5 Preface
Preface
This volume is a product of the four workshops we conducted as part of 
the Second Bilateral Joint Research Projects between Slovenia and Japan, which 
took place in Ljubljana and Tokyo from 2014 to 2016 with the financial sup-
port of the Slovenian Research Agency and Japan Society for Promotion of 
Science (JSPS). Our joint research was given the title “A Comparative Analysis 
of the 20
th
 Century in Slovenia and Japan through Historiography and History 
Textbooks”.
The results of the First Bilateral Joint Research Project were published in 
Ljubljana in 2013 as a book entitled School History and Textbooks: A Comparative 
Analysis of History Textbooks in Japan and Slovenia
1
. At the First Bilateral Joint 
Research Project the following five points were discussed: 
1) A comparison of the changes in the systems of history education and text-
books after Slovene independence in 1991 and after World War II in Japan 
from the viewpoint of regional history and national history, 
2) Considering Slovene history education in the Former Yugoslavia and 
Japanese history education in East Asia from a wider perspective, 
3) The possibility of history textbook studies as a field of area studies, 
4) The formation of a network between historians and history teachers in each 
country,
5) The promotion of confidence-building between historians and linguists.
The Second Bilateral Joint Research Project started on the basis of the above-
mentioned discussions. The main purpose of the Project was to compare the 
great changes of the 20
th
 century in Slovenia and Japan through not only the 
1 Shiba, Nobuhiro, Gabrič, Aleš, Suzuki, Kenta, Lazarević, Žarko (eds.). School History and Textbooks: 
A Comparative Analysis of History Textbooks in Japan and Slovenia. Ljubljana: Inštitut za novejšo 
zgodovino, 2013.

6 The 20
th
 Century Through  Historiographies and Textbooks 
countries’ respective history textbooks, but also their historiography from an 
interdisciplinary point of view.
The 20
th
 century is considered a very significant period in historiography. The 
whole century was marked with deep geopolitical, economic and social changes. 
State politics, economies and societies took on new shapes through many transfor-
mations, and new forms of economic and social life were introduced. In the case of 
20
th
 century we can distinguish two turning points; two watersheds which strong-
ly affected historical developments in regional terms. The first one was WWI and 
WWII and the ensuing postwar reality and the second was the end of the Cold 
War (the transition period) with the subsequent collapse of the communist re-
gimes in Europe and Asia and Soviet Central Asia, which in East Asia transformed 
itself into the communist party led capitalism we see today in China and Vietnam 
or remained basically unchanged, as in North Korea. Each of these events had a 
significant influence on creating new historical identities on the level of societies, 
interest groups and individuals, since the changes in geopolitical terms, statehoods 
and political and economic regimes were far-reaching. The establishment of a new 
identity framework that would enable different societies and individuals to legiti-
mize their positions in the new social-political reality was a continuing process 
and an integral part of the historical developments in this century. This process 
did not emerge all of a sudden, but was created over time and under specific social 
circumstances - to which it also had to adapt. History was and is still an important 
factor, which we emphasize here as the assertion of our main thesis. From the as-
pect of society as a whole as well as its political, economic and cultural elites and 
individuals, the question of the historical substantiation of the political, cultural, 
social and economic character of societies had now become very important.
Such changes did not occur only on an internal level or on the level of indi-
vidual states/societies, but also within the international framework. Our thesis 
was that after each great change, the analyzed regions were faced with the pro-
cesses of reinterpretation of history due to the changes in the societal system(s) 
of values, priorities and perceptions. Furthermore, we claim that these reinter-
pretations were first elaborated in the historiography and gradually transmitted 
to the history textbooks. In a way, we can talk about the “battle for history”, the 
“battle” for the interpretation of history from the aspect of the socio-economic 
positions of interest groups or individuals, with the intent of legitimizing their 
current positions, relations and interactions - also on the international level 
within the framework of international relations. The notion of the international 
environment and international relations is very important from the aspect of 
both analyzed regions. The basic concept of the project therefore represented 
a comparative and multi-disciplinary research study and interpretation of the 

7
genesis, dynamics and typological process structure of identity concepts in Japan 
and East Asia and in Slovenia in comparison to the Southeast European region.
Our aim was to carry out an interdisciplinary historical and linguistic com-
parative analysis of changes and the prevalence of predominant historical dis-
courses (coexistence or conflict relation) from the viewpoint of contents, re/
interpretations and linguistic structural characteristics. With this we focused 
on the definition and comparison of changing re/interpretations in the national 
historiographies/monographs, on inter/national history as a whole, and the re-
flections of these changes in the history textbooks printed after World War II 
in the above mentioned two different cultural environments and sets of values. 
Analyses of such societal contexts are important for the understanding of the 
social mentality as well as the role of history in a given society in order to bet-
ter understand the “battle for history”. The basic research issue of the project 
was precisely the interaction between the social environment and the structures, 
contents and interpretations of history at the level of historiography and his-
tory textbooks and their mutual interdependence in historical perspective on 
both the national and the international level. We could not necessarily attain all 
objectives, but are confident that some positive results may have been produced 
nonetheless.
Nobuhiro Shiba – Žarko Lazarević
Preface