Ethics Newsline®

TOKYO
Japanese politicians and education officials last week agreed on a new definition of patriotism to be included in that nation’s educational plan — no small moral issue in a nation worried that patriotism could translate to the type of nationalism that brought Japan into World War II.

The Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper reported that the agreement came when the Liberal Democratic Party toned down the description of patriotism while keeping the key expression “to love the nation.”

But the definition may still face opposition because the Japanese word for nation, kuni, can be interpreted variously as “homeland” or “governing system.”

The latter interpretation worries one senior official, who told the Yomiuri Shimbun that loving the governing system “was a slogan of nationalism in the prewar era: You have to die for the governing system, which you love.”

The full definition of patriotism in the act, which is the first revision of education law since 1947, reads: “cultivating an attitude which respects tradition and culture, loves the nation and homeland that have fostered them, while respecting other countries and contributing to international peace and development,” according to the Japan Times.

A dispatch from the Japan Economic Newswire, a branch of the Kyodo News Service, reported that the government had sputtered in previous attempts to revise the postwar education law “as a way to promote patriotism, public spirit and respect for tradition due to public concern that such an amendment could lead to a rise of nationalism similar to that seen in Japan in the run-up to World War II.”