Actuality of “Blacked-Out” English Textbooks: Focusing on Eigo 1 Koutoujogakkouyou

Abstract

  Eigo 1 Koutoujogakkouyou (Tokyo: Chutougakkoukyoukashokabushikigaisha, 1944) is one of the textbooks that were hastily composed by experts from an urgent need to revise the previous ones which contained some passages admiring cultures especially in England and America at the time of war against these nations. After the surrender in 1945, however, the ministry of education in Japan made an abrupt change in attitude and ordered schools to delete the militaristic content in such textbooks mainly with the intention of keeping it from the sight of U.S. occupation officials. Consequently, teachers were supposed to direct their students to black out the passages, sometimes the whole page, of the textbooks that seemed to have nurtured the war-aspiring spirit. This practice is generally called “black out” (suminuri) and the textbook partly painted in black ink is called a “blacked-out textbook” (suminuri kyoukasho). In this paper, I will focus on the notes a particular student put in the margins of the pages in Eigo 1 Koutoujogakkouyou as well as the black traces she willy-nilly left in it. After reading them from the viewpoint of literary criticism (especially its rhetorical approach to the unreadable), I will illustrate the actuality of “blacked-out” English textbooks.