After censorship was eliminated in 1996, a new breed of writer-directors created a canon of internationally provocative and visually stunning genre-bending hit films, and new and established producers infused unprecedented venture capital into the local industry. Today, a bevy of key producers, including vertically integrated Korean conglomerates, maintain dominance over the film industry while engaging in a variety of relatively neartransparent domestic and international expansion strategies. Backing hits at home as well as collaborating with filmmakers in China and Hollywood have become priorities. In stark contrast to the way in which the film business is conducted today is Korean cinema's Golden Age of the 1960s - an important but little- known period of rapid industrialization, high productivity and clandestine practices. To develop a fuller understanding of the development of Korean cinema, this article investigates the complex interplay between film policy and production during the 1960s under authoritarian President Park Chung Hee, whose government's unfolding censorship regime forced film producers to develop a range of survival strategies. A small but powerful cartel of producers formed alliances with a larger cohort of quasi-illegal independent producers, thus - against all the odds - enabling Korean cinema to achieve a golden age of productivity.

On 21 February 2009, the international mother language day, UNESCO launched the online version of its ‘Atlas of the world's languages in danger’. This electronic version that will also be published as the third edition of the UNESCO Atlas in May 2009, now includes the Luchuan [Ryukyuan] languages of Japan (UNESCO 2009). ‘Luchuan’ is the Uchinaaguchi (Okinawan language) term for the Japanese ‘Ryukyu’. Likewise ‘Okinawa’ is ‘Uchinaa’ in Uchinaaguchi. Well taken, UNESCO recognizes six languages of the Luchu Islands [Ryukyu Islands] of which two are severely endangered, Yaeyama and Yonaguni, and four are classified as definitely endangered, Amami, Kunigami, Uchinaa [Okinawa] and Miyako (see UNESCO 2003 for assessing language vitality and endangerment).

A government-sponsored bill to send the Self-Defense Forces to Iraq to take part in postwar reconstruction cleared the Lower House last week. There is little doubt this legislation is a demonstration by Japan of its willing cooperation with the U.S. global strategy.

On 23 June 2006 the UN proudly launched its Peacebuilding Commission (PBC) seeking to reverse a situation where international efforts to rebuild war-torn societies had, more often than not, failed. In the words of its charter, the PBC will “marshal resources at the disposal of the international community to advise and propose integrated strategies for post-conflict recovery, focusing attention upon reconstruction, institution-building, and sustainable development in countries emerging from conflict.” As an advisory body made up of 31 member countries including four permanent members of the Security Council, and currently chaired by Japan, the PBC purports to offer tailor-made solutions to target countries making the transition from war to peace.

History moved forward, but the movement was accompanied by painful sacrifice. Prime Minister Koizumi's visit to North Korea was intended to carve out a new page in the history of Japan and North Korea, countries whose relations have been suspended for almost half a century. Instead, when North Korea revealed the shocking truth that among the Japanese abducted to North Korea 8 were dead and 5 alive somewhere, the response from the Japanese public was of anger against North Korea combined with suspicion that the Koizumi administration was using the North Korean visit to try to boost its own popularity. The Japanese Foreign Ministry, moreover, compounded its incompetence by delaying distribution of a list recording the dates of the victims’ deaths. Fierce criticism of the government and its handling of foreign affairs mounts daily. In response to this public concern, the outlook for the normalization talks scheduled for October becomes uncertain, and it is possible that the government's schedule for accelerated negotiations towards normalization might collapse.

When, in mid-2005, Japan's Yomiuri newspaper began to publish a series of articles on the question of “war responsibility”, the event attracted nationwide and even international interest. Now the newspaper series has become a book, published in a two-volume version in Japanese and in a one-volume abridged English translation entitled Who Was Responsible? From Marco Polo Bridge to Pearl Harbour. There can be no doubt that these publications mark an important moment in the long and vexed history of East Asia's “history wars” – the ongoing conflicts between Japan and its neighbors (particularly China and both Koreas) about memory of and responsibility for Japan's 20th century military expansion in Asia.

How many people in the world now remember that fateful day? At 11:02 a.m. on August 9, fifty-nine years ago, the city of Nagasaki was instantly transformed into ruins by a single atomic bomb dropped from an American warplane, killing some 74,000 people and wounding 75,000. Today, Nagasaki's verdant cityscape attracts visitors from around the world, and its residents maintain a distinctive set of traditions and culture. Nevertheless, the city's increasingly elderly atomic bomb survivors continue to suffer from the aftereffects of the bombing as well as from health problems induced by the stress of their experience. We the citizens of Nagasaki call upon the world with a renewed sense of urgency, even as we reflect upon the intense suffering of those who have already perished.

We call upon the citizens of the United States to look squarely at the reality of the tragedies that have unfolded in the wake of the atomic bombings 59 years ago. The International Court of Justice has clearly stated in an advisory opinion that the threat of nuclear weapons or their use is generally contrary to international law. Notwithstanding, the US government continues to possess and maintain approximately 10,000 nuclear weapons, and is conducting an ongoing program of subcritical nuclear testing. In addition, the so-called mini nuclear weapons that are the subject of new development efforts are intended to deliver truly horrific levels of force. In terms of the radioactivity that such weapons would release, there would be no difference compared to the bomb dropped on Nagasaki. So long as the world's leading superpower fails to change its posture of dependence on nuclear weapons, it is clear that the tide of nuclear proliferation cannot be stemmed. People of America: The path leading to the eventual survival of the human race unequivocally requires the elimination of nuclear arms. The time has come to join hands and embark upon this path.

Both official Chinese and exile Tibetan responses to the protests that broke across Tibet last month followed a familiar, worn-out script. For the Tibetan exiles and their international supporters, this was a last gasp for independence by the victims of cultural genocide. For the Chinese government this was premeditated mayhem orchestrated by the “Dalai clique” and “criminal elements” bent on splitting China. Both sides have it wrong.

Speaking at a conference under the rubric “Summit on Energy Security” at West Lafayette, Indiana, this month, the powerful chairman of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Richard Lugar, characterized Venezuela, Iran and Russia as “adversarial regimes” that were using energy supplies as “leverage” in foreign policy.

This article, and Geoffrey White's “War Memory and American Patriotism: Pearl Harbor and 9-11” originally appeared in Laura Hein and Daizaburo Yui, Crossed Memories: Perspectives on 9/11 and American Power, Center for Pacific and American Studies, The University of Tokyo, 2003. http://www.cpas.c.u.-tokyo.ac.jp/ The texts have been revised and condensed for Japan Focus.

BANGKOK - If all goes to plan, China will for the first time ever in July host joint military exercises with troops from the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the strongest indication yet that Beijing's recent economic charm offensive toward the region is starting to pay real strategic dividends.

The worst nuclear disaster to strike Japan since a single bomb fell over Nagasaki in 1945 occurred in the spring of 2011 at the Fukushima nuclear power plant following the epic tsunami. On August 22, The New York Times reports (in submerged fashion, headlining Gaddafi's imminent fall in Libya) the disturbing news that a wide area around the Fukushima plant “could soon be declared uninhabitable, perhaps for decades, after a government survey found radioactive contamination that far exceeded safe levels.”

Audiovisual temporal integration ability, reflected by the size of the temporal binding window (TBW), plays an important role in reading. The audiovisual TBW is not fixed, but dynamically changes during the integration process, this is referred to as rapid temporal recalibration. To investigate the rapid audiovisual temporal recalibration ability across age and its correlation with reading, the present study conducted simultaneity judgment (the index includes ΔPSS and ΔTBW) tasks involving speech (Experiment 1; children: Mage = 10.70, adults: Mage = 24.52) and non-speech (Experiment 2; children: Mage = 10.19, adults: Mage = 24.26) audiovisual stimuli in native Mandarin-Chinese-speaking child and adult groups (n = 36 in each group). Results showed that children’s ΔPSS and ΔTBW for speech stimuli were comparable to those of adults. However, when examining trial-by-trial changes in TBW during the integration process, a gap between children and adults was evident. Besides, for non-speech stimuli, children significantly differed from adults in both ΔPSS indicators and the integration process. Moreover, for both children and adults, the correlation and regression analysis showed that the rapid audiovisual temporal recalibration ability of both speech and non-speech stimuli explained reading fluency uniquely after controlling TBW, age, and gender.

Out of the thick political fog produced by Japan's G8 Summit in Hokkaido emerged one key pledge: the world's second-largest economy has announced a 60-80 percent cut in greenhouse gases by 2050, one of the most ambitious national targets. The pledge has since come under intense scrutiny, particularly over the telling lack of mid-term targets and deliberate fudging on the starting or base year for cuts – 1990 or 2008? But one thing remains very clear: nuclear energy will shoulder much of the burden of the country's climate-change strategy.

Ever since the October 10 news conference announcing the discovery of a small tablet in China's Tang dynasty capital of Chang'an (now Xi'an), excitement in Japan has run high. Recording the death of a Japanese student in China in 734, the tablet indicates that Jing Zhencheng posthumously received from the Chinese Emperor a high official appointment. It also contains the earliest use of the name Riben or Nippon, the Chinese and Japanese characters for Japan that have been used ever since.

As major floods have coursed through the middle Mekong across Southeast Asia this August in what some describe the greatest flooding in one hundred years, governments have announced plans to step up flood control work. At the same time, many are asking whether China is responsible for the heavy damage, especially as its cascade of dams has in the past been blamed for holding back the natural flow of water and intensifying the historic patterns of flooding. Certainly greater transparency on China's part would make for increased understanding of the issues. Yet transparency is in short supply all round if we consider the way that decisions are made in the downstream riparian countries, namely the Lao PDR and the Kingdom of Cambodia, especially the way that NGOs are given short shrift and where even armies are deeply involved in illegal logging and other nefarious ventures. For that matter, the current political crisis in the Kingdom of Thailand in part turns upon the lack of financial transparency that bedeviled the ousted Thaksin Shinwatra regime.

On April 19, the Japanese government raised the allowable annual radiation exposure limit from 1 mSV (millisievert) to 20 mSV. The decision has been heavily criticized by experts inside and outside Japan, as it is applied to children who are more susceptible to radiation, and this limit does not take internal radiation dosage into consideration. 20 mSV is the yearly average of what is allowed for Japanese nuclear plant workers under normal circumstances. On this website, we have so far primarily written and provided information in English on this “20 mSV” issue and on the Fukushima nuclear crisis in general. In this post we attempt to compile a list of articles, video news, press releases available in English and other languages.

Surprise, surprise, it is the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), the trade union notorious throughout the world for being “useless”, that has taken on Wal-Mart and succeeded in setting up workplace union branches at twenty-two Wal-Mart supercenters in China within four weeks. This has attracted the attention of the Chinese media, all major US newspapers, and the China Labor Bulletin (CLB). CLB is the Hong Kong-based labor NGO headed by Han Dongfang, the worker who emerged for a few weeks during the 1989 Tiananmen Square movement as a labor leader of the Beijing Workers Autonomous Federation. I was invited by Japan Focus to comment on the significance of the union's action and the CLB report.

A Japanese history textbook for junior high school students, created by the members of the ‘Atarashii rekishi kyokasho o tsukuru kai’ (hereafter referred to as ‘Tsukurukai’; Society for History Textbook Reform)1 and approved by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in spring 2001 (we shall use the edition published for the general public), depicted the Showa Emperor over two pages at the end of its ‘Personality Columns’. The first part of this column, entitled ‘The Showa Emperor - a life lived with the Japanese people’, reads:

‘On the day of the demise of the Showa Emperor’

On the morning of 7 January 1989 (the 64th year of Showa), when the Showa Emperor (124th Emperor: 1901-1989) passed away, many people assembled in front of the Imperial Palace on hearing the news. An old lady of sixty-eight years old who had been exposed to the radiation in Hiroshima and was then living in Tokyo said, ‘I have a feeling that I have always been sharing hardships with the Showa Emperor’. Just like this old lady, in front of the Palace as well as in all parts of the country, various kinds of people including youths, elderly people, housewives and salaried workers quietly pondered over the true meaning of the era of the Showa Emperor. (p. 306)