Japan's new textbooks deceitful and harmful

Japan's new textbook revisions provide another example of how the Japanese government, under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, has plotted one trick after another to whitewash Japan's history of aggression.

On Monday, Japan's education ministry approved some textbooks on history, civics and geography to be adopted by high schools next year. The move immediately drew indignation from China and the Republic of Korea as the revisions contain falsities about the country's wartime atrocities as well as its territorial disputes with its neighbors.

For example, in the new textbooks, China's Diaoyu Islands and affiliated islets are described as Japan's, while the Nanjing Massacre is ambiguously worded as "captives and civilians were involved" and "casualties were exposed", compared with the previous wording that the Japanese Imperial Army "killed many captives and civilians".