Overview

• The 2025 middle school history textbook by Tokyo Shoseki listed only 50 deaths from the April 2016 Kumamoto earthquake, excluding 223 disaster-related fatalities recognized by Kumamoto and Oita prefectures.
• Governor Keiichi Kimura held a July 17 press conference demanding that the publisher immediately correct the figures to reflect the full death toll of 278.
• Tokyo Shoseki said it will review and consider corrections to ensure there is no misunderstanding in its depiction of the earthquake’s impact.
• The Education Ministry said its textbook review process does not flag errors unless they are clear factual mistakes and that publishers determine content.
• The error stands out because timelines in the same edition include disaster-related deaths for other major quakes, such as the 1995 Hanshin and 2004 Niigata Chuetsu earthquakes.