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TOKYO: Japan is to risk reigniting a territorial row with South Korea by claiming disputed islands as its territory in the school curriculum, the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper reported Sunday.
The education ministry will describe the islets – known as Takeshima by Japanese and Dokdo by Koreans – as "Japanese territory" in its revised curriculum handbook, the daily said.
The school curriculum is revised about every 10 years and the latest revision of teachers' handbooks will be completed by July for use from April 2012, the newspaper said.
The move came after conservative lawmakers in Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda's ruling party stepped up pressure on the ministry to describe the islets as Japanese.
Japan claimed the islets in 1905 after winning a war with Russia in the region and went on to annex the entire Korean peninsula from 1910 until its 1945 defeat in World War II.
South Korea, whose military currently controls the islets, said Seoul's claim to them goes back centuries.
South Korea's new President Lee Myung-Bak vowed to turn the page in fraught relations with Japan when he visited in April
He was the first South Korean leader to visit the neighbouring country in more than three years amid lingering bitterness over Japan's rule over the Korean peninsula.
- AFP/so
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