With the passing of the first anniversary of the Fukushima Daiichi failure and meltdowns, various Japanese NGOs, activists, and energy specialists are stepping up efforts to convince the Japanese government to roll out a comprehensive support plan for solar power and other green energy sources.

It is now the second year in the fight against radiation. What should be done in a situation where we can’t see what lies ahead of us at all, and what is the situation inside the Fukushima atomic power plant meltdown? We asked Koide Hideaki.

As far as radioactivity is concerned, the fundamental rule is to make it compact and seal it off, not dilute and spread it. Scattering rubble all over the country violates the rule. National policy at present consists of two pillars. One is for local governments throughout the country to burn contaminated rubble in incinerators. The other is for each local government to dispose of the ashes as it wishes. Both are wrong.

With anniversary commemorations for March 11, 2011's terrible tragedies overshadowing all else in Japan this spring — including momentous decisions about U.S.-Japan relations pivoting on a new base in Okinawa — it is notable that historical memory controversies have reemerged to sour Japanese relations with both China and Korea. Although Japan's immediate challenges would seem to make good neighborly ties more important than ever before, some Japanese politicians persist in milking time-honored retrograde strategies for all they are worth: denying the Nanjing massacre and denigrating the experience of the comfort women. The ghosts in the memory closet of Japanese colonialism and war will not be laid to rest.

Just over thirty years ago the anti-nuclear power activist Hirose Takashi (who I knew because we frequented the same coffee house in Tokyo) said to me, “I have converted to the other side. I am writing a book arguing that nuclear power is safe after all.” He smiled to see how startled I was, and then went on. “Nuclear power is perfectly safe, right? That means there is no reason to build nuclear power plants in such far-away places. Building all those towers and stringing all those long wires costs a lot of money, and then because of the resistance in the wires you lose much of the electricity in the form of heat. Tokyo's power plants should be built in downtown Tokyo. The electricity would be cheaper, and instead of dumping all that hot water into the ocean as they do now, they could pipe it directly into people's homes, for cooking, bathing and washing clothes and dishes. If it's safe, why not?”

Last month, many TV channels around the world broadcast special reports on the nuclear crisis of March 2011. Among these, BBC's “Inside the Meltdown” and German TV channel ZDF's “Die Fukushima-Lüge” (The Fukushima lie) deserve special mention, as they both drew significant attention on the Japanese web.

We have known Iwata Wataru for more than two years, and when he decided to depart to Fukushima from Kyoto, he asked us to locate Geiger counters in France because at that time there were none available for his use in Japan. Despite active searching we found none. However, we contacted the independent radioactivity measuring laboratory CRIIRAD, which was created in France following the Chernobyl accident. The CRIIRAD people decided to send counters and other measurement accessories free to Wataru's recently created “Project 47”. In May 2011, we joined the CRIIRAD measurement mission to Fukushima and witnessed the first steps in “Project 47” and their collaboration with CRIIRAD. The link was made and the idea to create a Japanese version of CRIIRAD came to mind and Iwata took the lead: in July 2011 CRMS was born. Iwata became the founder and technical director, with the technical support of CRIIRAD and of the Umweltinstitut in Munich, with the financial support of Days Japan and other donors. Iwata's experience engagement and commitment is the topic of the new book by Nadine and Thierry Ribault:

We are seeing yet once more, a doublestandard in dealing with the PDRKs space and missile launches.

PND is calling for balance in the way we talk about both DPRK and US and Russian space and missile launches.

In the climate of fear and uncertainty concerning current levels of radioactive contamination in Fukushima Prefecture and their potential impact on public health, new government reports are indicating that these problems will remain serious ones for years.

While the rhetoric in this post 3.11 era is "mae muki" (looking ahead), there are still hundreds of thousands of displaced people displaced by the Tohoku disasters, many of whom are living in “temporary housing” units. This is not a self-sufficient way of life, and volunteers are still needed in many different ways, from playing with school kids and having tea parties with the elderly, to recovery activities, such as helping build a shotengai (shopping arcade) or fixing fisherman's nets. There is still rubble to be cleared, and beaches and parks to be cleaned. Of course, the more interaction with locals, the more Japanese language ability is useful.

Independent researcher Ian Goddard (see website here) has carried out a survey of published research on the potential health effects of rates of radiation exposure that the Japanese government has declared safe (up to 20 mSv per year). While few in Japan have been exposed to this level to this point, officials are on record saying that 20 mSv areas are safe for habitation. In addition, there are those in the Japanese scientific establishment who have argued that zones up to 100 mSv per year should be deemed safe. Currently evacuated towns closest to Fukushima Daiichi are likely to see radiation levels at or in excess of the 20 mSv exposure level for a decade or more. If the Japanese government holds to its current policies and interpretations, it is possible that evacuees, including children who are particularly vulnerable to the effects of radiation, may be moved back to “safe” 20 mSv areas. In a video presentation on his website (PDF summary courtesy of Satoko Norimatsu of Peace Philosophy Centre here) Goddard argues that accepting 20 mSv as safe could lead to a public health disaster.

For the first time in 42 years, the portion of nuclear power in Japan's energy mix reached zero on May 5 with the shutdown of Tomari's unit 3, operated by Hokkaido Electric on Japan's northernmost island. Difficulties in obtaining local approval for the restart of two reactors in Fukui Prefecture, combined with delays in establishing a new regulatory agency for the nuclear industry, could force Japan to ride out the summer months of peak demand by relying exclusively on thermal plants and energy-saving measures – a prospect the government is already taking into account.

In Ian Morris's book on energy and civilization, Why the West Rules–For Now, he writes that “greedy, lazy, frightened people” develop institutions that express “their own preferred balance among being comfortable, working as little as possible, and being safe.” But under conditions of crisis, they often innovate very rapidly. And, as is often noted, energy policy is not driven by elections but rather by crises.

At 3:36 pm on March 12, 2011, the day after the mega earthquake and tsunami hit northeast Honshu, Japan's main island, the No.1 reactor building of the Fukushima No.1 Power Plant exploded. Soon after, an order for 77,000 residents from 28,000 households within 20 km of the power plant was issued, instructing people to evacuate to areas outside a 20km zone around the plant. However, this official command was never received, as the electricity and all communication lines, including telephone and internet, had been cut by the earthquake. Nevertheless, rumor spread quickly that the radiation emitted by the explosion was so deadly that it would kill everyone in the vicinity unless they escaped immediately.

“Kisha (reporter) Clubs” are a much-discussed and controversial part of Japan's media environment. Laurie Anne Freeman's Closing the Shop: Information Cartels and Japan's Mass Media argues that these groups, which organize press access to officials in government, police and other areas of Japanese public life, limit contact to a core of “approved” journalists from Japan's big media organs, effectively cutting off freelancers and foreign journalists and freezing out anyone deemed too critical. Since the March 11, 2011 disasters, several of Japan's major newspapers, notably the Mainichi and Tokyo Shimbun, have provided critical reportage on TEPCO and government silences and irresponsibility. Freelancers, as outlined in a May 23 press release from Reporters Without Borders, however, have been denied adequate access and another potential avenue for critical examination of the government and TEPCO response to the nuclear disaster has been cut off. The Paris-based international organization is dedicated to defend freedom of the press, journalists and netizens world wide.

Japan's Mainichi Shimbun recently described Japan's nuclear industry and regulatory organs as a “black box” – an apparatus with visible inputs and outputs but no way to see its inner workings. A recent series of reports from the Mainichi and Asahi, which, together with the Tokyo Shimbun have leveled the sharpest mainstream media criticisms of TEPCO and the Japanese government, describe a climate of secrecy and collusion that reveals the continued power of Japan's “nuclear village”. The five articles reproduced below were published between May 24 and May 26. They reveal a series of “secret” meetings between government officials, nuclear company representatives, and regulators that excluded critics of nuclear power among regulators and at which no minutes were kept. Transparency and collusion have come to the fore as major issues since the 3.11 disasters. In the immediate aftermath of the Fukushima Daiichi meltdowns, it was revealed that regulators, politicians and TEPCO had repeatedly ignored warnings about the plant's general safety and about tsunami resistance specifically. The Mainichi and Asahi reports reveal continued collusion and a lack of transparency as Japan moves toward nuclear restarts. The revelations have thrown the regulatory authorities into confusion and empowered the critics of nuclear power.

Just when it seemed Japanese politics was being pulled back into the hands of the collusive interests who brought us Fukushima, it's thrown up another surprise. The reformists, centred in innovative capital and local government, seem to have found a new, and very promising, avenue to fight against the revanchist old guard that still dominates the central government. On June 10, Iida Tetsunari, the director of the Institute for Sustainable Energy Policies and of Softbank CEO Son Masayoshi's Japan Renewable Energy Federation, announced that he would be a candidate for governor in the July 27 Yamaguchi Prefectural election.

Immigrant groups in the United States routinely build monuments and memorials to commemorate historical traumas in their homelands. Plaques and statues that recall the Nazi destruction of Jewish communities throughout Europe in the middle of the 20th century together with commemorative stones dedicated to Ireland's 1972 Bloody Sunday are as American as California rolls (to name but two examples). Collectively, these monuments mark a particular group's ascendant political power, which, by American definition, comes about through economic success. Moreover, such testimonials weave a common narrative that binds people of disparate backgrounds within the same group in a diffuse land. The history involved is as much about the present as the past.

Greenpeace has released a report Toxic Assets: Nuclear Assets in the 21st Century, which presents evidence on the costs of nuclear accidents from the point of view of risk to investors. Greenpeace is not following the capital because of any corporate attachment. The report counters the common post-Fukushima argument that nuclear power is both inexpensive for consumers and a good investment for investors. The “cheap nuclear” mantra, they argue, fails to take into account the fact that nuclear plants can break a company and pass huge liabilities on to taxpayers. According to this report, nuclear seems represents everything wrong with contemporary capitalism – private companies reap profits while the public underwrites tremendous and obvious risks while concerns about sustainability are muted to assure short-term profits. The Japan Center for Economic Research places the likely Fukushima clean-up total at between 72 and 250 billion $US. This is at least several times the company's market value before the Fukushima disaster, an indication that the massive risks tied up with nuclear power are simply not being factored in to market valuations, which reflect estimates of future profitability.

Hiroshima atomic bomb survivor Nakazawa Keiji's manga Barefoot Gen (1973-1985) is widely regarded as one of the most powerful Japanese works about the Asia-Pacific War. In the decades since it was published, the series has sold millions of copies, been adapted into animated and live action films, and has been used as a part of peace education initiatives in Japanese schools and at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, which is currently holding an exhibition of Nakazawa's original artwork.

Introduction: In recent years controversy has centered on China's advance, both geopolitically and economically, in the South China Sea, East China sea, and in Africa. Here Andre Vltchek provides a look at another Chinese “export” as virtuoso pianist Yuan Sheng brings his music to the slums of Kenya and poses this question: can Africa follow in the footsteps of Venezuela and Brazil in using music as a way out of poverty for some of its youth? APJ.