Japan has come under fire from South Korea and China over its approval of history textbooks including one written by nationalist historians.
South Korea & China have criticised the textbook for whitewashing wartime atrocities, as well as reinforcing Japan's claim to a string of islets in the Sea of Japan which are also claimed by South Korea.
China and South Korea think the new history text books glorify Japan's war-time past and distort facts.
China and South Korea say the books underplay Japan's military occupations of Asian countries in the first half of the 20th Century.
One book refers to the Japanese slaughter of some 300,000 civilians in the
Chinese city of Nanjing in 1937 as an "incident", rather than the
"massacre" it is known as elsewhere.
A Chinese retail group also urged shops to stop selling Japanese goods in response to the new books.
"The basic (stance) is to develop future-oriented, friendly relations," said deputy chief cabinet secretary Seiken Sugiura during a press conference in Tokyo.
Japan issued a written apology in 1998 for its often-brutal colonial rule over the Korean peninsula between 1910 and 1945, quelling tensions between Tokyo and Seoul.
South Korean had long been unhappy over Japan's past military aggression.
But the approval of the history book, coupled with tensions over ownership of isolated islets in the Sea of Japan, about an equal distance from both countries.Critics say the new textbook glosses over Japanese atrocities in China, Korea and other parts of Asia.
The book was first approved in 2001 despite strong international protests.
The book was written by nationalist scholars for junior high students.
The territorial dispute revolves around a group of rocky outcrops, known as Tokto in South Korea and Takeshima in Japan.
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