In the 1930s and 40s, a young, politically precocious Noam Chomsky was much affected by the Great Depression and the slow, seemingly inexorable slide toward world war. The jingoism, racism and brutality unleashed on all sides were appalling, but it seemed to him from his home in Philadelphia that America had reserved a special level of animosity for the Japanese. When Washington ended a campaign of mass civilian slaughter from the air with the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in the summer of 1945, the 16-year-old, deeply alienated by the celebrations around him, walked off into the local woods to mourn alone. “I could never talk to anyone about it and never understood anyone's reaction,” he said. “I felt completely isolated.”

March 1 and May 4 are important dates in the calendars of South Korea and China as they respectively mark the anniversaries of popular uprisings in 1919 against Japanese imperialism.

In South Korea, the anniversary is observed with a commemorative ceremony in which the president delivers a speech.

This year, President Roh Moo-hyun remonstrated with Japan about its “mistaken glorification and justification of history” and demanded that it engage in sincere soul-searching on the issue. Last year, South Korea's Prime Minister Lee Hae Chan came under public criticism for skipping the ceremony to play golf and was forced to step down.

In two communities in Nagano Prefecture an increasing number of citizens are complaining of swollen lymph glands and muscle pain, and at the same time deformities are appearing in plants. The causes have not been clarified, but some people suspect that the electromagnetic waves from mobile phone base stations may be a factor.

This is the second of two paired articles which view the U.S.-Korean War through the lens not of great power conflict, or even of contending armies in a civil war, but from the perspective of its impact on Korean society in countryside and city, and the continuing traumas that remain unresolved sixty years late. The first article is

Japan's Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, determined to promote Japan as (in the words of his book) a “beautiful country,” whose school students will be taught to love it and whose citizens will be offered a version of its history in which they can take pride, finds himself in the incongruous position of sinking deeper and deeper into a shameful mire over his refusal to accept state responsibility for the mass mobilization of women for the sexual slave services for the Imperial Japanese Army during the Asian and Pacific wars to 1945.

The President of the Republic of Korea is unique as a politician in the media age, both in embracing the potential of the Internet and refusing to pander to the sound bite. He spends hours on-line each week promoting his vision of e-government. The website of the Cheong Wa Dae presidential residence, the Korean equivalent of the White House, features a picture of Roh typing away furiously at his laptop. Roh, who has authored a biography of Abraham Lincoln, on whom he models himself, and like Lincoln, crafts speeches of great intellectual complexity. Roh also sees himself as the leader of a nation divided between North and South, and fragmented within. He works on the assumption that concepts and ideals can transform a society.

[The chief of the Asahi shimbun's editorial board here draws attention to the cycle of reconciliation/repudiation, apology/assertion in Japan's attitudes towards Asia. He dubs this the “Law of Next Year,” meaning that the one is inevitably followed by the other.

Since the Six Party Beijing Agreement on North Korea of 13 February 2007, optimism has spread on all fronts save one – Japan. For the Abe government, nuclear weapons constitute only part of the North Korea problem. Indeed, as Wada Haruki notes below, for the Japanese government it is not nuclear weapons but the abduction problem that constitutes “the most important problem our country faces.”

The reverberations of the act of self-immolation next to Shinjuku Station on June 29, 2014 seem akin to the sound of one hand clapping. Japan's mass media reliably jumps all over any sensational story, but not this one. While not ignored, it was certainly not pursued, as the story of a man reciting an anti-war poem by Yosano Akiko, a national legend, before igniting himself in front of throngs on a Sunday afternoon at Tokyo's most crowded commuter station somehow failed to gain traction. It was a remarkable political statement without precedent in the Japan I have lived in since 1987 making the negligible coverage all the more newsworthy.

BANGKOK - Energy-hungry China has started to use the Mekong River as a new oil-shipping route, raising new environmental concerns that accidental spills could adversely affect the livelihoods of nearly 60 million downstream river dwellers and eventually evolve into a bone of diplomatic contention between Southeast Asian countries and China.

“August 6, 1945: Hiroshima. August 9, 1945: Nagasaki.” I wrote the words on the classroom whiteboard in large letters. Then I crossed out both dates and places with a big red X. “Not true,” I declared. “The atomic bombings never happened. A total fabrication.”

This article deals with the Japanese Imperial Government's and Military's involvement in the wartime military comfort woman system (1931-1945) and presents new archival evidence documenting the use of comfort stations by Japanese businessmen as well as soldiers.

The nationalization of the Senkakus opened a Pandora's box of conflicting sovereignty claims that Japan will not be able to close without either conceding on key issues regarding the administration of the islands and surrounding waters or risking a sustained escalation of the dispute. By analyzing Japan's political landscape, the strategic objectives of the People's Republic of China, the goals of the Republic of China (Taiwan), and the nationalism-driven militarization of the region, this article explains why the current dispute over the Senkakus is likely to be a protracted one.

Until recently, the present Bush administration hewed faithfully to its vow never to succumb to North Korea's “nuclear blackmail”. The offer that it presented at the third round of the six-nation talks in June 2004, which promised North Korea energy assistance and improved relations as it disarmed its nuclear weapons, appeared to break with this hard-line approach. In late July 2004, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and Undersecretary of State John Bolton both visited Northeast Asia to emphasize that North Korea will be surprised to see how much is possible if it simply abandons its nuclear programs; the case of Libya provides a demonstrative example of the rewards that await its cooperation.

[In mid-April Japan's deteriorating relations with China produced mass Chinese demonstrations and much handwringing around the Pacific. Subsequently, the frictions again receded into the background, partly as a result of Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro's April 22nd expression of “deep remorse” at the Africa- Asia summit in Jakarta. Yet according to Kaneko Masaru of Keio University, the problems are hardly over. Even if the tensions don't soon erupt again, they are rooted in multiple and deep-rooted conflicts, and may result in continuing political and economic costs on Japan.]

Japan Focus introduction: Once the closest U.S. ally on North Korean issues, Japan is now feeling alone and isolated. The Bush administration has reversed its stance toward Pyongyang and appears to be on the verge of removing the country from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list. China and South Korea are racing to invest money into North Korea. Russia backs both inter-Korean engagement and North Korea's integration into the global economy.

Still Japan holds back. Tokyo has expressed considerable displeasure over Washington's decision on the terrorism list, as the abduction issue continues to cast a heavy shadow over policymaking in Japan. Tokyo went so far as to send a delegation to Washington to plead its case in November.

Tomita Tomohiko, former grand steward of the Japanese imperial household, recorded in his diaries (1) that Emperor Hirohito ceased visiting the Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo when it decided to honour certain men sentenced to death by the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal (2). Seven of the 14 class A criminals condemned, including the prime minister, former general Tojo Hideki, were executed; the others died in prison.

On Saturday 25 August 2007, NHK broadcast a programme called Seishonen no jisatsu o kangaeyo [Let's reflect on youth suicide]. The programme was prompted by the National police agency's publication of new statistics on the problem of youth suicide. In 2006, 886 Japanese youths took their own lives, invariably in response to bullying. ‘Youth’ as defined by the NPA refers to primary, middle, secondary school as well as university students. The 2006 figure was the highest since records began. It comes hard on the heels of other statistics demonstrating that Japan's annual suicide figures have hit 30,000 for the 9th year in succession.