1,200 Corrections Made in Atlas for High School Students

The Yomiuri Shimbun

14:39 JST, February 18, 2023

About 1,200 corrections have been made to an atlas distributed by major textbook publisher Tokyo Shoseki Co. that is currently being used by high schools, it has been learned.

The atlas passed the screening of textbooks by the Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry and has been in use by first-year high school students since April last year.

The company is providing schools with the corrected version of the atlas, causing an unusual situation.

According to Tokyo Shoseki, the textbook in question is “New Atlas for High School Students,” and about 1,200 corrections were made in the 192-page book.

About 50 errors were found in writing and locations, while about 600 names of places did not match in the index and the map. There were about 400 mistakes in index page numbers and indicators that show where cities and other information are found in the book.

Some 150 corrections needed to be made to place names and others as a result of changes in social situations.

Among the mistakes found in the names of places, Drake Passage in South America was written as the Strait of Magellan, while Shaanxi Province in inland China was written as Shanxi Province.

The situation came to light after a schoolteacher pointed out the problem in the textbook that was distributed in April last year.

About 36,000 copies of the atlas were in use nationwide. Tokyo Shoseki has been providing the corrected version of the textbook since last month. As of Feb. 6, the publisher received requests for the distribution of about 25,000 copies of the corrected version.

Tokyo Shoseki had outsourced the work to an editing production company specializing in maps, but due to the pandemic, the officials in charge on both sides were working from home, making it difficult to communicate during the proofreading process, according to the publisher.

“We are extremely sorry and deeply regret that the textbooks were distributed with many corrections remaining,” a Tokyo Shoseki official said.