A dispute about the use of controversial textbooks in Japan's high schools escalated this week when the Education Ministry rejected demands for revision from South Korea and China. Critics say the texts, passed by the ministry in April, whitewash well-documented war atrocities and extol the benefits of Japan's brief colonial rule.
Seoul demanded changes to 35 of the most disputed sections, including those appearing to justify the annexation and brutal rule of the Korean Peninsula in the first half of the 20th century. Many Asian countries are enraged by the omission of references to women forced into prostitution by the imperial army during the second World War, and to the playing down of incidents such as the Nangking massacre, when Japanese troops butchered thousands of Chinese civilians in 1937.
Controversy also hinges on changes to the language used to describe the war. The "Japanese invasion of Asia" is changed to the "War in Asia and the Pacific", and the word "invasion" changed to "advancement". Mr Yoshifumi Tawara, leader of a group campaigning against the textbooks, said they amount to "a defence of Japan's aggression and colonial domination".
The Korean Foreign Affairs Minister, Mr Han Seung Soo, said he was dismayed at the decision to "throw cold water" on the improving relations between the two countries. The Japanese Prime Minister, Mr Junichiro Koizumi, is expected to cancel a trip to Beijing this year because of the strength of feeling in China.
Behind the row lies a long history of controversy about differing interpretations of the Pacific War. While the countries that took the brunt of Japan's rampage across Asia in the 1930s and 1940s look back on the era with a mixture of terror and relief that it came to an end with surrender in 1945, Japanese nationalists see things differently. Many say that Japan was merely mimicking the actions of Western imperialists.
While the holders of such views have been part of Japan's political fringe for much of the post-war period, some have recently made a play for mainstream respectability. Perhaps the most successful is the Society For History Textbook Reform, the group which wrote the most bitterly contested textbook.
Staffed by academics who say the current teaching of history in Japanese schools "fails to instil pride in children", they are backed by significant sections of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. While the dispute rages, they have put the book on sale and ordinary Japanese have been flocking to find out what all the fuss is about.
As the Education Ministry slams the door on further changes, the initiative now shifts to grassroots Japanese activists, who are campaigning to stop the textbooks from being used in schools.