With special guest speaker from Japan, Nobuyoshi TAKASHIMA
Saturday, October 17, 2015
The year 2015 marks the 70th
anniversary of the end of the Second World War in the Asia Pacific. This fall, the Vancouver Committee will welcome
Nobuyoshi TAKASHIMA, professor emeritus of the University of Ryukyus, to
Vancouver.
Professor Takashima, a former high school social studies (geography
and history) teacher and textbook author, a teacher educator at the University
of Ryukyus, has been leading study tours to Malaysia and Singapore for the last
four decades, researching, documenting and publishing on the history of the
region, particularly war wounds, during the Japanese Army’s invasion and
occupation from December 1941 to August 1945. He has published widely in the
areas of history education, textbook issues, war responsibilities and war
memory, including those of Okinawa. When he was in graduate school at Tokyo
University of Education (now Tsukuba University), he was a student of late
Saburo IENAGA, who is internationally known for the “Ienaga Textbook Lawsuits,”
the three-decades struggle from 1960s to 90s against the Japanese government’s
censorship of the textbooks he authored.
Professor Takashima also fought a
separate textbook lawsuit from 1993 to 2005, over the description of the media
control over events such as emperor Hirohito’s death and the First Gulf War. In
Vancouver, Professor Takashima will talk about his decades of collaboration
with people in Malaysia and Singapore in learning and sharing memory of the
war, as an example of grass-roots peace and reconciliation building in the
Asia-Pacific region. We believe that such event will be significant in multicultural
Vancouver with many of its residents closely connected to Asia, and we look
forward to having cooperation and support from individuals and organizations
who agree to the intent of this event. Professor Takashima also has a family
connection to Vancouver – his father was the first principal of Steveston
Japanese School, established in 1911. This is professor Takashima’s first
public lecture tour in North America.
