33 Bekeš: History Textbook Discourse from the Point of View of Writer – Reader Interaction HISTORY TEXTBOOK DISCOURSE FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF WRITER – READER INTERACTION Andrej Bekeš INTRODUCTION Regarding actual discourses, including discourses in history textbooks, the following view on discourse by Fairclough is highly relevant: In using the term ‘discourse’ , I am proposing to regard language use as a form of social practice, rather than a purely individual activity or a re- flex of social variables. This has various implications … it implies that there is a dialectical relationship between discourse and social structure, there being a more general relationship between social practice and social structure: the latter is both the condition for, and an effect of, the former. 1 1 Fairclough, Norman. Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992, pp. 63 – 64. 34 The 20 th Century Through Historiographies and Textbooks My research in the project “The 20 th Century Through Historiographies and Textbooks in Japan and Slovenia” focuses on various aspects of the organization of discourse from the point of view of writer – reader interaction, including the framing of content by the choice of voice (as a syntactic category, J. tai), modal- ity and ‘voices’ (in the sense of Bakhtin’s 1981 R. golos, J. koe) in Japanese history textbooks and history monographs. The Linguistic Background of Writer – Reader Interaction First it is necessary to explain some linguistic background of writer – reader interaction. Communication implies participants, their roles in the communica- tion process being determined by the social context of communication and the subject matter of communication, which in the case of history writing, would be the experiential world. Further, there are several types of meanings, conveyed by language. In the context of history writing, the most relevant seem to be (i) experiential meanings, like in This is a pen; and (ii) interpersonal meanings, like in a request Could you please buy me a pack of cigarettes. 2 Voice. Grammatical voice pertains to experiential meanings. As has been pointed out by Kress and Hodge 3 , linguistic means, i.e., lexico-grammatical sys- tems, are not neutral regarding their content. Particular choices within particu- lar contexts can influence the reception of the text by the addressee (i.e., hearer/ reader). Voice 4 is a means for framing the narrated segment from a particular point of view through the choice of subject. The agent, i.e., the entity performing an act through volition, can thus be foregrounded by the use of the active voice, or backgrounded by the use of the mediopassive or passive voice. As Kress and Hodge have demonstrated, this property can be used to subtly manipulate the content. Another way to frame the content by a more brute force approach is the choice between expressing it in the main text and delegating it to the footnotes. Modality. Modal expressions signal to the hearer/reader what kind of lan- guage exchange is intended by the speaker/writer, i.e., a request, a question, an assertion, a statement, a conjecture etc. 5 In Japanese, modality expressions usually appear as what we can call suffixes attached to the predicate and/or as 2 Halliday, M.A.K. Language and Context: System and Instance. In: Collected Works of M.A.K. Halliday vol.9, London: Bloomsbury, 1991; ---, An Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Edward Arnold, 1994; Ruqaya, Hasan. The place of context in a systemic functional model. In: Halliday, M.A.K., Jonathan J. (eds.). Webster Continuum Companion to Systemic Functional Linguistics, London: Continuum, 2009, pp. 166–189. 3 Kress, Gunther, Hodge, Robert. Language as Ideology. London: Rutledge & Kegan, 1979. 4 In Japanese, the ‘passive’ judōtai, ‘mediopassive’ jihatsu and ‘active’ nōdōtai are distinguished. 5 Narrog, Heiko. Modality in Japanese: The Layered Structure of the Clause and Herarchies of Functional Categories. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2009. 35 Bekeš: History Textbook Discourse from the Point of View of Writer – Reader Interaction modal adverbs, modifying the whole sentence. This is illustrated in the example ( 1) b e l o w . (1) dōmo ashita wa yuki ga furu rashii somehow tomorrow TOPIC snow NOMINATIVE fall (NON-PAST) probably It will probably snow tomorrow. In the above example, dōmo (“somehow”, modal adverb) and rashii (“proba- bly”, modal suffix) are modal expressions expressing the probability of the enun- ciated content. By these expressions, the speaker/writer signals to the hearer/ reader that the enunciated content is not a fact but something probable. These particular expressions in the example above belong to the realm of so-called epistemic modality, signaling the status of the information that the speaker is dealing with – in this case the strength of evidence on which the statement is based. Indeed, modality expressions can be seen as signals or a trace of an inter- action, in which the speaker/writer is signaling to the hearer/reader what kind of verbal interaction (assertion, questioning, request, etc…) is going on. This view also corresponds to Bakhtin’s 6 view of the dialogic nature of text, the nature that is revealed even in monological texts. Modality in expository prose, including history writing, typically encom- passes epistemic modality, i.e., modality concerning the epistemic nature of the conveyed information, i.e., whether the information is a fact, of a second hand nature, a conjecture, a logical deduction, etc. Voices. Another important aspect of discourse are what Bakhtin (ibid.) calls ‘voices’. Several ‘voices’ can appear in the text: the neutral narrator’s ‘voice’, the author’s subjective/personal ‘voice’, ‘voices’ of other people, etc. ‘Voices’ thus rep- resent another channel of interaction. Purpose and Material The purpose of this paper is to elucidate writer–reader interaction in history textbook and history for general readership writing in Japan through analysis of the use of voice (in grammatical sense), modality expressions and ‘voices’ in Bakhtin’s sense. It is expected that the characteristics of interaction revealed through such analysis will give us further clues as to what kind of writer–reader interaction is envisioned by the authors and their publishers within the particu- lar social contexts where the textbooks are used. 6 Bakhtin, Mikhail M. Discourse in the Novel. In: The Dialogic Imagination (Voprosy literatury i estetiki). University of Texas Press, Slavic series; no. 1, 1981. 36 The 20 th Century Through Historiographies and Textbooks The analysis is based on a case study. To obtain a more in-depth view of the characteristics of history textbook linguistic interaction, three sources of mate- rials were used for the case study: 7 a book for the general readership written by an expert, i.e., Nakamura Masanori Sengoshi (Post-War History), a high school textbook, approved by the MEXT, written by Aoki Michio and other 12 authors (2007/2009) Nihonshi B: kaiteiban (A History of Japan B: Revised edition), and The Japan, China, Republic of Korea three countries joint editorial committee Atarashī Higashiajia no kin-gendai shi – jō: kokusai kankei no hendō de yomu mirai o hiraku rekishi (New East Asia modern and contemporary history Pt. I: History that is opening the future – as read from the changes in international relations), hereafter referred to as “CJK joint monograph”. ANALYSIS Framing of the narrative as seen in the employment of grammatical voice Segments of texts dealing with the topic of the “Nanjing massacre” in the high school history textbook by Aoki et al., and by the Japan, China, Republic of Korea three countries joint editorial committee, hereafter referred to as “CJK joint monograph” were analyzed for this purpose. In these two publications that are quite different as far as their purpose and target readers are concerned, there is an overall similarity in the framing of narrative via the use of voice and the flow of information. As the Japanese textbooks have to be approved by the MEXT 8 in order to be used in schools, one would expect differences in framing the narrative through voice, backgrounding of the agentivity of the Japanese army side, etc., but the differences in this respect were not very conspicuous. On the other hand, the history textbook description of the event was significantly shorter and a lot, if not most of the relevant information was presented in foot- notes, and thus made less transparent than in the “CJK joint monograph”. Not directly connected to the choice of voice, the “CJK joint monograph” also pos- sesses a more transparent style, uses shorter and more transparently structured 7 Aoki, Michio et al.. Nihonshi B – kaiteiban (History of Japan B – Revised edition), Tokyo: Sanseido, 2007–2009; Nakamura, Masanori. Sengoshi (Post War History, Iwanami shinsho series), Tokyo: Iwanami Publishers, 2005–2008; Japan, China, Republic of Korea 3 countries joint editorial committee. Atarashī Higashiajia no kin-gendai shi – jō: kokusai kankei no hendō de yomu mirai o hiraku rekishi (New East Asia Modern and Contemporary History Pt. I: History that is opening the future – as read from the changes in international relations), Tōkyō: Nihonhyōronsha, 2012, pp. 113–114. 8 Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. 37 Bekeš: History Textbook Discourse from the Point of View of Writer – Reader Interaction sentences and presents more ample and more explicit treatment of the “Nanjing massacre”. A more detailed consideration of the relevant factors would be neces- sary in order to judge where all these differences stem from. On the other hand, the differences between the high school history textbooks and other genres of history writing appear very clearly also in the characteristics of writer – reader interaction expressed through the use of modality and ‘voices’ in Bakhtin’s sense. The issue regarding possible sources of such differences will be touched upon again at the end of this paper. The next section is devoted to an analysis of writer – reader interaction in the above sense. Writer – reader interaction reflected in the use of modality and ‘voices’ For the analysis, the sections on the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal from the Nihonshi B textbook and Sengoshi were chosen. In the analyzed material, dark grey “underlined bold” marks the sentence’s final assertion of undisputable (within the context of the particular discourse) facts, expressed by means of the -ta form of the predicate. Light grey “underlined” marks other modal expres- sions such as conjecture, etc. The author’s voice is marked with dark grey “bold italic” if marked with a sentence final expression such as to omou (I think) etc., whereas the whole sentence in the author’s voice is marked in light grey “italic” It is interesting to observe that the quantity of text allotted to the topic is quite different in both books. In the Nihonshi B textbook, the section is just 347 characters long, about one fourth of the length found in Sengoshi where 1,327 characters were used to cover the same topic. This hints at the fact that textbooks have to cram an enormous amount of information into a limited space, which also influences the type of verbal interaction evolving in the text. As can be seen in Tables 1 and 2, this is indeed the fact – as will also be made clear in the following section. 38 The 20 th Century Through Historiographies and Textbooks Table 1: The text on the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal in the Nihonshi B textbook (p. 340– 341) 1 1945年、 総司令部は 東条英機元首相ら39 人を戦争犯罪容疑者 （戦犯） と して逮捕 し、 1946年5月 、容 疑 を審理するための極 東国際軍事裁判 （東 京裁判） が開廷し た。 1945-Nen, sō shirei-bu wa Tōjō Hideki moto shushōra 39 nin o sensō hanzai yōgisha (senpan) to shite taiho shi, 1946-nen 5 gatsu, yōgi o shinri suru tame no Kyokutō kokusai gunji saiban (Tōkyō saiban) ga kaitei shita. In 1945, General Headquarters arrested former Prime Minister Tojo Hideki and a further 39 people as war criminal suspects (war criminals) and in May 1946, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (Tokyo Trials) to try the suspects had begun. 2 東京裁判にはアジ ア ・ 太平洋の戦争で の戦勝国11か国が参 加し、 オーストラリア 人のウ ェ ッ ブが裁判 長となっ た。 Tōkyō saiban ni wa Ajia Taiheiyō no sensō de no senshō- koku 11-kakoku ga sanka shi, ōsutoraria hito no Uebbu ga saiban-chō to natta. The 11 victorious powers of the Asia-Pacific participated in the Tokyo Trials, with the Australian Webb becoming the presiding judge. 3 裁判では、 A級戦犯 として起訴された東 条英機ら28人の被告 <1>が戦争全般に対 する指導的役割をは たしたかどうかをめぐ って審理され た。 Saiban dewa, A kyū senpan to shite kiso sareta Tōjō Hideki-ra 28 nin no hikoku < 1 > ga sensō zenpan ni taisuru shidō-teki yakuwari o hatashita ka dō ka o megutte shinri sareta. In the trials, 28 A class war criminal defendants including Tojo Hideki, were prosecuted as war criminals, with the trial centering on whether they played an overall leadership role in the war or not. 4 裁判のなかで日本軍 による侵略の実態が 国民の前に明らかに なり、 1948年11月に結 審して東条英機ら7人 が絞首刑となっ た。 Saiban no naka de Nippongun ni yoru shinryaku no jittai ga kokumin no mae ni akiraka ni nari, 1948-nen 11 tsuki ni kes- shin shite Tōjō Hideki-ra 7 nin ga kōshukei to natta. During the trial, facts concern- ing the invasion by the Japanese Army became clear and were put in front of the Japanese public, and the trial concluded in November 1948, with Hideki Tojo and 7 other defendants sentenced to hanging. 5 また、 戦争中に非人 道的行為を働いたと して起訴されたB ・ C 級戦犯の裁判<2>が 日本国内や東南アジ ア各地で行なわれ、 日本軍に徴用された 朝鮮や台湾の人びと のなかには死刑とな った者も多数い た。 Mata, sensō-chū ni hijindōteki kōi o hataraita to shite kiso sa reta B C kyū senpan no saiban < 2 > ga Nippon koku- nai ya Tōnan Ajia kakuchi de okonaware, Nippongun ni chōyō sa reta Chōsen ya Taiwan no hitobito no naka ni wa shikei to natta mono mo tasū ita. In addition, trials of indicted B and C-class war criminals accused of perpetrating acts against humanity during the war were carried out in Japan and Southeast Asian countries, and many of the Koreans and the Taiwanese drafted into the Japanese Army by the Japanese military were also sentenced to death. 39 Bekeš: History Textbook Discourse from the Point of View of Writer – Reader Interaction Table 2: Text on Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal in Sengoshi (p. 28–31) 1 　対日占領のも う一 つの重要な柱は、 ポ ツダム宣言第10項に も とづき 「一切の戦 争犯罪人」 を逮捕し、 厳重なる処罰を加え ることで あっ た。 Tainichi senryō no mōhitotsu no jūyōna hashira wa, Potsudamu sengen dai 10-kō ni motozuki ‘issai no sensō hanzai hito’ o taiho shi, genjū naru shobatsu o kuwaeru koto deatta. Another important pillar of the occupation of Japan, based on Section 10 of the Potsdam Declaration, was to arrest “all war criminals”, and punish them severely. 2 一九四六年五月三 日から始まった極東 国際軍事裁判 （東京 裁判） は、 約二年半 の審理をへて四八年 一一月に閉廷し た。（ 図 7 ）。 1946 nen 5gatsu 3nichi kara hajimatta Kyokutō kokusai gunji saiban (Tōkyō saiban) wa, yaku ni-nen han no shinri o hete 48nen 11gatsu ni heitei shita. (Zu 7). The International Military Tribunal for the Far East (the Tokyo War Crimes Trials), beginning on May 3, 1946, went on for about two and a half years until November ‘48 (Photo 7 3 ウエッブ裁判長は、 ニ八人の被告のう ち、 東条英機らA級戦 犯七名に絞首刑、 荒 木貞夫元陸軍大臣ら 一六名に終身禁固を 宣告した。 Uebbu saiban-chō wa, nijūhachi nin no hikoku no uchi, Tōjō Hideki-ra A kyū senpan nana-mei ni kōshukei, Araki Sadao moto rikugun daijin-ra jūroku-mei ni shūshin kinko o senkoku shita. Webb, the presiding judge, sentenced Tojo Hideki and an- other seven Class-A war crimi- nals to hanging, and sentenced former Army Minister Araki Sadao and another fifteen peo- ple to life imprisonment. 4 この裁判の経過につ いては優れた書物が 何冊も出ているので 詳し く 述べる必要は ない （朝日新聞東京 裁判記者団著 『東京 裁判』 上下、 島内龍 起 『東京裁判』 、 大沼 保昭 『東京裁判から 戦後責任の思想へ』 な ど ）。 Kono saiban no keika ni tsuite wa sugureta shomotsu ga nan-satsu mo dete iru node kuwashiku noberu hitsuyō wa nai (Asahi shinbun Tōkyō saiban kisha-dan-cho “Tōkyō saiban” jōge, Shimauchi Tatsuki “Tōkyō saiban”, ōnuma Yasuaki“Tōkyō saiban kara sengo sekinin no shisō e” nado). This need not be a detailed de- scription of the trial since there are excellent books about it. (Asahi Shimbun Tokyo court reporters “Tokyo War Crimes Trial” pt. 1, 2; Shimauchi Tatsuki “Tokyo War Crimes Trials”, Onuma Yasuaki “From the Tokyo War Crimes Trial to ideas about the responsibility for the war”, etc.). 5 むしろここでは、 東京 裁判の意義について 述べておき たい。 Mushiro koko dewa, Tōkyō saiban no igi ni tsuite nobete okitai. Here, I would rather describe the significance of the Tokyo War Crimes Trials. 6 　第一に、 東京裁判 の日本国民に対する 最大の影響は、 満州 事変 （柳条湖事件） や 南京大虐殺の事実が 法廷を通じて初めて 明 る み に 出 たことに ある。 Daiichi ni, Tōkyō saiban no Nihon kokumin ni taisuru saidai no eikyō wa, Manshū ji- hen (ryūjōko jiken) ya Nankin daigyakusatsu no jijitsu ga hōtei o tsūjite hajimete akaru- mi ni deta koto ni aru. First, the maximum impact of the Tokyo War Crimes Trials on the Japanese people is that the Manchurian Incident (Liutiaohu/Ryujoko Incident) and the Massacre of Nanjing came to be known for the first time through these court pro- ceedings. 40 The 20 th Century Through Historiographies and Textbooks 7 事件当時、 日本国民 は満鉄線路を爆被し たのは中国兵の仕業 だという軍部の発表 を鵜呑みにして、 中 同憎しの感情を高め ていっ た。 Jiken tōji, Nihon kokumin wa Mantetsu senro o bakuha shita no wa Chūgoku-hei no shiwa- za da to iu gunbu no happyō o unomi ni shite, chū dō nikushi no kanjō o takamete itta. At the time of the Manchurian Incident, the Japanese people accepted without question the fact that it was Chinese soldiers who blew up the Mantetsu line, which all the more enraged their feelings. 8 新聞 ・ ラジオも反中 国のキャンペーンを 張って戦争熱を煽り 立て た。 Shinbun rajio mo han Chūgoku no kyanpēn o hatte sensō netsu o aori tateta. The newspapers and radio also fueled the anti-China propa- ganda campaign with their propaganda. 9 とこ ろが実際は関東 軍の謀略であったこ とが、 東京裁判で明 らかにされ た。 Tokoroga jissai wa Kantōgun no bōryaku deatta koto ga, Tōkyō saiban de akiraka ni sa reta. But the Tokyo War Crimes Trials revealed that it was actu- ally a plot by the Kwantung Army. 10 これを知った日本国 民は 「だまされた」 と 心底から思ったもの である。 Kore o shitta Nihon kokumin wa ’damasareta’ to shinsoko kara omotta mono dearu. When the Japanese people learned about this, they sin- cerely believed that they had been “cheated”. 11 この裁判を通じて日 本人は、 権力やマス メディアのウソに誤 魔化されず、 真実を 知るこ との大切さを 学ん だ。 Kono saiban o tsūjite Nihonjin wa, kenryoku ya masumedia no uso ni gomakasarezu, shin- jitsu o shiru koto no taisetsusa o mananda. Through these trials, the Japanese people learned the importance of knowing the truth and of not being deceived by the lies of the powers that be and the mass media. 12 第二に、 古い言葉だが 「因果応報」 、 つま り 悪いこ とをすれば必 ず 罰 せられるという 考えを改めて国民的 規模で学んだよ うに お もう。 Daini ni, furui kotoba da ga ‘ingaōhō’, tsumari warui koto o sureba kanarazu basse- rare- ru to iu kangae o aratamete kokumin-teki kibo de manan- da yō ni omou. Second, though “retribution”, i. e., ‘If you do bad things, you end up being punished in the end’, is an old expression, I think that its truth has been learned again on a national scale. 13 東京裁判では、 「平和 に対する罪」 「人道に 対する罪」 を新たに 設定して、 被告人を裁 く方 式 をとっ た。 Tōkyō saiban de wa, ‘heiwa ni taisuru tsumi’ ‘ jindō ni taisuru tsumi’ o arata ni settei shite, hikokunin o sabaku hōshiki o totta. At the Tokyo War Crimes Trials, (the concepts of) “crimes against peace” and “crimes against humanity” were newly introduced and the defendants were judged ac- cording to this as well. 14 これに対しては、 イン ドのパル判事をはじ め日本側弁護人 （清 瀬一郎ら） が主張し たように、 法はその実 施以前の事項にさか のぼって適用されな いという不遡及の原 則がある。 Kore ni taishite wa, Indo no Paru hanji o hajime Nihon- gawa bengonin (Kiyose Ichirō- ra) ga shuchō shita yō ni, hō wa sono jisshi izen no jikō ni sakanobotte tekiyō sa renai to iu fusokyū no gensoku ga aru. Apropos these new crimes, the defense for the Japanese side (Kiyose Ichiro et al.), and the Judge Pal from India argued that in law, there is a principle of non-retroactivity and that it should not be applied retro- actively. 41 Bekeš: History Textbook Discourse from the Point of View of Writer – Reader Interaction 15 これに照らしてみれ ば、 東京裁判は明ら かに不遡及の原則に 違反し、 違法、 無効で あると言うのだ。 Kore ni terashite mireba, Tōkyō saiban wa akiraka ni fusokyū no gensoku ni ihan shi, ihō, mukō dearu to iu noda. In the light of this, the Tokyo War Crimes Trials clearly were in violation of the principle of non-retroactivity, therefore illegal and it could be said to be invalid. 16 事実、 第二次世界大 戦前の国際法は侵略 戦争を犯罪とはして いなかっ た。 Jijitsu, dainiji sekaitaisen mae no kokusai-hō wa shinryaku sensō o hanzai to wa shite inakatta. In fact, before World War II, international law did not con- sider wars of aggression as war crimes. 17 そ の 意 味 で 、私 も 東 京裁判は不遡及の原 則 に 反 し て お り 、「 勝 者の裁き」 である と考 える。 Sono imi de, watashi mo Tōkyō saiban wa fusokyū no gensoku ni hanshite ori,’shōsha no sabaki’ dearu to kangaeru. In that sense, the Tokyo War Crimes Trials, being contrary to the principle of non-retroac- tivity, can be considered to be a (form of) “winner’s justice”. 18 しかし、 こ こ で思考停 止に陥ってしまえば、 人類に何の進歩もな い ことに なろう。 Shikashi, koko de shikō teishi ni ochītte shimaeba, jinrui ni nani no shinpo mo nai koto ni naroo. However, if one would fall into the trap of stopping to think at this point, there would be no progress for the human race. 19 と く に原子爆弾をは じめ近代科学兵器 の開発、 使用によ り 人類は絶滅の危機に さらされ ることに な っ た。 Tokuni genshi bakudan o hajime kindai kagaku heiki no kaihatsu, shiyō ni yori jinrui wa zetsumetsu no kiki ni sara- sa- reru koto ni natta. In particular, with the devel- opment and use of the atomic bomb and weapons based on modern science, the human race has become exposed to great danger. 20 国際法のレベルだけ でなく 、 科学技術、 文 化のあらゆる分野に おいて 「核兵器時代 の思想」 は不可欠と なったのだ。 Kokusai-hō no reberu dake de naku, kagaku gijutsu, bunka no arayuru bun’ya ni oite ‘kakuheiki jidai no shisō’ wa fukaketsu to natta no da. Not only at the level of inter- national law, but also at the level of science and technology and in every area of culture, “thinking [of how to live] in the nuclear weapons era” be- came indispensable. 21 その意味で、 私はオラ ンダのレーリンク判 事のいう よ うに 「国際 法は動く」 という観点 が不可欠だ と考 える （ レ ーリンク、 ヵッセ ー ゼ著／小菅信子訳 『 レーリ ンク判事の東 京裁判歴史的証言と 展 望 』）。 Sono imi de, watashi wa Oranda no Rērinku hanji no iu yō ni ‘kokusai-hō wa ugoku’ to iu kanten ga fukaketsuda to kangaeru (Rērinku, Kassēze- cho/ Kosuge Nobuko-yaku “Rērinku hanji no Tōkyō saiban rekishi-teki shōgen to tenbō”). In this sense, I think that what the Dutch judge Röling said, namely, that “international law moves on” is an essential point of view (Röling ‘ Cassese/ transl. by Kosuge Nobuko, “Judge Röling’s Tokyo War Crimes Trial: Its historical testimony and future develop- ment”). 42 The 20 th Century Through Historiographies and Textbooks 22 東京裁判の判決当 時、 日本国民から大 きな反対がなかった のは、 敗戦国民と して 「やむを得ない」 「当 然だ」 という感情が支 配的であったためで あ る が 、こ れ に 加 え て 「戦争はこ り ごりだ」 という平和主義の思 想が国民に広く 浸透 していたためである。 Tōkyō saiban no hanketsu tōji, nihonkokumin kara ōkina hantai ga nakatta no wa, haisen kokumin to shite ‘yamuwoenai’ ‘tōzenda’ to iu kanjō ga shihai-teki deatta tame dearuga, kore ni kuwaete ’sensō wa kori gorida’ to iu heiwa shugi no shisō ga koku- min ni hiroku shintō shite ita tame dearu. At the time when the verdicts of the Tokyo War Crimes Trials were handed down, the fact that the Japanese people voiced no great opposition to them was due to the feeling that they were “unavoidable”, and of it being “ natural” that was dominant among the de- feated people of Japan, and in addition, also due to the paci- fist feeling that was prevalent among a public which was “fed up with the war”. 23 であればこそ、 のち にアメリカが ベトナム 戦争で非人道的な戦 争犯罪をおかしたに もかかわらず、 何ら 罰せられないのは不 当・不 法 で あ ると い う 批判が国際的に高ま っ た。 Deareba koso, nochi ni Amerika ga Betonamu sensō de hijindōtekina sensō hanzai o okashita ni mo kakawarazu, nanra basserarenai no wa futō fuhō dearu to iu hihan ga kokusai-teki ni takamatta. On the other hand later criti- cism stating that it is unfair and illegal that the United States did not receive any kind of punishment, despite their having committed war crimes against humanity in the Vietnam War has increased internationally. 24 一九六八年、 イギリ スの哲学者ラ ッセル やフランスの哲学者 サル トルが 「世界法 廷」 を聞き、 米国を道 義的に告発したとき の鮮烈な印象を 私 は 忘 れない 。 1968 nen, Igirisu no tetsug- akusha Rasseru ya Furansu no tetsugakusha Sarutoru ga ’sekaihōtei’ o kiki, Beikoku o dōgi-teki ni kokuhatsu shita toki no senretsuna inshō o watashi wa wasurenai. I will never forget the vivid im- pression [it made on me] when in 1968, I heard that the British philosopher Russell and the French philosopher Sartre had started the “World Court”, and morally accused the United States. INTERPRETATION Analysis in Section 2.1 hints that the framing of events such as “Nanjing massacre” which put Japan’s past in negative light in MEXT approved Textbook Nihonshi B does not differ essentially from the “CJK joint monograph”. Limitations regarding length, ample usage of footnotes, and less transparent style in the former seem to be more due to the requrements of content and style of history textbook writing in Japan, influenced as much by the wish to convey the relevant content as by the necessity to adapt to the formalized evaluation of knowledge by the system of entrance exams. This is also clear from the analysis in Section 2.2. The description of Tokyo Tribunal in the Textbook Nihonshi B is very condensed, the whole passage be- ing only 347 characters long. The textbook asserts only the facts, with no other 43 Bekeš: History Textbook Discourse from the Point of View of Writer – Reader Interaction modality being expressed or author’s ‘voice’ being present. Thus the interaction between the writer and the reader is limited to the writer’s one sided providing of what is presented as unquestionable facts. There is no attempt of nuancing on the part of the writer, or of the writer’s subjective perception being included. This is indeed something that can be expected to happen if the amount of space is as limited as it is in this case. In the case of the general readership oriented postwar history monograph – Sengoshi, the situation is diametrically opposite. The space allotted to the topic, with 1,327 characters, is about four times more ample than in the history text- book. This fact is reflected also in the type of verbal interaction employed in Sengoshi. The use of modality meanings is more varied, including the narrative stream with assertions using the assertive past -ta form of verbal predicates; there is also background information marked with non past -ru forms of the predicate. There are also various types of epistemic modalities, such as logical conclusions or explanations, expressed by – noda/no dearu, generic truths, expressed by -mono dearu, and conjectures, expressed by the predicate sufix -ō, etc. The ‘voices’, too, are more variegated. There is of course the neutral narra - tor’s voice, marked by the omission of personal pronouns, detached, impersonal use of predicates and the exclusive use of the third person. Besides the narrator’s ‘voice’, though, the author’s ‘voice’ is also present. The author’s voice is revealed in the use of predicate forms such as -to omou (I think), -to kangaeru (I con- sider), -tai (I want), and the explicit use of personal pronouns such as watashi (I),. among others. CONCLUSION In the case study, two pairs of texts belonging to two different genres of writ- ing about history were examined. In the first pair, MEXT approved textbook Nihonshi B and “CJK joint monograph” treat the topic of “Nanjing massacre” in a relatively comparable way and, except the extensive use of footnotes in Nihonshi B, no conspicuous discrepancies were noticed. This is true also regarding the application of grammatical voice (J. tai) to present the critical events in Nanjing massacre. On the other hand, Nihonshi B and Sengoshi treatment of “Tokyo Tribunal” was quite different. Since both texts deal with the same topic and were produced at approximately the same time, i.e. in the second half of the first decade of the third millennium, why should the differences be so pronounced? Why do we 44 The 20 th Century Through Historiographies and Textbooks find that in the textbook the absolutely predominant mode of interaction is the omniscient presentation of facts, while other more interesting ways of getting acquainted with historical facts are possible, as can be seen in Sengoshi. One can think of several reasons. One is genre. General history textbooks of the type such as Nihonshi B seem to have the sole purpose of covering as many facts as possible, without any leeway to engage the reader in a meaningful way into the content being presented to her or him. Such a mechanical, unproblematic presentation of history presents no chal- lenge to the juvenile budding intelligence. The result is that readers (in this case high school students) perceive historical narrative as a string of undisputed facts, and as an unappetizing burden to be memorized if they want to graduate from high school and enter their chosen university. One might look for the possible origins of this type of genre in many direc- tions, the first that comes into mind being the prevalent level of efficiency re- quired of students at entrance exams. But since the author has had a similar ex- perience with history textbooks from his own years at high school in Slovenia – albeit half a century ago, but nonetheless applicable – entrance exams may not be the whole answer. All in all, the question of how to stage the writer – reader interaction in his- tory textbooks is without doubt a problem that deserves further serious exami- nation in a comparative perspective.