Discussion Paper No.350
History Regimes in High School World History
Textbooks in Contemporary Japan

Odanaka Naoki

May 2016

TOHOKU ECONOMICS RESEARCH GROUPGRADUATE SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS AND
MANAGEMENT TOHOKU UNIVERSITY

27-1 KAWAUCHI, AOBA-KU, SENDAI,
980-8576 JAPANHistory Regimes in High School World History Textbooks
in Contemporary Japan

Odanaka Naoki (odanaka@econ.tohoku.ac.jp)

Contents
1. Introduction
2. Objects of Analysis: Two Editions, Two Generations, and Two
Historiographical Trends
3. Temporal Structures: Toward De-linearization
4. Spatial Structures: Toward De-Western-modernization
5. Concrete Narrative Styles: Always a Chain from Cause to Result
6. Conclusion*This paper has been prepared for the “Workshop on Historical Narratives,” tobe held from July 7 to 9, 2016, at Ruhr-Universität Bochum (Bochum,
Germany).
*This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI (Japan Society for the
Promotion of Science, Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research) Grant
Number 15K02925.
*Not for citation.

1

History Regimes in High School World History Textbooks in Contemporary JapanODANAKA Naoki (odanaka@econ.tohoku.ac.jp)
WS Historical Narratives (RUB July 7‐9 2016)

1. Introduction
This paper aims to make clear the history regimes adopted by contemporary Japanese high school
world history textbooks. The term “history regime” means a shared image of the narrative structureof time-space: a common mode of comprehension and explanation of a temporal structure
articulating the past, present, and future, combined with a spatial one that articulates areas orregions. This regime consists of three components: a temporal structure, a spatial structure, and aconcrete narrative style.1
We address this topic in the following steps: in Section 2, we present the objects of analysis, i.e.,
two textbooks, and their historical and historiographical backgrounds. Then, in Sections 3 and 4 wecomparatively analyze their temporal and spatial structures. Next, in Section 5 we elucidate theirconcrete narrative styles. Finally, in Section 6 we summarize our arguments by recapping thefundamental characteristics of the history regimes found in these two texts.

2. Objects of Analysis: Two Editions, Two Generations, and Two Historiographical
TrendsAs our object of analysis, we took a textbook entitled Sekai no Rekishi (World History) publishedby Yamakawa Shuppansha (Tokyo, Japan), the leading publishing house for high school history
textbooks in Japan, whose market share is always over 50 percent. Sekai no Rekishi was firstpublished in 1973, with a second edition (renamed Shin Sekai-Shi [World History New Edition]) in
1982 and a third in 2014.2

1

Use of the term “regime” here is inspired by François Hartog’s (2003) concept of a “regime of historicity.”

According to the author, a regime of historicity is “the mode or configuration of categories which organize andverbalize the experiences or, more exactly speaking, that articulating three universal forms or categories of the past,
the present, and the future,” which “varies according to the places, the ages, and societies.” (Hartog, 2003,
Introduction).
2

Certainly it would be better to analyze all textbooks in the field, but we decided that taking one textbook as an

example would be sufficient, for after WWII Japan adopted the governmental check system for school textbooks(kyokasho kentei seido). Publishing houses, referring to the education guidelines (gakushu shido yoryo) issued by2

We will compare the 1973 and 2014 editions of this textbook. The former was edited by Shibata
Michio (b. 1926) and Kanda Nobuo (b. 1921), and eight other contributors born between 1923 and1935. The latter was edited by Kishimoto Mio (b. 1952), Haneda Masashi (b. 1953), Kubo Fumiaki(b. 1956), Minamikawa Takashi (b. 1955), and three other contributors born between 1963 and1967. As to why we made this choice, it was because these books were written by historians fromdifferent generations, influenced by different historiographical trends.
Among historians in postwar Japan, we can classify four generations: first, those who were bornaround the turn of the century and led historical research until 1960s in various stances (e.g.,
Marxist, progressivist, or positivist). Second, those who were born in the 1920s or early 1930s,
heavily influenced by the first generation’s stance on history. Third, those who were born in the
1940s, who took part in the student revolts of 1968 as activists, and encountered and absorbed the
new emerging trends in historical theory and methodology. And fourth, those born after the 1950s,
who familiarized themselves with new trends in historical research from the very onset of theirprofessional careers. The 1973 edition of the chosen textbook was written by second-generation
historians, and the 2014 edition by fourth-generation historians. This difference in generation has
led to variations in historiographical position.
As

is

well

known,

historicalresearchwasdominatedbymodernism,

that

is,

scientific-progressive-national/nationalistic trends, since the mid-19th century all over the world.
However, around 1970, we can see the emergence of anti- or at least non-modernist historiography.3
We could call this phenomenon the post-modernist (in a very broad sense) turn, which involved: arenewal of social history (e.g., labor history from below in England, the Annales school ofhistorical anthropology in France, the Bielefeld school of sozialgeschichte in Germany, etc.), thebirth of gender history in the US, the introduction of Emmanuel Wallerstein’s world system theory
into historical analysis, and so on.4 This tendency toward post-modernist historiography was
the government, edit textbook drafts (written mainly by university historians) and send them to the Ministry of
Education. Then ministry textbook examiners, trained as academic scholars but whose main task is to follow theeducation guidelines, check the draft and request modifications if necessary. In this situation, school textbooks are
not so different from one another, for they all have to respect the guidelines in order to be accepted by the Ministry
and be published.
3

In this paper we use the term “post-modernist” in a very broad and loose sense, and avoid using the term

“post-modern” because it can have a narrow and particular meaning that does not fit our objects of analysis, i.e., the2014 edition, its authors, and third- and fourth-generation Japanese historians.
4

Hartog says that there have been three regimes of historicity in Western historiography: pastism (passéisme),

futurism, and presentism. The first, dominant until the 18th century, regards the past or history as a teacher. During
the Renaissance, for example, ancient Greece was regarded as a model to be followed at the political, cultural, andsocial levels. The second, emerging at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries and becoming dominant with thescientification of historical research in the Rankean manner in European countries, regards the past as theprecondition of the future. Historical materialist historians, for example, claimed themselves as scientific because

3immediately introduced in Japan and resonated widely, especially among third-generation
historians who were about to start their academic careers, and the coming fourth generation. Whatis more, the outputs of these new trends came into fashion in the 1980s under the name shakaishiboom (social history craze).5
The 1973 edition was written by modernist historians and the 2014 one by post-modernist
historians. We have a textbook and its revised edition, which are products of different generations
and stances. This is why we judged these two editions as worthy of comparison.

3. Temporal Structures: Toward De‐linearization
In this section we analyze the temporal structures of the two editions, focusing mainly on
periodization. The main questions are: What kind of periodization do they adopt? And how does itfunction in the structuralization of the whole text?
The 1973 edition consists of four main parts containing one to three titled chapters, with an
introductory chapter concerning prehistory:
Part 1: chap. 1 (ancient world)Part 2: chap. 2 (European world), chap. 3 (Islamic world), chap. 4 (East Asian world)Part 3: chap. 5 (formation of modern Europe), chap. 6 (development of modern European
society), chap. 7 (changes in Asia)

Part 4: chap. 8 (beginning of imperial age and WWI), chap. 9 (Versailles system andWWII), chap. 10 (contemporary world)

Judging from the chapter titles, we could say that part 1 treats the ancient age, part 2 the medieval
age, part 3 the modern age, and part 4 the contemporary age.6 This means that this edition adopts atetrameric periodization of world history.
At this point we would like to point out three characteristics of the 1973 edition.

they could predict the arrival of a socialist mode of production using their knowledge of the past and historical laws.
The third, blossoming in the 1970s and 1980s with the diffusion of post-modernisms (in plural form) in a broad
sense and the fall of the Berlin Wall, claims that the past changes according to our “here and now,” i.e., the present.
This very typical post-modernist stance can be found in many contemporary historical texts.
5
6

As for the post-modernist shift in Japanese historiography, see, for example, Hasegawa (2015).
The chapters composing part 2 do not use the word “medieval,” but chap. 2 begins with a section entitled“Western Europe in the early medieval age,” chap. 3 starts with a column entitled “the medieval Orient and Islamic
worlds,” and chap. 4 covers the 3rd to 18th centuries in Asia. What is more, part 3 begins with the phrase “From themedieval age to the modern one.”4

Firstly, its authors claim in the preface that learning history in the high school class is not forfinding lessons or predicting the future, but for instilling in students a historical way of thinking.
This edition thus does not refer to the future, considering itself as objective.
Secondly, the four parts are not just arranged chronologically; the authors say in the preface thatthey are logically connected in a linear way: the contemporary world is an entity (part 4) created inline with the development of West European modernity (part 3). However, each region has retained
its original character at the social and cultural levels (called bunmei ken or civilizational sphere), setin place before European expansion (part 2) and based on the historical preconditions found in eachregion (part 1). We could and should find here a linear temporal structure constructed by theauthors.
Thirdly, part 3 begins with Dai-Kokai Jidai (Age of Navigation).7 The modern age began aroundthe turn of the 15th and 16th centuries. This means that the authors of the 1973 edition adopt, as
criteria of modernity, the European (Western) values and ideologies that emerged in these days,
such as Renaissance humanism, state-consciousness (post-Westphalian system), and, to somedegree, Christianism (from the Reformation). According to the authors, these values and ideologies
were exported to the rest of the world by European countries: this is nothing less than amodernization process that created the contemporary world.
As for the 2014 edition, it consists of five main parts, each containing four or five chapters, with an
introductory chapter concerning prehistory:
Part 1, entitled “ancient age”: chap. 1 (the Orient and Ancient Greece), chap. 2 (Ancient
Rome and West Asia), chap. 3 (South Asia, South-eastern Asia, and Oceania), chap. 4(East and Central Asia), chap. 5 (Africa, North America, and South America).

Part 2, entitled “medieval age”: chap. 6 (trends in East and Central Asia), chap. 7 (trends
in West Asia), chap. 8 (trends in South and South-eastern Asia), chap. 9 (the formation ofEurope);Part 3, entitled “early-modern age”: chap. 10 (Age of Exchange and Commerce), chap.
11 (trends in East and South-eastern Asia), chap. 12 (trends in West and South Asia),
chap. 13 (the growth of Europe);Part 4, entitled “modern age”: chap. 14 (Europe and America in the Age of Revolution),chap. 15 (Europe in the Age of Nationalism), chap. 16 (state-formation by settlement andmigration), chap. 17 (turmoil in Asia);8 and

Part 5, entitled “contemporary age”: chap. 18 (imperialism and the world), chap. 19(world wars), chap. 20 (the Cold War and the independence of the third world), chap. 21(today’s world).

7

Dai-Kokai Jidai (Age of Navigation) is the same meaning of the “Age of Discovery” common in

English-speaking academia. Japanese historians have avoided using the latter term, because it seems Euro-centric.
8

Chapter 16 deals with North and South America, Australia, and New Zealand.

5

Contrary to the 1973 edition, this version adopts a five-division periodization of world history,
introducing the concept of the early-modern period.
Here we would like to point out three characteristics of the 2014 edition, and compare it with the1973 one.
Firstly, its authors claim in the general preface that we learn history in the high school classroom inorder to acquire the capability to understand the present, as is the case with the 1973 edition.
Secondly, it is constructed as a non-linear historical narrative: each period (ancient, medieval,
early-modern, and modern) is directly connected to the contemporary age, and we are told how it
informed the development of today’s world. The temporal structure adopted by the authors isclearly shown in the prefaces to each part:

The ancient age gives us classical philosophy, a model of political unity (the Roman
Empire), etc.;

The medieval age is characterized by the growth of world religions, which still exercise
centripetal power in all regions today;The early-modern age is depicted as the starting point of contemporary globalization; andThe modern age is dominated by the ideology of progress, which still captivates most of
us today.

Thirdly, it adopts the concept of the “early-modern age.” The 1973 edition’s modern age is divided
into early-modern and modern ages. This leads us to the questions: What distinguishes the two ages
in this textbook? And what are the authors’ criteria of modernity?
In the preface to part 3, the authors give us an answer, saying that:

The modern age in the broad sense began around the 16th century;However, we find many important events at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, suchas the Industrial Revolution in England, American Independence, and the French
Revolution;



These events had a huge impact on our everyday lives by creating new technology,
nation-states, democracies, etc.;

We should thus distinguish the early-modern and late-modern (“modern” in thistextbook) ages in order to properly understand world history.

Taking into consideration the fact that they use the term “modern” to express “late-modern,” we areforced to say that the criteria of modernity in the 2014 edition are the values and ideologies created
and diffused under the (late-) modern age, rather than those of the early-modern one.
Comparing the two editions at the temporal level, we find both similarities and differences. The
former concerns the absence of the future, which they both avoid. This may be the result of theauthors’ need to portray themselves as objective and neutral. The latter concerns the linearity of6temporal structure. The 1973 edition adopts a temporally linear structure of history where ages areconnected in a line. The 2014 text, on the contrary, adopts a temporal structure where past eras are
directly connected to the present in a non-linear structure. We find here a tendency toward thede-linearization of history regimes.

4. Spatial Structures: Toward De‐Western‐modernization
In this section, we analyze the spatial structure of the two editions, focusing principally on therelation between East and West. The main question is: What share of the books do the descriptions
on East and West have?
Of course, dividing East and West is always an arbitrary and artificial act. In Japan, however,Western and Eastern historical studies have been clearly divided in academia at the institutional andpractical levels since scientific and academic historical research began after the Meiji Restoration(1868).9 Thus, in the Japanese context, West and East are clearly distinguished from each other.
The former means Europe, plus North America after US independence. The latter means the rest of
the world, i.e., Asia, Africa, and so on.10
The 1973 edition allocates 312 pages to its four parts. Of them, 133 (43 percent) are allocated to theEast and 179 (57 percent) to the West.
Periodically speaking:In part 1 on the ancient age, 33 pages on the East and 16 on the West;In part 2 on the medieval age, 52 pages on the East and 28 on the West;In part 3 on the modern age, 24 pages on the East and 80 on the West; and

In part 4 on the contemporary age, 24 pages on the East and 55 on the West.

We found the following two characteristics of the 1973 version here.
Firstly, heavy emphasis is given to the modern age in the West (80 pages, that is to say, almost 25
percent of the text). The Renaissance, Age of Navigation, Reformation, emergence of theWestphalian sovereign-state system, Industrial Revolution, American Independence, French

9Japanese historical academia has thus been divided into three fields: Japanese history, Western history, andEastern history. As for the reason for and history of this tripartite system, see, for example, Lim (2012) and Wang(2012).
10

This does not mean that there has been no debate over the arbitrariness of the East-West divide in Japanese

historiography. “Is Russia part of the West?” and “How about South American history?” are examples of questions
that have been raised. At the institutional level, however, Eastern and Western history are still clearly distinguishedtoday. Almost all history departments at Japanese universities are divided into Japanese history, Eastern history, andWestern history sections.

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Revolution, birth of nationalism/nation-states, etc., are regarded as the main line of world history
that created the foundation of today’s world. We could say that the 1973 edition is“Western-modernized.” An example of this point is the explanation of the French revolution. In the
10 pages given over to this topic, we find a very detailed description of the course of events,
containing the names of Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette, Lafayette, Mirabeau, Barnave, Robespierre,
Danton, Babeuf, Napoléon, and even Joséphine, Napoléon’s first wife.
Secondly, the East, which looms large in the ancient (67 percent) and medieval (65 percent) parts,
diminishes suddenly after the arrival of the modern age: 23 percent of the modern age and 30
percent of the contemporary one. The Islamic and East Asian worlds, narrated and depicted in detailin part 2, are reduced in parts 3 and 4 to a kind of appendix, or to no more than a target andplayfield of the Western powers. In brief, the 1973 edition says that the East changed from an active
historical actor to a passive one around the 15th and 16th centuries.
Turning now to the 2014 edition, it allocates 374 pages to 5 parts. Of them, five pages are used for
explaining the Age of Navigation from a global (i.e., non-Western/Eastern) perspective and five
pages for today’s globalization. As for the remaining 364 pages, 161 (44 percent) are allocated to
the East and 203 (56 percent) to the West.
Periodically speaking:In part 1 on the ancient age, 32 pages on the East and 25 on the West;In part 2 on the medieval age, 40 pages on the East and 36 on the West;In part 3 on the early-modern age, 27 pages on the East and 40 on the West;In part 4 on the modern age, 20 pages on the East and 46 on the West; and

In part 5 on the contemporary age, 42 pages on the East and 56 on the West.

We identified some impressive characteristics of the 2014 edition, and will now explain two.
Firstly, we find the emergence of a truly global perspective. The Age of Navigation is explained,
not as a process of discovery and conquest of East by West, but principally as a phenomenon where
East and West came into contact, deepened trade and cultural transfer, and influenced each other as
equal actors. Contemporary globalization is covered from a global point of view—needless to say,there is no other way to depict this trend.
Secondly, in all parts, East and West are treated almost evenly, when we compare these figures withthe 1973 edition where the East’s share falls off sharply in the modern and contemporary ages.
While it is true that part 4 of the 2014 edition allocates many more pages to the West, both aretreated rather more evenly than in the 1973 edition. As for the pages assigned to the French
Revolution, it mentions only five names: Louis XVI, Turgot, Necker, Robespierre, and Napoléon.
Comparing the two editions at the spatial level, we detected a tendency toward
de-Western-modernization. The 1973 edition adopts a spatial structure that stresses the modern age
in the West, claiming that the importance of the East decreased from the ancient and medieval ages

8

to the modern and contemporary ones. The 2014 edition, on the contrary, adopts a spatial structure
where East and West are treated rather equally throughout the text.

5. Concrete Narrative Styles: Always a Chain from Cause to Result
In this section we will analyze the characteristics of the concrete narrative styles adopted by the two
editions to see whether they differ. We take, as the object of analysis, the accounts of American
Independence. The 1973 edition narrates this event as follows:
After the Seven Years’ war, the British home government tightened its mercantilist policy
toward the colonies in order to avoid a budget crush, which could occur through war andcolony protection expenditures. The North American colonies, united by the battles against the
French army, judged this new stance as violating their autonomy. The Stamps Act of 1765,
especially, caused a protest at the constitutional level around the principle of “No taxation
without representation.” …In 1774, representatives of the colonies gathered in the Continental
Congress, and the next year an armed clash occurred between the colonies and the homegovernment. (p. 200)
Here historical events are connected to one another in a linear causal chain. In this chain, the cause(past) precedes the result (present or near-past) in the text.
Now let us proceed to the explanation of the same event in the 2014 edition:
After the end of the Seven Years’ war in 1763, the British home government, seeing its
financial situation worsen because of war expenditure, shifted its colonial policy to a positive
interventionist one in order to increase national revenues through international trade control
and tax hikes. The North American colonies, regarding this policy change as an attack andviolation of their autonomy, criticized it and showed their discontent with the homegovernment. Colonial assemblies, standing against tax hikes, made public a protest note on thebasis of the principle of “No taxation without representation.” …In 1774, 12 colonies (Georgia
abstained) gathered in the First Continental Congress, protesting as a unified body against thehome government. When the home government’s army and Massachusetts state militia enteredinto armed conflict at Lexington and Concord the following year, the colonies moved towardwinning independence by force. (pp. 255-6)
Here, too, historical events are connected to one another in a linear causal chain where the cause(past) precedes the result (present or near-past). Comparing the two accounts of American
Independence, we could say that the two books adopt almost the same concrete narrative style.
This might sound a little strange, for, as was said in the preceding two sections, the two editions
adopted different temporal and spatial structures. Surely temporal and spatial structures andconcrete narrative styles are located at different levels, but there must be some affinities or relations

9

between the two because they all compose the history regime. We thus have to pose the question:
Why do they use the same narrative style?
Here we would like to introduce an argument by Watanabe Masako (2004), a specialist in cognitive
psychology and comparative education. Watanabe compared elementary-school-level history
education in Japan and the US, and found some remarkable differences. In Japan, history educationis constructed according to the causal chain from cause (past) to result (present or near-past). In theclass, teachers usually pose the questions “Then?” or “How?” regarding the result. In the US,teaching history according to the causal chain remains the guiding principle of education, but thedirection is opposite: the causal chain must be traced from the result (present or near-past) to thecause (past). In the class, teachers usually pose the question “Why?” regarding the cause.
According to Watanabe, the causal chain is chronological in Japan, but regressive in the US.
We could, based on this, infer that the two editions adopt the same narrative style, with achronological causal chain, because it fits the Japanese education style and, possibly,comprehension of history. Temporal and spatial structures can be modified rather easily because
they are abstract, but a narrative is hard to modify because it is concrete and thus tightly connected
to our way of thinking, or “structure of conviction” to use Watanabe’s terminology.
Is the narrative style found in the two editions (i.e., that tracing the causal chain chronologically)
inherent to Japanese culture? The answer may be “No,” for the narrative style may be a historicaland artificial construct in itself. So then, how has it been constructed in Japan (and, of course, inother countries)? And why has each narrative style been adopted in such and such country? These
important questions await answers.

6. Conclusion
To conclude, we will now summarize and compare the characteristics of the history regimes foundin the two textbook editions.
The 1973 edition contains a history regime composed of three elements: a temporally linear
structure; a spatial structure characterized by the importance of the modern Western age and thechronologically diminishing importance of the East; and a concrete narrative style featuring a
causal chain from cause to result.
The 2014 edition also features a history regime composed of three elements: a temporally
non-linear structure where the past is directly connected to the present; a spatial structure where
East and West are fairly equally treated in every age; and, like the 1973 edition, a concrete narrative
style with a causal chain from cause to result.
The two editions’ different temporal and spatial structures are surely due to the generation gap
among authors. The 1973 edition was written by authors who shared a belief in the linearity of time10and history, and in the importance of the Western modern age (and contemporary one, to someextent). This is typical of the modernist (i.e., scientific-progressive-national/nationalistic) historians
preponderant from the mid-19th century to the 1960s. The 2014 edition was written by people who,
after absorbing the new trends in history and surrounding disciplines starting with cultural
anthropology (Claude Lévy-Strauss), philosophy (Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, etc.), or
linguistics (Ferdinand de Saussure), came to doubt the linearity of time and history; take for granted
the importance of the modern and contemporary East and globalization; and be sufficiently
self-reflexive to find themselves still caught up in Occidentalism, Westernization, and modernity,
which need to be overcome.
On the contrary, the books share a concrete narrative style (i.e., a chronological causal chain),perhaps because it fits well with the structure of conviction in the contemporary Japanese education
system (and perhaps in contemporary Japanese society, too).
After comparing these two editions of a world history textbook, we found that historiographicaltrends can be reflected rather easily at the level of temporal and spatial structures in general, butthat a concrete narrative style is hard to change. As for the history regime in general, we can saythat it is changing in the sphere of Japanese textbooks, albeit slowly.

11References
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Hasegawa, M. (2015). Challenges of ‘society history’ in Japan: New perspectives in history.
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Kishimoto, M., Haneda, M., Kubo, F., & Minamikawa, T. (Eds.). (2014). Shin Sekai-Shi [WorldHistory New Edition]. Tokyo: Yamakawa Shuppansha (in Japanese).
Lim, J.-H. (2012). Historicizing the world in northeast Asia. In D. Northrop (Ed.), A Companion to
World History (pp. 418-432). Chichester, UK: Wiley Blackwell.
Shibata, M., & Kanda, N. (Eds.). (1973). Sekai no Rekishi [World History]. Tokyo: Yamakawa
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