When the Chinese Communist party’s Eighth Route Army marched into Wuxiang county in 1937, one of its commanders asked to see the textbooks at a village school. Xiao Jianghe, then nine years old, remembers that the commander was not impressed with what he read. Now a tall, bone-thin 87-year-old with cataracts clouding his left eye, Mr Xiao recalls the officer’s verdict: “He said: ‘These are old books. You should read new books on the anti-Japanese resistance and sing songs about it.’”
The Eighth Route Army had rushed to Wuxiang, in northern Shanxi province, to harass an advancing Japanese unit that it would later defeat at the Battle of Pingxing Pass. That its commanders took time to examine Mr Xiao’s school demonstrated the Communist party’s appreciation of the power of textbooks. Like victors elsewhere, the party has been writing its version of history — and expunging rival narratives — ever since.
Textbooks and patriotic memorials remain central to a new battle between competing nationalisms in Japan and the two countries that bore the brunt of its military expansion in the first half of the 20th century — China and Korea.