ABSTRACT
This chapter further examines the reaction against right-wing historical revisionism and the endeavours for historical reconciliation in East Asia. It discusses the history of the ‘textbook problem’ in Japan in comparative context, highlighting similarities and differences with the experience of German-Polish dialogue over history textbooks. The Japanese reception and perception of this European dialogue serves as a background to the discussion of the value and limitations of this ‘model’ for the East Asian case, taking as its starting point the arguments put forward by the very scholar who introduced the German-Polish dialogue to Japan: Nishikawa Masao. The argument here suggests that new ways of writing history, that involve going beyond the ‘traditional’ division between one’s own national history and those of foreign ‘others’ without sacrificing one’s subject position, might in the long run be more pertinent than the German-Polish model of bi-national reconciliation. This suggestion resonates with Sun Ge’s problematisation of the ‘East Asia perspective’ earlier in this volume.
