This essay addresses the history textbook dispute between Korea and Japan, focusing on a Japanese conservative right-wing project for the 'making of Kokumin.' It regards the textbook dispute as originating from the project for the 'making of Kokumin' by the survivals of Japanese imperialism who succeeded in political comeback in the 1950s. The Japanese textbook problem became a Northeast Asian issue in the 1980s when Korea and China resisted the Japanese government-initiated retrogressive revision of its own history textbook. In the 1990s, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party escalated its intervention in this issue by transforming such an imperialist consciousness of history into a private sector 'campaign for textbook.' In the meantime, there have been efforts by UNESCO and private sector groups to resolve this problem. Various common sub-textbooks were also produced by the 2000s. However, these efforts did not succeed in overcoming these imperialist and nationalist barriers which were structured in the 1950s. This essay examines the ways in which the Northeast historical dispute was structured from the mid-1950s to the 1990s.