Just over a year ago, a sample copy of an English course textbook, New Junior Crown (for third graders) by William C. Clark, was submitted to the Mombusho (Ministry of Education) in Tokyo for approval. To obtain teachers’ reactions to the course, the Ministry sent out a hundred copies of New Junior Crown and asked for their views. A group of left-wing teachers, the New English Research Association, found a number of things in the book tendentious and inaccurate, not from the point of view of English idiom or grammar, but from what was purveyed to the pupil as ‘the Japanese way of life’. Each lesson showed an American family, the Browns, on a tour of Japan, and in Lesson Eleven they were taken to ‘The Grand Shrine at Ise’. The New English Research Association had already pointed out that Mr Clark seemed intent, in other lessons, on glorifying the Emperor-system and over-simplifying religious issues; but in Lesson Eleven he had really gone beyond the mark. After tipping a Shinto priest two thousand yen, the Browns were invited into the shrine, where some dances were performed for their benefit. ‘Now let’s go to the Inner Shrine’, the lesson went on, ‘it’s the most sacred place in Japan. I want it remembered as the high point of your trip. ... A thick white curtain was in the entrance. The Browns stood reverently before the curtain. How peaceful everything was. They prayed for peace in the world.