The China Heritage Quarterly covers recent developments and scholarship in areas related to China's heritage. Founded as an e-journal in 2005, from 2008 it expanded its purview to include more material on intellectual history, literature, culture (in the broadest sense) and translation.

Drawing on English language sources and material from Western Samoa (now Samoa), this examination of photographically illustrated serial encyclopaedia and magazines proposes an alternative historical analysis of the colonial photographs of Samoa, the most extensively covered field in Oceanic photographic studies. Photographs published between the 1890s and World War II were not necessarily from that era, and despite claims in the text of illustrated publications of an unchanged, enduring, archaic tradition in Samoa, the amazing variety of content and subject matter often offered contradictory evidence, depicting a modern, adaptive and progressive Samoa. Contrary to orthodox historical analysis, the images of Samoa in illustrated magazines and encyclopaedia were not limited to a small, repetitive gallery of partially clothed women and costumed chiefs.

[For twenty years, Prime Ministerial visits to Yasukuni Shrine, have provided a flash point for Japan-China and Japan-South Korea clashes, together with conflicts over territorial and textbook issues. Yasukuni, Japan's war memorial, is a facility with close association with the Emperor. It preserves the remains of Japan's military war dead, enshrined as gods. It also includes the remains, among those of other leaders, of fourteen Class-A War Criminals convicted at the Tokyo Tribunal. With China's emergence in the last year as Japan's leading trade partner, the Yasukuni issue continues to poison the atmosphere between the two nations as well as those with South Korea. The issues are central both to rising Japanese nationalism and to diplomatic relations throughout East Asia. Pressure is building within Japan to resolve the Yasukuni issue. One sign of this is the recent statement by Lower House Speaker Kono Yohei and five former prime ministers urging caution in visiting the shrine to avoid further deterioration of Japan's ties with neighboring countries. The five former prime ministers are Kaifu Toshiki, Miyazawa Kiichi, Murayama Tomiichi, Hashimoto Ryutaro and Mori Yoshiro. Recent editorials from the Yomiuri Shimbun and Asahi Shimbun highlight important parameters of the debate.]

The peculiar and unique U.S.-Japan relationship has entered a new phase, in which its future is shrouded in mist. While few Americans can be bothered ever to think about it, in the back of many Japanese minds it is something as generally accepted as a fact of nature, but at the same time a permanent complication that is recently showing sharp and irritating edges. Quite a few have begun to think that they should shake themselves out of the habit of taking it so much for granted.

The Assessment of Park Chung Hee, the brutal dictator who many credit with launching South Korea's accelerated economic development, is central to debates on Korean democracy, development and independence. Paik Nak-chung, distinguished literary critic and a leading Korean public intellectual, delivered this keynote address to the International Korean Studies Conference on ‘The Park Era: A Reassessment After Twenty-five Years’ at University of Wollongong.

When we speak of “religion,” we often associate it first and foremost with matters of belief: to be “religious” is commonly understood in terms of the doctrines we accept, and the extent to which our actions are rooted in those doctrines. Indeed, our behavior (whether ethical or ritual) often makes sense precisely in the context of the religious world(s) we inhabit. As we found in Part I of this reader, religious traditions provide some of our most fundamental orientations to the world, profoundly shaping how we understand and respond to our experiences, even as those experiences influence the way we perceive the meaning of our traditions.

Yamada Hiroshi, a carnation grower in Shizuoka prefecture, is one of 3.2 million Japanese farmers and fishermen who depend on Norinchukin Bank for financing and support. Now the Tokyo-based bank, hit by losses on holdings backed by overseas property loans, is asking him for help.

[Japan Focus has previously introduced the cases of Chinese and Korean World War II forced laborers, and of comfort women from many Asian nations filed against the Japanese government and corporations. Here Kinue Tokudome reviews the claims filed in U.S. courts against Japanese corporations by American POWs who worked as forced laborers more than sixty years ago. In all of the above-mentioned cases, the outcomes pertain not only to justice for victims, but also to transcending animosities associated with the war and paving the way for reconciliation. The issues are particularly salient at a time when Japan is embroiled in conflicts over war, colonialism and historical memory with its Chinese and Korean neighbors.]

Iwabuchi Nobuteru has visited New Guinea more than 200 times over the past 40 years –not to relax on a tropical beach but to look for human remains.

The divided East Indies island – the west half Irian, Indonesia, and the east half Papua New Guinea – saw heavy fighting between Japanese and Allied forces during World War II. Thousands of soldiers died there, and Iwabuchi's father, Keiji, was one of them.

With the regional and global spike in food prices it is naturally imperative that East Timor corner crucial sources of food, joining a queue of food deficit countries from the Philippines to Singapore. But how and why has East Timor – a land of subsistence agriculturalists and one of the world's poorest nations- been turned into a net food importer? And what is the future of East Timor's agriculture? The answers are complex but we are reminded of the “Timor problem” described Dutch geographer F.J. Ormeling in the mid-1950s in a book of the same name, a reference to Timor's delicate environmental niche including highly invariant rainfall, that always threatens to breach self-sufficiency. Apparently the food security “problem” was not understood by the World Bank which, from 1999 to 2002, prioritized irrigated rice development over and above East Timor's traditional basket of staples of which corn was dominant. Indonesian rule after the 1975 invasion did extend wet-field rice, but they also left the rice paddies abandoned in 1999. With the crisis apparent, FAO in East Timor has only belatedly acknowledged the need to address non-rice agriculture. The “problem” today, as addressed by Douglas Kammen, is that East Timor faces down the curse of other states drawing upon hydrocarbon rents for quick fixes, namely that it is cheaper to import just about everything – food included – and that agriculture – the life and blood of the country for millennium - is left to the market or to wither. But as Kammen also stresses, problems of overcoming cronyism and corruption at the interface of state and market are central to East Timor's future. This is the third in a continuing series on the world food crisis. See Walden Bello, How to manufacture a global food crisis: The destruction of agriculture in developing countries; C. Peter Timmer, Japan and a Solution to the World Rice Crisis Japan Focus

On August 1991, Korean former “comfort women,” (women who were forced to serve as sex workers for the Imperial Japanese Army) including Kim Hak-sun, the first to speak publically about her experience, began to raise their voices. Before then, the issue had only been discussed quietly in postwar Japanese society. Previous testimonies had come from soldiers, partly in the form of romanticized memoirs of their time spent with the women.

One important new witness is Mizuki Shigeru, a leading Japanese manga artist, who provided detailed descriptions of a “comfort station,” that is, a military brothel, in his book “Soin Gyokusai Seyo [All of You Shall Die for Honor]” (14-15.) based on his personal wartime experience. In his afterword he wrote, “I can't help but feel irrational resentment when I write war chronicles. Maybe the spirits of the war dead make me feel that way.” There Mizuki told of a soldier who shouted, “Thirty seconds for each!” and another who said, looking at the long queue in front of the station, “Hey Sis, about 70 more to go. Be patient.” This important historical testimony reveals how the Japanese army set up comfort stations in the very front lines at that time. (See Matthew Penney, War and Japan: The Non-Fiction Manga of Mizuki Shigeru)

This three part New Year essay was commissioned by the Okinawan daily Ryukyu shimpo and published on January 6, 7, and 8, 2009, under the title “Satsuma shinko 400 nen – “Gekijo” kokka to shite no Okinawa,” (400 Years since the Satsuma Invasion: Okinawa as ‘Theatre’ state“).

For Japanese text, carried here with permission from Ryukyu shimpo, see the headings of each section.

“The Man Who Turned Foreign Policy Into a Fight.” That is the title of a booklet published by the Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun about Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro's approach to diplomacy during his five years in office. The Japanese title uses the word “kenka.” It is usually translated as “fight,” but the nuance it carries is closer to a “fistfight” or “verbal scuffle” among little schoolboys.

“Though global safety standards kept on improving, we wasted our time coming up with excuses for why Japan didn't need to bother meeting them.” Madarame Haruki, Chairman, Nuclear Safety Commission, Diet testimony, 2/15/12

The nuclear accident at Fukushima was precipitated by natural disaster, but poor risk management, including a failure to comprehend tectonic risk in the most earthquake prone country in the world, and an institutionalized complacency about risk, were major factors increasing the likelihood of a major accident and fumbling crisis response. Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the utility operating the Fukushima Daiichi Plant, and the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA), the government regulatory authority, mismanaged a range of risks - siting, seismic, tsunami, emergency preparedness and radiation - and it is this mismanagement that made Fukushima into Japan's Chernobyl. Investigations into the accident have established that the crisis response was improvised and inadequate because of lack of preparation, institutional flaws in emergency procedures, and poor communication within the government and between officials and TEPCO.

Two recent libel cases have led to concerns that the freedom of Japanese journalists to investigate and, if necessary criticize the powerful is under attack. Both involve marginal publications that make a living tackling “taboo” subjects and which have suffered serious legal repercussions as a result. The mainstream media in Japan has so far declined to discuss the issues, still less to offer any expressions of solidarity for their plight. The cases coincide with the publication of a report by Reporters Without Borders, which called the “steady erosion” of press freedom in Japan “alarming” and again criticized the stifling role of press clubs on reporting in the world's second-largest economy.

TOKYO - With Japan experiencing strained diplomatic relationship with China and South Korea, the opportunity exists to set the tone in balance-of-power politics and economic integration with another neighbor. That is Russia, and the overarching, issue that continues to divide Japan and Russia is sovereignty over the four Russian-held Kuril Islands. Recently, some Japanese experts on Russia have been calling for greater flexibility and compromise by Tokyo, which has always demanded the return of all four islands. There's no sign yet of official acceptance, but pressures are building for Japan to strike a deal and accept a “two islands plus alpha” solution - still to be hammered out. In this perspective, Japan would give up its demands for the return of all four islands and instead accept the two smaller islands and a portion of the two larger ones.

What more can be done to protect the workers—those on the front lines of protecting the nation—so they can continue their efforts to stabilize the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant? The Japanese state and TEPCO should recognize the health and safety of front-line workers as a national priority

Concepts and best international practices presented in this document draw on current Japanese and international research and literature to provide information that may be of value in protecting the health of Fukushima workers and others who experience extreme heat and radiation.

The major reason for writing a paper on Japanese unionism is that much of the debate assessing Japanese enterprise unions was set in the pre-1990s period when the economy was strong and there was a shortage of skilled labour. Thus, whilst some commentators argued that Japanese enterprise unions were little more than an arm of management, it was difficult to refute the argument that this form of unionism had resulted in real wage and benefit increases for a considerable period of time whilst generally ensuring a high level of job security for large numbers of workers. Over the past 15 years or so a different economic context has arisen where wage gains have been harder for unions to achieve, where unemployment and irregular employment have increased, and where globalization has made the market for Japanese goods highly competitive. It is time to provide a more contemporary assessment of this form of union organization.

On 13 June 2005, the doors of the White House Oval Office opened to admit a young (37 year- old) Korean man named Kang Chol-Hwan, a refugee from North Korea and perhaps the first person from North Korea for the president to meet. Kang was slightly overwhelmed by the warmth of his welcome, not only from President George W. Bush but also Vice-President Dick Cheney and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley. Just three days earlier, in the same room, Bush had hosted a visit by South Korean president Roh Moo-Hyun. The welcome for Kang, the refugee, was by all accounts much warmer than that for the head of state, and at forty minutes lasted about as long.