Nations should be allowed an ‘official story’  To some the idea of a national story may be an anachronism but history is one of the things that bind a country together. As Benedict Anderson argues nations are ‘imagined communities’ as members of that nation will never know most of the members of that community or even hear about them but despite this there is conceived to be a comradeship between its members. [1] The creation of a national story from the history of the nation that helps create that common unit. French historian Ernest Renan went so far as to argue that ‘Getting its history wrong is part of being a nation’. [2]  South Korean President Lee Myung-bak himself has argued “A textbook of modern history should be written in a way that does not hurt our national pride,” when criticising a South Korean textbook’s interpretation of the dividing of Korea. [3] If this is the case it is difficult to see how there can be any objection to Japan using the same principle.  [1] Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities, Verso, 17 November 2006, pp.6-7   [2] Renan, Ernest, quoted in ‘Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780’, The Nationalism Project,   [3] Sang-Hun, Choe, ‘Textbooks on Past Offend South Korea’s Conservatives’, The New York Times, 17 November 2008,