What links Osaka, Seoul, Busan and Glendale, California? Prime Minister Shinzo Abe¡¯s championing of revisionist history.
Since becoming a member of the Diet in 1993, Abe has been pushing for a more positive spin on Japan¡¯s 1931-45 wartime record. To that end, he ushered through a law promoting patriotic education in 2007. More recently, his education ministry has issued guidelines for textbook publishers and educators that mandate instruction about various controversies, such as the ¡°comfort women¡± system of sexual servitude, that conforms to the government¡¯s stance.
In mid-February, in the early days of the Moritomo Gakuen scandal brewing in Osaka, Abe declared that he shared the ideological views of the school¡¯s founder. This stalwart defense of Yasunori Kagoike has since crumbled as Abe has scrambled to distance himself from what has become the biggest crisis of his premiership.
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