TOKYO (AP)- South Korean lawmakers on Thursday asked a Japanese court to ban the sale of school history textbooks that critics across Asia say whitewash Tokyo’s wartime atrocities, officials at the South Korean Embassy in Tokyo said.

Eight controversial books approved by the Japanese government in April reportedly use the term "advance" to describe Japan’s takeover of South Korea in the early decades of the 20th century and its invasions of other Asian countries.

Critics also say the books fail to mention many atrocities, including the use of hundreds of thousands of Korean and other Asian women as sex slaves for Japan’s World War II soldiers. The texts will be offered for use at junior high schools beginning in 2002.

"Lately, the Japanese government has ignored the warnings of its Asian neighbors, rationalizing its wartime imperialism and approving textbooks that erase from the record any mention of "comfort women,’" the four South Korean lawmakers said in a statement, referring to the women forced into sexual slavery.

It was not immediately clear which books the group wanted banned. The lawmakers had said in their statement that they may seek damages from the publishers.

Officials at the South Korean Embassy, speaking on condition of anonymity, refused to elaborate on the lawmakers’ demands. Hiroshi Yamamoto, a spokesman at the Tokyo District Court, refused to comment.

The texts have drawn sharp criticism from South Korea, China and other Asian countries which suffered under Japan’s militaristic expansion.

Anger is particularly strong in South Korea. The Korean Peninsula was under Japanese colonial rule from l9l0-l945. During that period, Koreans were forced to adopt Japanese names and banned from using their own language in schools.

The South Korean government on Tuesday officially asked Japan to revise 35 controversial passages in the eight textbooks, including 25 in one book written by nationalist scholars.