Koji Takekeda

  A critical study of the Supreme Court decision on the so−Called primary textbook suit．

                                  Abstract

　Professor Saburo Ienaga of Tokyo University of Education prepared a history textbook，The New Japanese History, for use in high school．This was

Screened by the Ministry of Education and only conditionally approved．

 On June12，1965 Professor Ienaga，seeking redress，sued the government for mental damage，together with ten people of a plaintiff group in the Tokyo District Court．The legal process extended over a long period of time but

In 1993 the Supreme Court gave the final deeision wbich put an end to this

case．The series of hearings leading to the final decision is known as  “the primary textbook suit”．

 In every hearingd it was concluded that the textbook sereening process was constitutional．However，tbere was still a strong doubt among those people advocating the right to education as to the constitutionality of the screening by the government．While the petition by the plaintiffs was primarily based on the Artiele21 of the Constitution，Article 26provided the basis of the argumentfor the government．In my opinion，there is a defect that both sides possess in common．They did not clearly take in to account Paragraph 2 of Article 26 when considering the constitutionality of the textbook screening prpcess.

 In this study an attempt was made to examine the petition submitted to the Tokyo DistrictCourt. Reflecting on the series of the primary textbook court hearings,we sbould reconsider again tbe significanse of paragraph 2

of  Article26 in thelight of the ideology of the Constitution.

Keywords

Professor Saburo Ienaga,Ministry of Education, Primary textbook suit．The high school textbook, The New Japanese History, petition,Paragraph 2 of Article 26 of the Constitution, Article 21 of the Constitution