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Spanning Japan's watershed twentieth century, this compelling autobiography traces Ienaga Saburo's childhood, education, wartime experience, academic career, and court battles. He is perhaps best known as the courageous plaintiff in three lawsuits (1965D1997) against the government seeking to end OcertificationO of textbooks, which even today constrains discussion of Japan's involvement in China and in the Pacific War. Minear contextualizes Ienaga's career and brings the story to the present with a masterly introduction of the man and his times and excerpts from Ienaga's court testimony and recent interviews.
List of contents
Chapter 1 Translator's Preface Chapter 2 Translator's Introduction Chapter 3 Recollections from Infancy Chapter 4 Education in the Period of Taisho Democracy and Its Effects on Me Chapter 5 Drawn to History: Recollections of Middle School Chapter 6 A Copernican Revolution in My Educational Life Chapter 7 Student Life after the Extinction of the Student Movement Chapter 8 My Life as a Scholar, Begun in the Era of the "Dark Valley" Chapter 9 My State of Mind in the Period Immediately after the Defeat Chapter 10 The Beginning of the Reverse Course and the Maturing of My Social Consciousness Chapter 11 To the Filing of the Textbook Lawsuits Chapter 12 The Textbook Trials and the Struggle at Tokyo University of Education
About the author
Ienaga Saburo (1913-), now retired, was a professor at Tokyo University of Education from 1944 to 1977 and the author of dozens of books (several translated into English, German, French, Spanish, and Russian) on Buddhist thought, on art, and on social and intellectual history. He remains one of Japan's _ and the world's _ foremost intellectuals. Richard H. Minear is professor of history at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and the author of Dr. Seuss Goes to War.
Summary
This autobiography of historian, Ienaga Saburo, traces his childhood, education, wartime experiences, academic career and two major battles that occupied his later years. One was the fight against the relocation of Tokyo University of Education; the other was the fight against certification.
