著者

GRAHAM Jimu

出版者

文教大学

雑誌

文学部紀要 (ISSN:09145729)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.32, no.2, pp.1-38, 2019-03

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This is a continuation of the discussion on how various types of school textbooks used in Japan and the United States lack a thoroughness that begs for supplementation or revision (Graham 67-93). In addition to virtually ignoring war's role in the social history of American racial relations by Japanese textbook writers, within the framework of history instruction, both countries' textbooks avoid authentic testimony by individual soldiers on what it feels like to kill another human being, whether combatant or non-combatant. While literature and popular culture aptly take up this theme for emotional and aesthetic effect, raw and artless accounts of war's most grotesque realities are seldom if ever juxtaposed with the names and dates textbooks offer students for rote memorization that can lead to success on examinations. A direct proximity of such recollections to the dry narrative of modern war's geopolitical ramifications would deepen an understanding of what war really is, at least where more sensitive students are concerned.