'Win or lose-- What matter? We fight for freedom of spirit.' Thus writes
Ienaga Saburo, preeminent Japanese historian and courageous plaintiff in
three lawsuits (1965D1997) against the government seeking to end
Ministry of Education OcertificationO of textbooks, which even today
constrains discussion of Japan's actions in China and elsewhere in the
Pacific. The cases arose specifically from government censorship of
Ienaga's forthright textbook accounts of the Pacific War and of such
controversial events as the Nanjing massacre. The questions he has
forced into the public arena are central both to the nature of Japanese
democracy and to issues of war and memory. They have shaped Japanese
politics and frictions with its Asian neighbors and with the United
States for half a century. Spanning Japan's watershed twentieth century,
this compelling autobiography traces Ienaga's childhood, education,
wartime experience, academic career, and the two major battles that
occupied his later years. One was the fight against the relocation of
Tokyo University of Education to a new Oresearch cityO outside Tokyo;
the other was the fight against Ocertification.O Neither battle ended in
victory for Ienaga, but as he eloquently expresses in the short poem
above, defeat did not make them any less worth fighting. Minear provides
a masterly introduction of the man and his times and brings the story to
the present with excerpts from Ienaga's court testimony and recent
interviews. Illustrated with photos and textbook extracts, this volume
brings to life the experience and intellectual odyssey of one of the
leading shapers of contemporary Japan. It will be widely read and used
by Japan specialists as well as all scholars and general readers
concerned with issues of academic freedom and war and peace.
