Koizumi Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said Thursday Japan would not amend a controversial new history textbook despite repeated urging by China and South Korea. He was speaking after a Chinese foreign ministry official summoned a Japanese embassy official late Wednesday to lodge another protest that the school textbook glosses over Japan's militarist past. The Japanese embassy in Beijing issued a list of eight areas in which China had grievances concerning the textbook's version of history, according to Kyodo News agency. They included claims that Manchuria benefitted economically from investment by Japanese heavy industries.
China maintains Japan plundered the resources there on a vast scale.
Beijing also complained that the Nanjing Massacre was only briefly mentioned in the book and there was no mention of Japan's notorious Unit 731, which conducted experiments on living Chinese prisoners to study germ warfare and the treatment of combat wounds. The textbook has also provoked anger in South Korea where a series of anti-Japanese protests have been held. Terusuke Terada, Japan's ambassador to Seoul, proposed last September that Japan and South Korea sign a free trade agreement to form a market of 170 million people worth 5 trillion dollars, two-thirds of the US market. The book, approved by the Tokyo government after 137 modifications, avoids references to Japan's pre-World War II invasion of its Asian neighbours. It also plays down events such as the Nanjing massacre and the use of tens of thousands of Asian women as sex slaves for Japanese troops.