Thanks for your support! Important Updates from Eclipse Rising

Thank you so much for signing our petition. Thanks to your support, combining the signatures from Japanese, Chinese and Korean sites, and physical signatures collected, we have over 2,000 from around the world! We're happy that more and more mainstream media coverage is out on Prime Minister Abe's attempt to remilitarize Japan -- presumably in the image of the Imperial Japan that his grandfather (former Prime Minister Kishi) had helped shape during WWII and in the initial phase of Japan's post-war reconstruction era. The grassroots groups in Japan, organized in a national coalition of teachers, unions and citizens groups called "Textbook 21" will invite their Korean partners who are also part of this petition campaign, and hold an international strategy meeting/conference in Tokyo Feb. 28-March 1 to review progress of the petition, and other domestic efforts to block Mr. Abe and Ministry of Education's efforts to influence history textbooks as a political propaganda tool and cultivate Japan's youth as future supporters of a warring state. We're currently working to secure an international press conference at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Tokyo, where in the past the historical denialists have held press conferences arguing that "comfort women were mere prostitutes." We will be presenting the list of organizational endorsers and the status of this petition campaign for the press, to show that the people are united to protect the Peace Constitution and history education grounded in the truth! So your continued support in spreading the word about this petition is critically important to us. We have also extended the petition deadline to March 20, 2015. Please forward this petition onto your friends and organizations today. This past month, we secured the organizational endorsement from four groups in Taiwan representing hundreds of voices of the people of Taiwan. We've also launched the Chinese language site. See top of the petition form for the short link! Also the Peace Philosophy Centre, in Vancouver, Canada has endorsed the petition. We hope to garner the support of our friends in Canada as well, to show Mr. Abe and his cabinet that while they may have a friendly audience domestically especially among the ultra-conservative ultranationalists, betraying the world's confidence will not be easy. On August 15, 2015, the 70th anniversary of the end of WWII, Mr. Abe is expected to release the "Abe Statement" which many fear will contradict and override the "Kono Statement" of 1993, in which then-Cabinet Secretary admitted that the Japanese Imperial Army had forced "comfort women" to work in military-run brothels during WWII. Already, some history textbook languages under review include phrases such as "some historians allege Japan's involvement," etc., blurring the facts that all Japanese children deserve to know. The textbook fight is only a prong of many strategies being waged to keep Japan on the path of peace and reconcilitation for its future - but is an important one. Japan has allocated half a billion dollars for the global PR campaign to "correct perceived bias in accounts of the country's wartime past" ("Japan Global PR Message Could Misfire With Focus on Wartime Past," The New York Times, February 10, 2015) -- funds that we believe should be directed towards true reconciliation with Japan's past in order to ensure such atrocities never occur again. That would be the winning path to healthy, genuine patriotism, and Japan that we could all be proud of. Thank you for your continued support, and please stay tuned! Eclipse Rising and friends