Abstract: This study analyzed the content of the first class of the typical Japanese textbooks published in China in the past 30 years and published in Japan in the last 20 years. The author also compared the trends of the textbooks which had revised versions. The most common features of the first lesson in the published textbooks are the use of conversational content, grammar, sentence patterns, and typical Japanese greeting expressions, while the differences occurred mainly in the ease of expression of the typical sentence patterns of greetings; the setting of the conversion scenes and preference of people appearing in the conversation and so on. The findings described above could be observed in the textbooks published both in Japan and China. However, differing from the textbooks published in China, the textbooks published in Japan use “Kana” to replace the Chinese characters; use "sound reading" for the pronunciation of Chinese names; and do not use the honorific expressions in conversations among students. The textbooks published in Japan and China maintain a high degree of consistency in that the conversation topics are organized using the way of self-introduction. This has been used also in the new versions of the textbooks after revision. The author believes that the teaching content of the first lesson in Japanese awaits revision and improvement on the basis of reexamination.