A modern democratic nation with a universal (state) education system always faces a curriculum question concerning the knowledge taught in its schools: Whose knowledge ought to be presented to students, who ought to decide it, and by what processes? Political struggles over textbook portrayals of Japan’s wartime past stretch back over half a century, with roots grounded in the contradictory process of Japan’s postwar democratization of education, curriculum policy, and official knowledge and in the subsequent process whereby the early democratization policies were reversed.