In April this year, the Japanese education ministry approved a controversial new textbook that critics say glosses over atrocities by the imperial army in the first half of the last century.

The book was drawn up by the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform, a group of right-wing academics and politicians. Although the ministry insisted on more than 100 changes to tone down the original text, China and the two Koreas complain that the final version still attempts to justify Japan's aggression from 1904 to 1945.

Cooperation and witness moderator Elizabeth Nash

According to a report to the executive committee from the Alliance's department of cooperation and witness, the right-wing attributes the growing violence in Japanese society - particularly among the young - to a lack of national pride.

In March 1995, the Aum Shinrikyo [Supreme Truth] cult launched a sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system that killed 12 people and injured thousands. Since then, religious cults have perpetrated a series of frauds and crimes, and the crime rate generally has jumped to record levels. The sharpest and most disturbing rise is in murderous crimes by teenagers.

The authors of the new textbook want to revive pride in their country. They say they want to counter the "masochistic" view of its history imposed on Japan by the US.

The book minimizes Japanese responsibility for war crimes. It ignores the Japanese army's use of "comfort women", the hundreds of thousands forced into prostitution in government-run frontline brothels. It plays down the Nanking massacre, questioning the Tokyo War Tribunal's judgement that the Japanese army slaughtered a large number of Chinese civilians after occupying the city in 1937.

China says the Japanese rightists "concocted" the new book to "deny and whitewash the history of aggression". North Korea says it is "an insult" to other Asian peoples. South Korea criticizes it for distorting history.

Former comfort women protested against the textbook outside the Japanese embassy in Seoul in April. "It is an unforgivable sin to turn one's face away from past atrocities while many of the victims are still suffering from the abuse they endured," they said.

Only in 1993 did the Japanese government finally admit the existence of comfort women. Two years later, the then prime minister apologised for Japan's wartime actions. During the same period, a Japanese court ruled in favour of allowing comfort women to seek compensation from the government, some cinemas showed a Chinese film on the Nanking massacre, and school textbooks started to mention sex slaves and other uncomfortable subjects.

The mood in Japan has since changed. Early this year, a senior politician angered Seoul and Beijing by claiming that Japan's occupation of its neighbours was justified. The Society for History Textbook Reform will soon release a film justifying the second world war as spurring Asian independence from western colonialism.

The executive committee has asked general secretary Setri Nyomi to discuss with Japanese member churches how WARC may support them in addressing the government about this rewriting of Japanese history.