Chinese books "extreme" in interpretation of history: Japan FM

Chinese textbooks are 'extreme' in their interpretation of history, Japan's foreign minister said a day after China's president demanded Tokyo do more to improve relations damaged by new Japanese school textbooks.

Chinese textbooks are "extreme" in their interpretation of history, Japan's foreign minister said today, a day after China's president demanded Tokyo do more to improve relations damaged by new Japanese school textbooks that allegedly whitewash war-time atrocities.

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However, despite the criticism, Nobutaka Machimura hailed a meeting between Chinese President Hu Jintao and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi in Indonesia, saying it has paved the way for the two Asian powers to start repairing battered ties that have led to violent anti-Japanese protests across China.

"From the perspective of a Japanese person, Chinese textbooks appear to teach that everything the Chinese government has done has been correct," Machimura said on a TV Asahi talk show. "There is a tendency towards this in any country, but the Chinese textbooks are extreme in they way they uniformly convey the 'our country is correct' perspective."

The foreign minister also defended Japan's textbooks, saying they do not gloss over Japan's invasion of other Asian countries as alleged, and expressed dismay with the lopsided view of history taught in Chinese schools.

Machimura said Tokyo would officially inform Beijing what it thought of China's textbooks after it fully reviews them. Machimura said Tang Jiaxuan, China's state councillor and a former foreign minister, had invited him to do so during a recent discussion about teaching history.

But Machimura said he was confident the neighbours' disputes could be resolved. "They're next door. We can't move.