When a 12-year-old Okinawan schoolgirl was raped by three U.S. soldiers in the autumn of 1995, I was governor of Okinawa Prefecture. In my address to the people of Okinawa, I said, “I apologize to you all for failing to protect the girl's human rights and dignity.”

In the battle of Okinawa between one third and one fourth of the Okinawan population was killed in the cross fire between Japanese and American forces. In the early years of the twenty-first century Okinawa is once again facing an acute shortage of medical personnel, particularly on the outer islands which are simultaneously facing aging and depopulation.

About 100 kilometers off the coast of the main island of Okinawa lies Kumejima, in the East China Sea. A 77 year old medical practitioner, known as an ikaiho (medical assistant or paramedic), is still practicing his craft on the island. For over half a century the lives of those living on the island have rested in his hands. With few medical facilities the people of Kumejima, and of the other outlying islands, face new difficulties as they look to their future.

At major intersections throughout Japan one can see the rightist groups with patriotic banners across their chests. They use relentless microphone-amplified diatribes to drive home their message as they stand atop their black vans. Their posters declaring “Worried about the Nation” has become a fixture of the Japanese urban landscape. After the Second World War such figures were considered comical. They seemed but hot-blooded nationalists; marginal crackpots far from the norm and with minimal influence. But before we knew it, the vague sense that perhaps their ravings contained a kernel of truth spread through Japanese society. Ironically, the far right has gained considerable power in Japanese society by insistently holding up the ideal of protecting the imperial system at the very time that civil society has achieved remarkable maturity in Asian nations.

The Nanjing (or Nanking) Incident (also known as the Rape of Nanjing, the Nanjing Massacre and the Nanjing Atrocities) remains a highly controversial episode in Sino-Japanese relations. Indeed, it remains so controversial, especially in Japan, that a neutral definition of the event, and even its name, has yet to be agreed upon. However, most researchers would perhaps agree on the following. The Nanjing Incident refers to the killing and raping of large numbers of Chinese together with widespread looting and arson over a relatively short period of time (usually given as six to seven weeks) by the Japanese military prior to and following the capture of the city of Nanjing on 13 December 1937. Sadly for the historian, the Nanjing Incident is not only an important episode in Sino-Japanese relations, but is also emerging as a foundation stone in the construction of the modern Chinese national identity. As a result, the historian's interest in and analysis of this event can be interpreted as an attack on the contemporary Chinese identity, while a refusal to accept the ‘orthodox’ position on Nanjing - however defined - can be construed as an attempt to deny the Chinese nation a legitimate voice in international society - or, in Iris Chang's words, as a ‘second rape’. In the highly emotional and deeply politicised environment in which the history of Japanese imperialism is constructed, the temptation to vilify all who disagree with accepted orthodoxies has proved irresistible to those on both extremes of the debate - extremes advocated by individuals who, here, will be labelled ‘corpse minimisers’ and ‘corpse maximisers’. On the one hand, to show too much scepticism is to risk being tarred as a nationalist revisionist or denier, an apologist for Japanese fascism and imperialism. On the other hand, any demonstrated interest in Nanjing can be viewed in some circles in Japan as ‘Japan-bashing’ or even anti-Japanese racism (in the case of foreign researchers) or ‘self-flagellation’ (in the case of Japanese). In this environment, the debate can become highly emotionally charged, and the historian's struggle to weigh the evidence can quickly fall victim to the demands of contemporary politics.

Battered by economic problems, weighed down by crushing public debt and skippered by a lumbering gerontocracy that seems powerless to stop the country's slow decline, it's tough times for leaky old Japan Inc. Now the country faces potentially its most serious problem yet - it is quickly running out of babies.

Japan's 1930s Manchukuo project concentrated the idealism, imagination, and energy of a generation of Japanese intellectuals who wanted a better world. Today, the ideal in whose name Manchukuo was founded remains to be accomplished and again compels attention: how to construct a peaceful, just, cooperative order in East Asia, especially among the three regions of China, Korea and Japan.

For six decades, the inhabitants of Okinawa have lived alongside thousands of US troops. Now new plans for base expansion have provoked fierce resistance.

Taira Natsume is a mild-mannered, bespectacled parson and pacifist in the Martin Luther King mode, but he warns he will not be pushed too far. “If the authorities come back with more people we'll be waiting for them,” he says. “I'm not a violent man but they're not going to get through.” It is a baking hot day in Henoko, a tiny fishing village in Okinawa, Japan's southernmost prefecture. For 110 days, the reverend and 8,000 supporters have been coming to this sun-bleached beach to fight off government engineers trying to begin drilling surveys for a proposed offshore helicopter base for the US military.

Tokyo, Nov. 2 - In the latest jousting between China and Japan over Russia's energy riches, China is talking with the the Exxon Mobil Corporation about buying gas from the Sakhalin Island field, which many Japanese assumed would power their nation for decades to come.

The gas talks come as China rues its loss of a Siberian oil pipeline that was once promised to run to Manchuria. Instead, Russian officials made clear this fall that the pipeline would go to a Russian port on the Sea of Japan. Russian leaders changed their minds after Japan's government offered billions of dollars to help finance the pipeline, which could be a $12 billion, 2,500-mile oil project running from Lake Baikal to Nakhodka.

Toyota is the most profitable company in Japan. Its net profit for fiscal 2004 was reported at 1.16 trillion yen ($10.5 billion). This is after-tax, clear profit, the first time in the history of Japanese capitalism that a company has passed one trillion yen in profits.

As the Japanese government moves to beef up the country's military preparedness, once again the issue of the protection of foreigners’ rights has been raised.

With the passage of military contingency legislation in June, the government has begun to prepare the civilian population for, and protect it against, an attack on Japan, military or terrorist.

This comes at a time of growing fears of possible strikes by terrorist networks, fueled in part by the ongoing crisis over North Korea.

Both Japan and the United States are embroiled in controversies over state enforcement of rituals of patriotism. In the U.S., the controversy now before the Supreme Court centers on the appropriateness of requiring students to daily recite a pledge of allegiance containing the words “under God”. The Japanese controversy centers on state enforcement of recently imposed provisions requiring all teachers and students to stand and sing Kimigayo, the national anthem in praise of the emperor with its strong associations with colonialism and war. The controversy erupted when Tokyo Governor Ishihara Shintaro began imposing harsh penalties on defiant teachers. The issues have particular significance as Japan sends its Self-Defense Force (army) into Iraq, a major step toward eliminating the no war clause (Article 9) in the Constitution. The following two editorials in the Asahi Shimbun call into question the use of punishment to enforce patriotic ritual. But in Japan, as in the United States, there are virtually no voices challenging the practice of pledging allegiance or singing the national anthem on public occasions.

[The fiery explosion and crash of a U.S. helicopter into a building at Okinawa International University on August 13 has touched off the most intense anti-base movement since the 1995 rape of a 12- year old Okinawan girl by three U.S. servicemen.

The U.S. Marine Corps Futenma Air Station, located in densely populated Ginowan adjacent to the campus, has been scheduled for relocation for nearly a decade. But with a powerful opposition movement in Henoko, the prospective new site, and mounting Okinawawide opposition to any new base on the island, the plan remains in limbo.

On 2 March 2003 some 6,000 people from Hiroshima gathered on an empty space one kilometer from ground zero, where the first nuclear weapon killed hundreds of thousands and devastated the city, to form a message with their bodies, which read from the sky as NO WAR, NO DU!

Our warning was against war and the use of nuclear weapons by USA-UK forces. Our fear was based on the fact that the US has used illegal nuclear munitions and weapons containing Depleted Uranium (DU) and plutonium five times since Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed on 6 and 9 August 1945.

This article explores the relationship between rural villages and Japan's colonies during the wartime period, with particular reference to the emigration of Japanese farmers to Manchuria (Manchukuo). My aim is to identify some of the key characteristics of Japanese emigration during this period and to reveal some of the distinctive features of the Manchurian case. I will focus mainly on Yamato Village in Yamagata Prefecture. The prefecture itself ranked second in the nation as a source of emigrants to Manchuria, and with Ohinata Village in Nagano Prefecture and Nango Village in Miyagi Prefecture it was one of the top three villages in all Japan in terms of the total number of emigrants produced.

BEIRUT – The dramatic abduction of three Japanese civilians in Iraq – hostage bargaining chips – is reverberating throughout Japan, casting a long shadow over the future of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and his Iraq policy of dispatching troops on a humanitarian mission to help the United States there. It evokes memories of hostage-taking during Lebanon's civil war, cases that dragged on for years with scant progress and abundant tears.

Eight months have passed since the Japanese Self-Defense Forces have been deployed in Samawa. Contrary to the Japanese government's intentions, discontent with the performance of the Self-Defense Forces among the citizens of Samawa has rapidly increased. This is a report of the local situation.

The Japan-United States relationship seems abnormal. “Abnormal” because, even if it didn't begin all of a sudden, since Koizumi came to power, and especially since 9.11, a situation that can only be described as “extreme abnormality” has become the norm.

On July 1, 1946, less than a year after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the United States resumed nuclear testing in the Pacific. In March, 1954 the US forced the 166 inhabitants of Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands, part of the United Nations Trust Territory that was among the spoils of victory in world War II, to leave their home island. On July 1, 1954 it conducted the first full-scale test of a Hydrogen Bomb at Bikini. The blast is estimated at 15 megatons, that is the equivalent of 15 million tons of TNT, one thousand times as powerful as the bomb exploded at Hiroshima. The Japanese fishing boat Lucky Dragon No. 5, sailing well beyond the zone demarcated by US authorities for the test, was covered with white ashes, later recognized as radioactive coral dust. The next day all 23 crew members suffered from headache, nausea, diarrhea and other symptoms from exposure to radioactivity. The symptoms were more acute among inhabitants of Longelap Atoll, 180 kilometers East of Bikini and other atolls. On September 23, the Lucky Dragon's chief radio operator died of jaundice, diagnosed as having been complicated by radioactivity. In Japan, the incident sparked a national petition campaign to ban nuclear weapons led by a women's group in Suginami Ward, Tokyo. The twenty million signatures that it collected within months provided a springboard for a national and international anti-nuclear movement. In August 1955 the World Conference Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs convened in Hiroshima, the first in a series of annual meetings that became the center of the antinuclear movement. This series of articles, on the fiftieth anniversary of the Bikini test, records the fate of the crew members, the fishing communities that were their homes, and their impact on the subsequent treatment of atomic victims in Japan.