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The Mainichi

Shohei Ohtani tops Japan school textbook appearances as celebrity scandals worry publishers

TOKYO -- Major League Baseball star Shohei Ohtani has emerged as the most featured celebrity in textbooks that have passed education ministry screening for use primarily by first-year high school students from the 2026 academic year. Textbooks have adopted celebrities to help familiarize students with the content, but their selection is a source of concern for publishers, as corrections need to be made if those celebrities become embroiled in scandals. Ohtani appears in 12 textbooks for four courses across two subjects. In "English Communication I" published by Daiichi Gakushusha Corp., Ohtani's nine-by-nine goal achievement sheet was incorporated for English learning. Many other celebrities featured in textbooks are athletes, including javelin thrower Haruka Kitaguchi, table tennis player Hina Hayata and wheelchair tennis player Tokito Oda. In the modern Japanese language textbook "Gendai no Kokugo," works by musicians and entertainers, such as Gen Hoshino and Neru Nagahama, were also included. Taishukan Publishing Co. initially introduced Ippei Mizuhara, Ohtani's former interpreter, in a learning unit for "English Communication I." However, the portion was entirely replaced with a story of a pre-World War II baseball team comprising Japanese Canadians due to Mizuhara's involvement in a gambling scandal, with a screening comment saying, "It could disrupt learning." The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology explained that since he had been charged in connection with the scandal, the learning envisaged through the material had become difficult. A junior high school textbook mentioning Mizuhara that had passed the 2023 academic year's screening process was also partially replaced after the gambling scandal surfaced. While a textbook that carried a photo of personality Fuwa-chan passed the 2023 academic year's screening, it was deleted after she made an inappropriate post on social media about a comedian. Publishers say the task of picking celebrities to be featured in their textbooks is "challenging." One representative of a textbook company revealed, "At our editorial meetings, we always discuss whether there are any scandals about people featured in our textbooks. As a private company, the best we can do is to check online whether there are strange rumors about them, so we just keep our fingers crossed that they will go scandal-free over the four years until the next screening."