Prime Minister Aso Taro's admission that his family company employed prisoner-of-war labor during the final months of World War II may one day be seen as a milestone in Japan's struggle to contend with its own national history. In response to persistent questioning by an opposition lawmaker on the floor of the national parliament on January 6, Aso acknowledged the truth of recent disclosures of POW work at the Aso Mining Company in 1945.

[The Tokyo war crimes trial (International Military Tribunal for the Far East, 1946-1948) was the Pacific counterpart to the first Nuremberg Tribunal. Controversial at the time, it is more controversial today. This essay reminds American readers of differences in assessing the trial in the victorious and in the defeated countries, as well as within a single country such as Japan.

This essay explores representations of Japanese imperialism and war in museums of the People's Republic of China. With the post-Mao reforms, there has been a general trend in such representations toward an emphasis on atrocity and victimization and away from the narratives of heroic resistance that dominated in the Mao era. Yet, the museum curators in these museums must negotiate between these two representations in trying to make the war relevant to a young audience generally more attracted to the pleasures of popular culture than history museums.

For some of us in the China-watching business (I have been there for more than 40 years), there has always been a China “threat.” It began with the 1950-53 Korean civil war, which initially had nothing to do with China.

Indeed, if any outside power was involved in North Korea's attack on its rival government in the South, it was the Soviet Union, not China. The Communist regime in Beijing had just come to power after a protracted civil war with the rival Kuomintang (KMT) regime. Its troops were being moved to the south of the country, far from Korea, in preparation for the final attack on the KMT enemy which had fled to Taiwan.

Of the many gifted directors within Japanese animation, arguably the most imaginative and certainly the most prolific is Miyazaki Hayao. Miyazaki's works over the last three decades have consistently dealt with catastrophe on both a personal and a universal level, often focusing on young people and their reactions to a devastated world. This paper examines the treatment of disaster in the films, concentrating particularly on his most recent film Gake no ue no Ponyo, (Ponyo). Ponyo is discussed in the context both of Miyazaki's general treatment of disaster and in relation to the tsunami of March 11.

By some accounts, the location of America's capital was decided at a secret dinner party that Thomas Jefferson held in 1790 at his New York City residence. There, through the age-old practice of logrolling, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton hatched a plan to build the nation's capital in Virginia. “Madison agreed to permit the core provision of Hamilton's fiscal program to pass; and in return, Hamilton agreed to use his influence to assure that the permanent residence of the national capital would be on the Potomac River” (Ellis 2001, 49).

This chapter by Ito Peng and Joseph Wong on East Asian Asian welfare regimes is very welcome, particularly as a guide for what to watch in our increasingly fluid era of financial, energy and other shocks to the developed and developing economies. The authors review the literature on East Asian welfare states and show how much of it has been concerned with highlighting essential differences between the region and a generalized model of what we see in North America, Europe, and Scandinavia. (We might add that generalizing among those latter cases also seems unwise). One of the critically distinctive features of the East Asian welfare state typology was and remains the rather restricted fiscal role of the state. As the authors point out, in 2005 Japan led East Asia with 18.6% of GDP devoted to social spending. But the average in the OECD and EU countries was, respectively, 20.5 and 27%. Taiwan and Hong Kong are even further removed from the OECD pattern. During the mid-2000s they were only spending about 10% of GDP on social outlays. And then there is Korea, China, and Singapore weighing in with less than 7% of GDP spent on social outlays. The issues are particularly fascinating in light of the literature on the developmental state, pioneered by the late Chalmers Johnson, which highlights each of these countries as examples of state intervention in charting economic development.

Upon my inauguration in February 2003, I laid out three major national policy goals: Establishment of participatory democracy, balanced development of society, and the opening of a new era for a peaceful and prosperous Northeast Asia. This third objective has served as the backbone of my government's foreign policy – an attempt to build a Northeast Asian community through a new regional order of cooperation and integration that transcends old antagonisms and conflicts among countries in this region. I believe this policy is vital in ensuring our survival and enhancing our prosperity.

Six decades have passed since the end of the Pacific and East Asian War and the collapse of the Japanese colonial empire, but responsibility for colonialism, war, and their accompanying atrocities, continues to agitate Japan and East Asia. It is widely believed that Japan refuses to apologize or face the truth of history, much less compensate victims. Such a belief is, however mistaken, although it is true that it took five decades before any such steps were taken and the adequacy of the steps taken has been debated and continues to be debated.

Former Defense Ministry analyst Maeda Hisao warns of the emergence of a national warfare state and the further decimation of the provisions of Japan's peace constitution. He targets for criticism two Koizumi administration documents: The Defense White Paper of summer 2002 and the War Contingency Bills currently tabled for debate in the legislature. Maeda critiques the transformation of Japan's “self-defense” policy into one of aggressive “pre-emptive defense” as its defense perimeter is extended far beyond the Japanese islands. In contrast to the careful legislative analysis of Maeda Tetsuo (also available at Japan Focus), this manifesto by a former military establishment insider offers a blunt criticism of Japanese leaders. While warning of the consequences of an aggressive Japanese defense posture, the author, like a number of other SDF insiders, is equally critical of the consequences of the usurpation of the autonomy of Japan's Self-Defense Forces, that is, its subordination to American global military designs. From Gunshuku (Disarmament) in November, 2002.

At the centenary of Japan's Annexation of the Korean Empire in August 2010, speculation centered on whether Japan could achieve a radical departure from its traditional foreign policy of ‘Datsu-A Nyu-Ou’, namely leaving Asia to become a Western style country. This policy, resulted in Japan's colonization of Korea in August 1910 and led further to the invasion of China and other Asian nations, ending in Japan's utter defeat in August 1945.

It is a troubled Time for NATO's campaign against Libya. President Obama has seen a near-revolt in Congress against the costly war, while Defense Secretary Gates in Brussels has warned his European allies that their tepid response “is putting the Libya mission and the alliance's very future at risk.” Back home, according to the London Daily Mail, “Mr Gates has requested extra funds for Libya operations, but has been rebuffed by the White House.”

Japan's former Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro has repeatedly called for current Prime Minister Abe Shinzo to make an explicit decision to get out of nuclear power. Koizumi's full-scale press conference on this matter, held on November 12 in front of 350 journalists, shook up the Abe cabinet. It continues to do so, judging by the tendentious commentary it continues to attract. Koizumi forced the cabinet to address an item they clearly wanted to finesse for the time being. But the substance of Koizumi's over hour-long event has not yet received the attention it merits. This article puts Koizumi's talk in context, showing that his position is shared by all the former Japanese prime ministers, including Nakasone Yasuhiro. Most important, contrary to the claim that Japan's choice is either gas or nuclear, Koizumi highlighted the ongoing deployment of radical efficiency and renewable energy as the proper path forward. And the accelerating rollout of smart cities across Japan suggests that Koizumi and his colleagues are standing on the right side of history.

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.

On 13 August 2004, a U.S. Marine Corps transport helicopter crashed onto the campus of Okinawa International University, Ginowan City, injuring the three service members on board and sparking a large fire. Although the accident occurred on civilian soil, U.S. forces cordoned off the scene and blocked access to Japanese police investigators; according to some reports the only local representatives allowed through the blockade were delivery drivers bringing pizzas to the American MPs. That night, the national Japanese TV news networks either failed to cover the crash or afforded it scant attention.

More than a week after March 11, when northeastern Japan was hit by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake and 7-metre tsunami, the death toll remains unknown. It seems certain to exceed 20,000, as whole sections of some communities were washed out to sea. Search and rescue groups are grimly at work finding bodies alongshore and beneath the rubble and debris.

Selig Harrison originally visited North Korea in 1972, when he and Harrison Salisbury were the first independent or non-communist American journalists to visit since the Korean War. Mr. Harrison was also one of the first American experts to understand the strong grip of nationalism in North Korea, which he elucidated in his excellent 1978 book, The Widening Gulf: Asian Nationalism and American Policy. He now has more than 20 visits to Pyongyang under his belt, and his most recent book, Korean Endgame is a provocative call for American disengagement with Korea.

It also contains perhaps the best informed treatment that we have of the issues that have animated the confrontation between Washington and Pyongyang over the latter's nuclear program. With that stymied conflict now in its eighteenth year, it is no wonder that Mr. Harrison returned from his most recent visit with a suggestion that “benign neglect” of the nuclear issue might be the best among a narrowing list of American options.

Japanese space activity started in 1955. After fourteen years of rocket and satellite experimentation, space activity was initiated in such practical realms as weather forecasting and broadcasting. Scientific missions extending from the near-Earth region to deep space were organized by the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS), which was founded at Tokyo University in 1964. Other missions such as weather satellites, communication satellites, broadcasting satellites and environment monitoring satellites were managed mainly by the National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA), which was established in 1969. The two organizations together with the National Aerospace Laboratory were merged to form the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) in 2003. When NASDA was founded, the Diet unanimously adopted a resolution stating that Japan's space programs were exclusively for peaceful purposes, consistent with Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution. The word “peaceful purposes” was strictly interpreted to mean that Japan could use and exploit space only for “non-military” purposes. Japan's “non-nuclear” policy was simultaneously proclaimed. The Diet resolution of 1969 established “the principle of peaceful use of space” as the bedrock of Japan's space policy. As discussed below, military space activity would infiltrate the space program despite the principle. Indeed, Japan would become the most active military partner of the U.S. with respect to so-called “missile defense” systems. Even the “non-nuclear” policy has been discarded in practice through official tolerance of entry into Japan of U.S. nuclear submarines and nuclear missiles. After two decades of inconsistency between “the Principle of peaceful use of space” and the reality of militarized space activity, the new Japanese space law enacted in 2008 lifted the ban on the use of space technology for military purposes.

In 1993, an onsen (hotspring) in the city of Otaru, Hokkaido, decided it had had enough of Russian sailors not following bathhouse rules. The managers put up signs saying “JAPANESE ONLY,” and refused entry to all foreigners.

Excluded people complained about this situation for years, but the Otaru city government ignored the situation. Although they admitted that this activity was discrimination, they maintained that they had no power to stop it. This was, after all, not specifically illegal in Japan, and they considered it “too early” to legislate against it.