On April 30, 2026, the Society for the Studies of Nation Issues held a screening of the film "Education and Patriotism" (2022, directed by Hisayo Saika). We would like once again to thank everyone who took part.

This documentary depicts the reality of political pressure on school education in Japan through the textbook controversy and testimony from people working in schools. How do disputes over historical understanding seep into the space of the classroom and bind the words of teachers and students? This work, which sharply questions that structure, resonated deeply with the concern the Society for the Studies of Nation Issues is working on: "the politicization of nationalism."

After the screening, we invited Professor Masaru Tonomura of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, University of Tokyo, as commentator, and he gave us an explanation of the film and raised questions about it. Drawing on his many years of research on the history of Koreans in Japan and labor issues in the colonial period, Professor Tonomura placed the problems in schools depicted in the film within the larger context of how historical memory has been passed down in postwar Japan.

What was especially striking was his reference to the question of "what is not taught." Showing concretely how certain passages have been deleted from or reduced in textbooks, Professor Tonomura pointed out that this is not merely a "change in content" but an expression of a political will to make certain historical experiences "as if they never happened." His words gave participants an opportunity to reinterpret the film, and the discussion after the screening was so lively that it ran past the scheduled time.

The questions raised by "Education and Patriotism" are ones that the Society for the Studies of Nation Issues should continue to face. We hope to keep building up occasions like this one.