Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun has published a letter from Nishioka Takeo, the House of Concillors President and an important member of Kan's own Democratic Party calling for Prime Minister Kan's resignation.

The original link in English and a reproduction of the original in Japanese (not available in full on the Yomiuri website).

Last month, many TV channels around the world broadcast special reports on the nuclear crisis of March 2011. Among these, BBC's “Inside the Meltdown” and German TV channel ZDF's “Die Fukushima-Lüge” (The Fukushima lie) deserve special mention, as they both drew significant attention on the Japanese web.

[As the US seeks to isolate Iran and pave the way for UN sanctions that would legitimate an attack on Iran, China and Russia have taken important steps to expand their regional organization. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization constitutes the major regional challenge to American power in the Asia Pacific region. The invitation to Iran comes at a time when that nation faces extreme international isolation, and raises the stakes in the US diplomatic and military efforts to pressure Iran to terminating its nuclear program.]

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which maintained it had no plans for expansion, is now changing course. Mongolia, Iran, India and Pakistan, which previously had observer status, will become full members. SCO's decision to welcome Iran into its fold constitutes a political statement. Conceivably, SCO would now proceed to adopt a common position on the Iran nuclear issue at its summit meeting June 15.

In this article Walker argues that Japanese imperial processes began much earlier than other scholars often assume; the Tokugawa government was well aware of various geo-political threats that certain countries posed to Japan's national defense in the early 19th century. Specifically, both the Qing Empire and Russia were poised to claim sovereignty over Sakhalin, an island in the North Pacific, through their competing attempts to map the territory. Walker examines the journeys of several Japanese cartographers, especially Mamiya Rinzō, who were commissioned by the Tokugawa government to map Sakhalin first and determine the borders between Japan and Russia. Walker argues that, while European countries were often “centers of calculation” that sought to amass scientific knowledge for the benefit of imperial projects, the Japanese cartographic efforts were an attempt by a “periphery of calculation” to rival these claims. The Tokugawa government's mapmaking activities were not only a way to fend off European colonialism, but used the same technology as the Russians, which allowed Japan to claim that it was a scientifically advanced society and therefore had a right to control Sakhalin. According to Walker, mapping distant lands was “an inherent exercise in state logistical power” because it showed that the state was strong enough to amass the manpower and ships to embark on such endeavors. The imperial processes that would enable Japan to successfully incorporate the southern part of Sakhalin (called Karafuto) into the Japanese empire in 1905 were thus set into motion almost a hundred years prior to Karafuto's colonization.

Recent works have found renowned author Hayashi Kyoko and A-bomb survivor expanding her criticism of nuclear weapons to include nuclear power. This article looks at her criticisms of the nuclear disasters at Tokaimura in 1999 and Fukushima (ongoing), and her emphasis on the dangers of radiation as one which affects all humanity.

Thursday, June 16, 2005 is a date that will be etched in memory as the day Japan's proposal for United Nations reform was dealt a fatal blow by the U.S. government.

The United States’ proposal on reform of the U.N. Security Council released that day calls for expansion of membership from the current 15 to 19 or 20, by adding “two or so” permanent members to the current five– Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States–as well as two or three additional nonpermanent members.

It has been ten years since the Democratic Peoples' Republic of Korea (DPRK or North Korea) embarked on a path of change. The first major course correction occurred in 1998 when the DPRK amended its constitution. A new cost accounting system in economic management was introduced, and a new political line of Songun (Army-First Politics) was promulgated in addition to the Juche ideology of national self-reliance. Although this adapted form of Marxism-Leninism continued to guide the country on its way to “Korean-style socialism,” the proposed changes would bring some elements of economic liberalisation and commercialisation of the economy. As part of this cautious plan, several enclaves scattered across the country were allocated by the DPRK government exclusively for inter-Korean cooperation.

Koizumi's Japan enjoys the warmest of relationships with Bush's US, for the very good reason that Koizumi has proved himself willing, even enthusiastic, to deliver what Washington requires – uncritical support in general, continuing provision of facilities for the US military in Japan, and Japanese boots on the ground to support the American mission in Iraq. On one significant issue, however, Koizumi has failed to deliver: the 1996 promise to replace the antiquated and inconvenient facilities of Futenma Marine Air Station, that now sits uncomfortably in the middle of the bustling township of Ginowan in the middle of Okinawa island, with a new facility in Northern Okinawa, to be built on the coral reef offshore from the fishing village of Henoko, in the township of Nago. It was a relatively remote and backward area, and Tokyo assumed it could rely on persuasion and financial inducements to overcome local opposition. It got rid of the Governor, the stubborn scholar and constitutionalist, Ota Masahide, in 2000, installing in his place a conservative figure expected to be more pliable, and poured in money to soften up the local opposition. Despite everything, however, it has not prevailed. In October 2005, the plan to construct the base on the reef had to be abandoned. Koizumi admitted the opposition had been too great. The Japanese state had, in effect, been defeated, by a coalition of fishermen, local residents, and citizens. One of the most remarkable events in recent Japanese history passed without notice by the media and the pundits.

Signs abound of China's emergence as a significant status quo power in the international order in step with its emergence as a major world economy. In its leading role in the 6-Party talks on North Korea, in its opening to ASEAN and to Africa, in its pivotal role in the Shanghai group of nations, China's geopolitical reach has expanded. So, too, in its economic and financial reach as China, with Japan, prop up the US dollar through their massive purchase of US securities at a time of financial crisis, and China extends its search for resources globally. In the following overview of six decades, Pang Zhongying speaks to international concerns about the nation's growing international presence and highlights distinctive features of China's approach to diplomacy including its prioritization of UN-sanctioned roles as reflected in its growing participation in UN peacekeeping and relief missions, and its criticism of unilateral intervention. The author emphasizes the importance of an expanded Chinese global role at a time of declining US power and envisages Chinese participation in an international order that is not simply dominated by the US. Pang places heavy emphasis on environmental issues, noting China's developmental dilemma, its rise to a position as the world's leading producer of greenhouse gases as well as recent efforts to address environmental issues. But like the nostrums of other powers, it is difficult to discern in China's policies anything approaching the steps that will be required to avert ecological disaster in the coming years. The author calls for major changes including progress toward democratization in China and in that nation's international policy while also spelling out the need for change in Western approaches to China. MS

Komiyama Yoko is the first woman to ever be appointed Japan's Minister of Health, Welfare and Labor. As a mother she may have more insight and empathy than many of her male colleagues into the issues her ministry addresses. What is certain is that, as soon as she took the job in August, she stirred up controversy, mainly with her comment that the cigarette tax should be raised in order to help fund reconstruction in the areas devastated by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. But tax matters are the responsibility of the Finance Ministry.

Two years after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami triggered the planet's worst's nuclear disaster since Chernobyl, journalists are still often asked: is the crisis over? One plausible reply might be that it has just begun.

This is part two of a supplement on South Korea's Kwangju Uprising: Fiction and Film. Part one is Ch'oe Yun and Mark Morris, South Korea's Kwangju Uprising: Fiction and Film.

Japan's Yasukuni problem is inseparable from the fact that nationalism is the dominant ideology of our era. This is abundantly clear in media representations, memorials, museums and popular consciousness during and after wars and other international conflicts. This is true not only of Japan but also of South Korea, China and the US, among many others. And it is surely nationalism—stimulated and emboldened throughout Asia following the end of the era of US-Soviet confrontation, the rise of China as a regional and world power, and aggressive US actions associated with the “war on terror”—that constitutes the most powerful obstacle to resolution of the issues that divide nations and inflame passions in the Asia Pacific and beyond. Throughout the twentieth century, nationalism has everywhere been the handmaiden of war: war has provided a powerful stimulus to nationalism; nationalism has repeatedly led nations to war; and war memory is central to framing and fueling nationalist historical legacies. This article considers Yasukuni Shrine and Japanese war memory and representation in relationship to contemporary nationalism and its implications for the future of East Asia.

In February 2000, Japan began the new century on a sour note when it lost its rights to the Khafji oil field in the Saudi-Kuwaiti neutral zone. Japan's Arabian Oil Company had held exploration rights in that zone since 1957, and the loss of such a long-term investment was keenly felt.

While all eyes have been focused on China's dramatic recasting of the global solar PV industry, and the trade disputes engendered with the US and EU, there is another solar frontier now emerging, involving grid-connected concentrating solar power (CSP) plants. China is committed to developing capacity of 3 GW by 2015 (more than doubling cumulative world capacity) and 10 GW by 2020, which would make it by far the world's CSP leader, with consequent dramatic impact on cost reductions, driving the diffusion of CSP around the world as key challenger and alternative to nuclear and fossil power.

“So, how do you like Japan, Mr. Binney?'

The scene: a party at the Sumitomo Bank back in 1984 for the new manager of Chase Manhattan's Tokyo branch where I was then working.

Whoops. Most of us from Chase looked at the floor while our hosts tittered politely. Our manager should have said he enjoyed Asahi Beer, not Sapporo. Because Asahi was the Sumitomo group brewer and naturally the Sumitomo Bank served as the company's socalled “main bank”. At that time, Sumitomo Bank was regularly seconding its own people to the then-troubled beer maker including two of its presidents.

On March 29, 2007, members of the Japan Acton Network for the ‘Comfort Woman’ Issue, accompanied by three Diet representatives, visited the Cabinet Office to submit letters of protest against Prime Minister Abe Shinzo's series of statements denying Japanese governmental involvement in coercing the comfort women into the military's wartime system of sexual slavery. They also raised concern over efforts to revise the 1993 “Kono Statement.”

It is often said that 9/11 has changed the world. Certainly, the world being swayed by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in the wake of that event appears to prove the saying correct.

But as far as the basic structure of today's international politics is concerned, the world underwent a drastic change when the Cold War ended. 9/11 served as a catalyst to make the structural change all the more manifest.