Postwar History Education in Japan and the Germanys: Guilty Lessons

(Routledge) This book explores how East and West Germany and Japan reconstituted national identity through history education after 1945. Students in East Germany, where party cadres controlled the curriculum, learned that World War II was a capitalist aberration, while students in West Germany, where teachers controlled the curriculum, learned lessons of shame and regeneration. In Japan, where bureaucrats purporting their neutrality managed the curriculum, students simply learned the empirical building blocks of history. The author argues that constructions of national identity are subject not only to moral and political concerns, but also to institutional constraints and opportunities. Dierkes is an associate professor and the Keidanren Chair in Japanese Research at the University of British Columbia’s Institute of Asian Research, where he teaches Asia Pacific Policy Studies.