Saburo Ienaga

Canada Association for Learning & Preserving the History of WWII in Asia

As we enter a new century there is a continuing danger that the lessons of the horror of world war which were so bitterly learned in the first half of the twentieth century may be forgotten.

Professor Saburo Ienaga has devoted a large part of his life to ensuring that the truth about what happened in Asia in the Second World War is known and remembered in his native Japan.

Professor Ienaga was born in 1913 in Aichi Prefecture, Japan, and graduated from the Literature Department at Tokyo Imperial University (the present Tokyo University) in 1937. He became a teacher and in 1941 at the time of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour he was a teacher in a high school in Niigata. He did not participate in the Second World War, and has spoken of his shame at failing to offer resistance as a teacher to the compulsory teaching of war propaganda and imperial myths at his high school during the war.

Professor Ienaga later became a professor at Tokyo University of Education and subsequently at Chuo University. He was awarded the Japan Academy Prize in 1948 and the title of Professor Emeritus at Tokyo University of Education. He became a specialist in the history of Japanese thought and Japanese cultural and legal history, and is the author of nearly one hundred works spanning from ancient to contemporary subjects. His broad range of subjects include " Historical study of the Independence of the Judiciary", " The Constitution in Historical Context", " Japanese Cultural History", and " The Pacific War".

In 1965, Professor Ienaga initiated a court case in Tokyo by suing the Japanese Government, which through "textbook screening" i.e. amendment and censorship of school textbooks, had been controlling the content of history taught in secondary schools. Books censored had included some of Professor Ienaga's works. Professor Ienaga then initiated his second and third lawsuits against the government. Through the textbook screening the government repeatedly removed or softened truthful descriptions of atrocities committed by the Japanese military before and during World War II. A notable example was the Government's insistence in Ienaga’s third lawsuit that references to the Nanking Massacre had to be " mentioned as what happened in confusion", although the massacre in fact involved the systematic killing of hundreds of thousands of civilians over a period of weeks. Another issue in dispute was the government's insistence that all textbooks avoid the negative expression "aggression" in relation to the Japanese Army's occupation of China and instead use only the term " military advance". Professor Ienaga's case was based on the argument that textbook screening violated the freedom of expression and freedom of education guaranteed in the Japanese constitution, and so were unconstitutional and illegal.

Professor Ienaga lost the first two lawsuits which he brought against the government in 1965 and 1967. The first suit lasted 27 years until 1993, and the second lasted 22 years from 1967 to 1989. In 1984 he initiated a third suit arising from eight screening comments made by the government on his draft textbooks from 1980 to 1983. In 1989 the district court ruled against most of his arguments. He then appealed to the High Court which ruled that three of the eight screening comments were illegal. These three screening comments include those relating to the description of the Nanking Massacre, including mention of widespread rape.

In 1997, Professor Ienaga's appeal on the remaining five points finally reached the Japanese Supreme Court, which ruled 3-2 in Professor Ienaga's favour that the Education Ministry had acted illegally when it removed from one of Professor Ienaga's textbooks a description of Japan's biological experiments on 3000 people in northern China during World War II. In these biological experiments, conducted by a germ warfare group called Unit 731, subjects were operated on without anaesthetics, injected with diseases such as typhoid and allowed to die without treatment. The Japanese Government has never acknowledged the existence of this unit, but its existence was documented because of the later confessions by some of the doctors involved in the activities.

Ienaga’s court challenge encouraged many school textbook authors to include descriptions of Japanese war atrocities in their texts. As a result, textbooks were significantly improved in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

However despite the fact that Professor Ienaga has devoted himself full time to the issue of the textbook screening since his retirement, and has been battling continuously to make it possible for the truth about World War II to be told since before he commenced his first legal action 35 years ago, his victory in 1997 was only partial. The Supreme Court rejected claims that four other portions of his book had been illegally censored including a passage which described the rape of Chinese women by Japanese soldiers in Northern China.

This partial victory reflects a continuing divide in Japan between those like Professor Ienaga who want the truth about World War II to be known and revisionists who claim that well-documented war crimes and atrocities did not occur. These revisionist claims are often used by right wing militarist groups and their sympathizers which continue to exercise an insidious influence on Japanese society. Those like Professor Ienaga who have spoken out for the truth have often been physically attacked by extremists or otherwise penalized. When Professor Ienaga first gained a victory in one of his textbook lawsuits in 1970 right-wing extremists issued death threats to him (as well as to the judge and to lawyers involved in the case) and his house was surrounded day and night by thugs who kept him awake by shouting slogans and banging pots and pans. The actions of Professor Ienaga in continuing to fight for the truth have therefore required great courage, as well as determination and persistence.

By his determined fight over so many years to ensure that Japanese young people are able to read the truth about their country's recent history Professor Ienaga has done more than probably any other living person to ensure that the lessons of the history of World War II in Asia are not forgotten and that George Santayana's grim prophecy is not fulfilled in this region of the world. His contribution deserves the international recognition which the Nobel Peace Prize confers and the aims of ensuring lasting peace and discouraging revival of militarism will be greatly furthered by such an award. We therefore nominate Professor Ienaga for the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize.