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‘problem’ is to be found, first of all, in the reaction of politically conservative and rightist
groups in America to what they perceive to be an anti-American bias in history textbooks”
(1989, p. 51). This public interest is also reflected in Japanese history textbooks, particularly
when new editions are published (see, for example, Barnard, 2003a, 2003b); and the
emotional status that national history topics and national identity generally hold in the minds
of the general public. For example, Keith Crawford (2008) analyses the Japanese public
interest in national history as an example of sustaining a traditional national identity. It is
through manga comic magazines that millions of Japanese citizens express this interest in
their nation’s past, and this is due, in Crawford’s view, to “…manga offer[s] a far more
accessible and populist medium through which to help shape a sense of Japan’s past” (2008,
p. 61). In linking to the school curriculum, it is argued that for “…an issue that finds little
space within Japanese secondary history textbooks…” (Crawford, 2008, p. 62), popular and
accessible publications extend beyond what is available in the school curriculum,
encompassing deeper aspects of national identity through a nation’s history.
Arguably, one of the most well known recent studies of ideology within national identity
comes from Barnard’s (2003a) research of Japanese History textbooks. Published in 2003, a
CDA approach is applied to extrapolate the underpinning ideologies in Japanese textbooks
post-WWII. In particular, he focuses on events of WWII that have been commonly deemed
controversial, partly due to “…claims that Japan has never ‘apologized properly’ for its
actions between 1931 and 1945…There are frequent protests, both from within Japan and
from overseas, that a biased, nationalistic history is taught in Japanese schools” (Barnard,
2003a, n.p.). The research and analysis conducted for this project is aligned with the
description applied by Barnard of his use of CDA, citing “…critical discourse analysts…
have been interested in pointing out ideologies that form part of seemingly neutral,
disinterested, and objective discourses” (Barnard, 2003a, pp. 20-21). Regarding mythologies
of national identity that can be presented to school students through the History curriculum,
Barnard draws on the example of pre-WWII Japanese school curriculum, writing:
When Japanese schoolchildren before and during the war were taught not history, but
a racially based mytho-history centering on the divine descent of the imperial family
and foundation myths of the Japanese people, together with anti-scientific views on
the unique nature of the Japanese race and the sacred nature of their land (Brownlee
1997; Wray 1983), the people who were deriving benefit from this were certainly not
the ordinary Japanese people themselves. (2003a, p. 21, emphasis added)
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