ABSTRACT
Writing history textbooks in Japan is not the most exciting business. To begin with, the number of pages allocated to any given book is too small to accommodate many facts and names. Governmental regulations require authors to describe the entirety of Japan’s 1,300-year recorded history in a single volume of about 220 pages. Publishers also force authors to include as many historical events and names as possible to meet the market’s strong demand for preparation aids for entrance examinations to upper schools and universities. As a result, we, the authors of history textbooks, face two different pressures: the requirements of the Japanese educational system and the demand to create a textbook adequate to support students’ studies for entrance exams. Given the way they are written and the purposes they are designed to serve, it is not surprising that Japanese students tend to forget the contents of history textbooks as soon as they have taken and passed their entrance exams. The textbooks are just boring. Even worse, students often begin to hate history after being forced to memorize so many facts and names in high school.
