In the course of 2002, Japanese peace activists laid the groundwork for the convening of an International Criminal Tribunal for Afghanistan to try George W. Bush for war crimes. Following three research trips to Afghanistan and research in Japan, the Tribunal convened the first of a series of hearings in December. Maeda Akira, a convenor of the International Criminal Tribunal for Afghanistan, is a professor of international law at Zokei University in Tokyo. This article appeared in Kinyobi 10, January 2003.

Next Wednesday, April 23, North Korea, the U.S., and China will meet in Beijing to discuss a possible resolution of a crisis caused by North Korea's determination to defend itself with nuclear weapons against threats of aggression from the Bush administration. North Korea made the first concession. On Saturday, April 12, Pyongyang dropped its demand that it meet the U.S. face-to-face, without any other participants in the talks, including the U.N. Security Council.

VOSTOCHNY, Russia - For now, Krylova Cape is not much to see: a spit of land between the Russian taiga forest and the Sea of Japan, its soil being graded a bit by a bright yellow bulldozer. But what is taking shape here is central to a pitched struggle between the two most important economies in Asia: the reigning titan, Japan, and its rising challenger, China.

Recent events provide a stark reminder that we live in a global society where major events affect everyone, across borders, regions, and cultures. Yet, despite the intensification of global interconnections effected by worldwide flows of capital and culture, the meanings of September 11 continue to be constructed in sharply nationalist terms. This may be especially so for Americans who were the primary targets of the 2001 attacks, and who generally see them as attacks on the nation (as, indeed, they seem to have been intended). As John Dower has observed, one need only look at the outpouring of patriotic responses to September 11 in the United States, marked by flags, songs, ceremonies, and commentaries (as well as military actions) enunciating national pride and solidarity. (John Dower, in remarks made at a symposium marking the 60th anniversary of Pearl Harbor, observed that these responses reminded him of accounts of Japanese nationalism in the early stages of the Asia-Pacific War.) But the �new� American patriotism being produced in the post-9-11 era frequently invokes earlier forms of patriotism, especially in images of World War II, the �good war.� Here I reflect on the role of memories of the bombing of Pearl Harbor in (re)producing American patriotism in the 9-11 era, focusing particularly on cultural practices of remembrance.

The rebuilding of both a nuclear nonproliferation system and a framework for multilateral consultations in Asia toes the line of postwar Japanese foreign policy.

There is no denying that Japanese diplomacy is being tested by the threat of North Korea's nuclear weapons program. However, the problems of Japanese foreign policy lie not only outside Japan but also within.

Gavan McCormack is a research professor of East Asian history at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia, co-author of Korea Since 1850 and author of The Emptiness of Japanese Affluence.

It all began on July 18th, 2001, when I made a visit to reconstruct the clinic in Darya-ye Nur. It was the first time for me to enter Afghanistan since the Taliban had come into power. It had been a while since I last crossed the Khyber Pass. I went around each PMS clinic in Darya-ye Nur, Daraye Peech and Nuristan Wama, which are in the back region along the Kunar River, upstream from Jalalabad.

From virtually the moment the ink dried on Japan's no-war Constitution of 1947, the United States and Japan's ruling party have sought to undermine the principle that the activities of Japan's Self-Defense Forces would be limited strictly to Japan's own defense. Maeda Tetsuo, a specialist on Japanese security, offers a detailed analysis of the threats to the Constitution that have intensified since September 11, 2001 with the intensification of efforts to mobilize the Self-Defense Forces both for regional policing and for direct support of U.S. war aims in the Middle East and Central Asia. The result, he concludes, is a fullscale military alliance with Japan preparing to undertake military actions at the U.S. behest in forthcoming wars. The article also analyzes the behavior of U.S. forces in Japan following 9-11, particularly the loss of Japanese sovereignty in U.S. bases. The article appeared in Gunshuku [Disarmament] 266 (December 2002): 6-11. This is the first of a series of articles on Japanese security and constitutional issues to be made available at Japan Focus.

Back to Back with Death

Kaneko Masaru: I read your book, I've Become Homeless. The general image of homeless people is that they've chosen that lifestyle themselves. Speaking from reality, that is totally wrong. Homeless people are in much more dire circumstances. That comes across well in your book.

Like the Gulf War of 1991, the Iraq War of 2003 sent tremors through Japan's foreign policy establishment in the face of widespread Japanese opposition to the U.S. invasion, and particularly to U.S. invasion in the absence of an authorizing U.N. resolution. This article, written on the eve of invasion, explores the Japanese government decision to support the U.S. war despite its deep misgivings and considers the implications for eroding Japan's constitutionally enshrined no war principles. The author particularly emphasizes Japan's dependence on the U.S. in light of the crisis in Japan-North Korea relations that surfaced simultaneous with the road to war in Iraq. “Japanese Foreign Policy in Light of the Iraq War,” by Yakushiji Katsuyuki, was published in Aera on April 5, 2003.

I first became aware of the relevance of the idea of refugee to my own life when I read Ghassan Kanafani's writing in the late 1970s. Kanafani (b. 1936), a Palestinian refugee, was a spokesman for the People's Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). In 1972 he was assassinated in Beirut by a car bomb. Kanafani's work, which appeared first in Japanese and then in Korean translation, also played an important role in the South Korean pro-democracy movement during the 1970s. Korean movement leaders such as Paik Nak-Chung were inspired by Arab literatures of resistance, and called for South Koreans to define their own struggles as part of a global Third World liberation movement.