Japanese schoolchildren to learn disputed islands belong to Tokyo
Government's move to revise textbooks angers South Korea, which warns of 'countermeasures'
Japanese education chiefs will instruct schools to teach children that islands at the centre of disputes with China and South Korea belong unequivocally to Tokyo, the government said yesterday, prompting an angry response from Seoul.
South Korea called in the Japanese ambassador to lodge a formal protest over the revisions.
In a separate statement, the South Korean foreign ministry threatened unspecified "reciprocal countermeasures" if the revisions were not withdrawn.
There was no immediate response from China.
The revised teachers' manuals for junior and senior high schools will be issued to education boards across the nation, a Japanese education ministry official said.
"From the educational point of view, it is natural for a state to teach its children about integral parts of its own territory," Education Minister Hakubun Shimomura told a news conference.
The move comes after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has repeatedly stirred controversy with his unabashed nationalism, which has included visiting the Yasukuni war shrine, widely viewed by neighbouring countries as a symbol of Tokyo's wartime aggression.