The presence of some 737 US military outposts around the world imposes great strains, and there is always the possibility of rejection by the inhabitants of adjacent communities. Chalmers Johnson, author of the acclaimed trilogy on US imperial expansion and its costs, highlights the tensions between overseas US bases and the countries where they are deployed, most prominently Okinawa. Nearly one-fifth of the land surface of Okinawa's small, crowded main island is devoted to 38 bases and facilities for the US military (almost 75% of the US forces stationed in Japan). Johnson depicts Okinawa as a hotspot among other US military outposts, where anti-American opposition might undermine the US alliance network in the Asia-Pacific. He draws particular attention to the US forces' exemption from the local criminal justice system, as well as from responsibility to overcome the environmental contamination of local sites caused by US military usage.

In the rise of participatory, networked and social media epitomised by Web 2.0 and user created content (UCC), mobile media has been central in ushering in new types of consumer agency, creativity and collaboration. Through its rapid uptake across the world, the mobile phone has become a compelling symbol for contemporary post-industrial modes of labour and intimacy. In particular, the icon of the mobile phone is most palpable in the Asia-Pacific where a diversity of innovative production and consumption practices can be found. One of the dominant symbols of the region's mobile media has been the conspicuous symbol of the female mobile media user. And yet, the phenomenon—and its gendered implications—has been relatively under-explored. By charting the rise of gendered mobile media practices, we can gain insight into how technology, gender, labour and intimacy are being conceptualised and how this, in turn, is reconfiguring the region within the twenty-first century.

In this paper I draw from a longitudinal cross-cultural case study of gendered mobile media conducted in Tokyo, Seoul, Hong Kong and Melbourne from 2000-2007. Deploying on interdisciplinary, ethnographic research conducted over a seven-year period, this paper examines the relationship between gender, technology, labour and intimacy through ‘imaging communities’. Imaging communities can take multiple forms — form of texting, camera phone practices or mobile novels (keitai shôsetsu). These communities provide fresh ways for conceptualising the region's multiple cartographies of personalisation. Cartographies of personalisation are new socio-emotional and political economic maps for imaging and imagining the Asia-Pacific in an age of personalised media and Web 2.0.

Précis: This paper examines the dominant forces at play in East Asia in an effort to chart regional dynamics within a global non-Eurocentric framework in the course of three epochs. In the first era, spanning the 16th to the early 19th century a China-centered tributary trade order provided a geopolitical framework within which private trade could also flourish. At its height in the 18th century, as East Asia linked to a wider regional and global economy, core areas achieved high levels of peace, prosperity and stability. The second period is notable for dislocation, war and radical transformation spanning the years 1840-1970. In this era profound transformations were the product of system disintegration, colonial rule, world wars, and anti-colonial wars and revolutions. With the collapse of the regional order, bilateral relations, colonial and postcolonial, predominated. Since the 1970s there have been signs of the emergence of a third epoch notable for progress toward the formation of a new East Asian regional order resting on foundations of dynamic economic growth. From the perspective of East Asian integration, the US-China opening of 1970 marked both the end of a century of war and polarization and the emergence of economic complementarity and geopolitical restructuring that have transformed both East Asia and the world economy. In assessing the resurgence of East Asia and the emerging character of East Asian regionalism, emphasis is placed on relations among China, Japan and Korea as ascending regional-global powers and the position of the United States as a powerful but declining superpower. The analysis considers the interplay of geopolitics and political economy in structuring hierarchies of wealth, power and position both within Asia and in the world order or disorder. Is the emergence East Asian regional order a basis for regional independence or a new framework for US penetration? What insights can the past offer toward the emergence of a viable regional order in East Asia, or, at a minimum, pitfalls to skirt?

Regular as the tides, the whaling controversy comes to revisit Japan. Once again, the nation's fleet ploughs the waters of the Antarctic on its annual “scientific whaling” expedition, a controversial euphemism for what much of the world views as commercial whaling in disguise. This winter, the fleet plans to harpoon 935 minke and 50 fin whales. Again, the chorus of disapproval has been predictable. As the whalers battle militant conservationist group Sea Shepherd, which harries the fleet every year, Japan's diplomats work to sooth diplomatic feathers.