President Xi Jinping's call for a “new type of great-power relationship” in meetings in 2013 with President Obama raises important questions about the future of US-China relations. On the surface, it appeared that the two leaders were on the same page. At the June summit, Obama agreed with Xi that “working together cooperatively” and bringing US-China relations “to a new level” were sound ideas. When the G-20 countries convened at St. Petersburg in September, Obama said of Xi's proposed new model: “we agreed to continue to build a new model of great power relations based on practical cooperation and constructively managing our differences.” But he added that “significant differences and sources of tension” remain with China, implying that China's “playing a stable and prosperous and peaceful role” in world affairs remained a matter of US concern.

In the wake of the March 11, 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster, much has been said about the character of Japan, and especially about Tōhoku and its people. In the early weeks and months, the exceptionally good behavior of an overwhelming majority of Japanese in the face of a disaster of almost unthinkable magnitude was the object of much admiration. Especially in the foreign press, mixed in with cringe-inducing references to the “Fukushima 50” as “nuclear samurai”-if anything, “kamikaze” would have been the more appropriate image-the tropes of “orderly” and “law-abiding” Japanese and “stoic” residents of Tōhoku were repeated frequently even by scholars whose careers are mostly built around combatting sloppy generalizations. Diverse voices from around the world, including those of Chinese netizens-more often cited as a bastion of virulent anti-Japanese sentiment-were joined in approbation. Sympathy and aid poured in from around the world, and the domestic media proudly relayed this news to their Japanese audiences.

In 1957, a young Japanese writer published a collection of short stories which quickly attracted nationwide attention. The title of the collection - Shisha no Ogori - is particularly difficult to render into English, but has been translated by John Nathan as Lavish Are The Dead. The writer was Ōë Kenzaburō, and the success of this, his first published book, was the start of a career that would ultimately bring him international fame and a Nobel Prize for literature