Legitimation Game: The Anti-Japanese Textbook Issue in Sino–Japanese Relations, 1914–1937

This article examines the anti-Japanese textbook issue, a diplomatic controversy from 1914 to 1937 between Japan and China over whether the Chinese government was inciting hatred against Japan by promoting school textbooks with offensive and xenophobic content. I argue that the issue represents a legitimation process, whereby Japan's concern about the content of these textbooks was determined by, and fluctuated with, its need to mobilise domestic and international audiences for its China policy in changing geopolitical contexts. Such an approach helps to explain why the anti-Japanese textbook issue persisted for more than two decades after 1914 and why Japan's approach to the matter inconsistently oscillated between interventionist and non-interventionist principles. More broadly, the article illustrates the value of paying closer attention to the internal inconsistencies of Japanese imperialism rather than merely its expansionist tendencies, and of analysing education and the writing of textbooks in early modern East Asia not just as a means of nation-building but also as part of Japan's efforts to build its empire in a broader, transnational context.