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The article explains that several members of Japan's academic community have increased efforts since the late 1990's to recast the history of Japan, specifically the Nanjing massacre. When the city of Nanjing was assaulted and taken over by Japanese forces, historians have documented that at least 200,000 Chinese civilians were killed and tens of thousands of women were raped. Scholars like Bunyu Ko and Nobukatso Fujioka argue that these numbers are incorrect and only Chinese soldiers were killed in that conflict. In creating a negative image of the Chinese, these scholars hope to reshape Japanese history and change the ways in which the Japanese youth are educated.

In this article the author discusses aspects of teaching history at the Guangdong University of Technology in China and at the Sophia University in Japan. He explores the differences in Japan's and China's history curricula. He comments on the number of students who asked him why they haven't heard about a historical event before. Also investigated are other countries' selective inclusion of historical events in their history textbooks.