Not only is a large proportion of these books of high printing and binding quality, but, at a quick glance, among them is also a pleasant diversity of genre, format, targeted age…

The book is entitled History Wars in the Classroom: Global Perspectives and examines how ten separate countries have experienced debates and disputes over the contested nature of the subject, for example the "Black Armband" and "Whitewash" factions in Australia who adopt opposingly celebratory or denigratory views of Australian…

It is not yet well known that there has been a selective bias in writing the "world" history of higher education. Western hegemony prevails in this academic endeavour. To recover one of the many lost traditions of higher education, this paper will make a historical comparison of the two distinctive academic traditions representing the…