Teaching the history of the ‘fifteen years’ war’ in Japanese junior high schools: teachers’ aims, approaches, and strategies

Controversy has long surrounded the treatment of the 1931-1945 period in Japan’s history education. However, studies to date have largely focused on history textbooks. This study scrutinizes how controversial topics were dealt with in junior high school classrooms, through interviews with 21 teachers in three areas of Japan, alongside lesson observations where possible. It was found that teachers usually taught about some controversial topics, but not necessarily at length. Influences upon the teaching of such topics included educational structures, past-related scholarship, social and political context, anticipated student reactions, and teachers’ own attitudes and perceptions. When teaching controversial topics, teachers used a variety of approaches in navigating their action space, including use of authoritative independent materials, limiting the visibility of their teaching, relating historical events to contemporary ramifications, displacement and implication, encouraging recognition of others’ perspectives, and omission and avoidance. Support from colleagues and management was important in enabling teachers to take risks in teaching controversial topics, but such support may be limited in the contemporary context.