ABSTRACT
In the mid 1980s, Ienaga Saburo found himself locked in three court battles with the Japanese state and the Ministry of Education (MOE), and all three
lawsuits were moving up to the Japanese Supreme Court. His three lawsuits
had some differences in their nature and focus (the first was a civil suit to
demand compensation, focusing on education, the second an administrative
suit to revoke the MOE’s decision in the textbook screening of Ienaga’s text,
and the third was another civil suit, focusing on history), but all challenged
the legitimacy of the state’s exercise of power in textbook-screening pro-
cesses, invoking Ienaga’s rights as a textbook author. In the course of events, the court became the site of a symposium to discuss educational
freedom and state power (see Chapter 1), or, alternately, the site of debates
over historical methods and methodology (see Chapter 5).
