Along the coast of Manila Bay in the Philippines, behind the grand Manila Hotel, there is a slum district called Baseco. Hidden by towering container yards and cargo ships, this shantytown had been virtually unknown until a few years ago when a television report broadcast nationwide put a red pin on the map of Manila.

While organizers mobilize across the globe for history's biggest climate march in New York on September 21, strikingly large numbers of Americans - and an even bigger share of their political representatives - remain quiet, doubtful or even in denial about climate change. But the US military, especially in the Pacific, is neither uncertain nor passive. The August 10 Stars and Stripes tells us that US Pacific Command (PACOM) is also “not waiting on politics” in responding to climate change. Brigadier General Mark McLeod, former head of PACOM's Logistics, Engineering and Security Cooperation directorate describes why. He points out that 70 percent of global storms are in the Pacific and that climate change's impacts are already having military consequences. He dismisses the denialism rampant in American politics and society with:” Call it climate change, call it the big blue rabbit, I don't give a hoot what you call it —— the military has to respond to those kinds of things.”

As the third anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear disaster approaches, a string of new projects analyzing its causes and impact are underway. Al-Jazeera America is among the first out of the blocks with a four-part documentary, broadcast on its “America Tonight” segment in early January 2014. Among the questions it explores in the video below: Does the lingering aftermath of the crisis pose any danger to people living on the West Coast of North America?

Responses to Japanese Prime Minister Abe's proposed labor reforms, which are part of the economic stimulus plan known as Abenomics, are a window on the positions of major stakeholders’ social debates in Japan's future. This paper identifies, summarizes, and analyzes six responses to one of the proposed structural reforms: new labor rules that would encourage expansion of “limited regular employment,” an employment status between Japan's famous “lifetime employment” and the burgeoning number of non-regular workers. Proponents in the business community and government tout limited regular employment (gentei seiki koyou) as a way to introduce flexibility and mobility in the labor market, boosting productivity, and helping stem the bifurcation of Japanese society into winners, with regular employment, and losers, with non-regular jobs. Opponents, however, see the proposed reforms as an ominous step toward dismantling Japan's already weak worker protections. They argue that limited regular employment is a poison pill containing inherent contradictions that threaten the hopes of women and younger workers for stable careers, as well as loosening long-standing social and legal constraints on employers’ right to dismiss workers. Parliamentary debate on this labor legislation is set for the summer of 2014.

The Designated Secrets Protection Bill passed into law on December 13, 2013 and will come into force on the same date this year. The law was railroaded through the Lower House on November 26 last year and then forced again through the Upper House on December 6 by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and Kōmeitō coalition.

“I do this job for the opportunity to kill the enemies of my country and also to get that boat I always wanted… . [W]hen engaged I will lay waste to everything around me.” – Contractor slogan.

“It’s the perfect war… everybody is making money.” - US intelligence officer in Afghanistan.

Three years ago Japan's northeast was pummeled by the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami, triggering a meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The plant spewed much of its payload into the surrounding air, countryside and sea, leaving damage that will be with us for decades. Much of what we know about the disaster is still shrouded in mystery. Did Japan's huge civil engineering projects alleviate the impact of the disaster, or magnify it? How has the impact been inflected by class, urban-rural, and wealth disparities? How dangerous was the Daiichi meltdown to Tokyo during the worst week of the crisis from March 11-18th? What was the interaction between Tokyo and Washington and how important was the US Military role in diagnosing the crisis and bringing it under control? Have the authorities and the media fairly represented the nuclear crisis and conveyed its dangers to the Japanese public?

Like hundreds of communities along Japan's northeast coast, the village of Koizumi exists on maps only. On 11 March 2011, a M9.0 earthquake beneath the Pacific Ocean erupted with the force of a million tons of TNT, triggering towering waves that killed around 19,000 people. In Koizumi, 40 of the 1,800 villagers died.

Today Japan has some of the strictest anticannabis laws in the world.

Punishment for possession is a maximum 5 years behind bars and illicit growers face 7-year sentences. Annually around 2000 people fall foul of these laws - their names splashed on the nightly news and their careers ruined forever. The same prohibition that dishes out these punishments also bans research into medical marijuana, forcing Japanese scientists overseas to conduct their studies.

On 4 August 1993, Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Kōno Yōhei issued an official declaration on the issue of the so-called ‘comfort women’ - women recruited to work in a large network of brothels operated by the Japanese military during the Asia-Pacific War, where many suffered terrible sexual and other physical and mental abuse, and many died. The declaration, based on a study conducted by the Japanese government, read in part as follows:

The Confucius Institute is an appealing brand for extending our culture abroad. It has made an important contribution toward improving our soft power. The “Confucius” brand has a natural attractiveness. Using the excuse of teaching Chinese language, everything looks reasonable and logical.

The following article is a reprint of a unit developed by MIT Visualizing Cultures, a project focused on image-driven scholarship. Click here to view the essay in its original, visually-rich layout. In the coming months the Asia-Pacific Journal will reprint a number of articles on the theme of social protest in Japan originally posted at MIT VC, together with an introduction by John W. Dower to the series. These are the first in a continuing series of collaborations between APJ and VC designed to highlight the visual possibilities of the historical and contemporary Asia-Pacific, particularly for classroom applications.

The following article is a reformatted reprint of a unit developed by MIT Visualizing Cultures, a project focused on image-driven scholarship. Click here to view the essay in its original, visually-rich layout. This is part two of the second in a series of Visualizing Cultures reprints. In the coming months the Asia-Pacific Journal will reprint a number of articles on the theme of social protest in Japan originally posted at MIT VC, together with an introduction by John W. Dower to the series. These are the first in a continuing series of collaborations between APJ and VC designed to highlight the visual possibilities of the historical and contemporary Asia-Pacific, particularly for classroom applications.

This essay is a comparative legal study of the use by the United States and South Korea of state of emergency powers before and during the Korean War. Beginning with the violent suppression of the Cheju Uprising in 1948, a succession of states of emergency was proclaimed in South Korea and the United States throughout the Korean conflict (1948-1953). The essay examines the context in which these emergency laws were conceived and their relationship to state-sponsored mass violence against the civilian population.

The trilateral summit among the presidents of Mongolia, China, and Russia, on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) at Dushanbe, Tajikistan on September 11, 2014, was the culmination of a deliberate summer whirlwind policy blitz of Mongolian President Tsakhia Elbegdorj to position his country to take advantage of deepening Sino-Russian economic relations. Concerned that a “great game” to create a new version of the Eurasian Silk Road was being played out without any Mongolian input, Mongolia's activist president used the celebrations around the commemoration of different anniversaries in Sino-Mongol and Mongol-Russian relations to make certain that his two powerful neighbors did not proceed with transportation and energy cooperation without taking into account the role of a mineral-rich Mongolia. The landlocked Northeast Asian nation is seeking to become an international transportation hub and at the same time diversify its mineral exports. This spotlight trilateral summit moment in Mongolian-Chinese-Russian relations, together with the trips of Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin to Mongolia a few weeks previous, attracted attention, bordering on concern, of other Eurasian countries, the European Union, and the United States who do not fully comprehend Mongolia's strategy.

Japan's energy policy regime appears dangerously adrift in the context of accelerating climate change. The core problem is agency. On the one hand, Japanese PM Abe Shinzo and the nuclear village appear obsessed with nuclear power restarts and 20th century paradigms of the power economy. On the other hand, Japan's anti-nuclear civil society lacks the political vehicle to force a combined nuclear pullout plus drastic reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Some anti-nuclear forces do not yet understand the urgent need to reduce emissions, and are content to burn coal, despite of the patent threat of climate change. This is precisely what Japan has done in the wake of 3.11. The Abe cabinet is focused on getting restarts and a nuclear-based energy plan. Yet the scope for restarts is surprisingly limited and - incredible in this era of multiple crises and revolutions - the draft new energy plan lacks concrete numbers. The country needs better leadership on smart growth, in the context of what McKinsey specialists refer to as a “resource revolution” and MIT economists depict as “the second machine age.”

In societies governed by the rule of law, what limitations should apply to police surveillance? What protections should be accorded to religious and ethnic minorities who may be subject to police profiling? Does police profiling of members of minority groups unfairly discriminate against them or violate fundamental rights such as the right to privacy or to practice religion? Questions like these are at the heart of ongoing litigation in Tokyo concerning police surveillance of Japan's Muslim community.

Takahashi Tetsuya, a philosophy professor at the University of Tokyo and a native of Fukushima Prefecture, has traversed the devastated region numerous times since the March 11 disaster, engaging in various kinds of activism. An introduction by the translators is followed by an English translation of Takahashi's speech at the University of Chicago on March 10, 2012, and a postscript written by Takahashi in May 2014. Takahashi explains “nuclear-power-as-sacrificial-system” via his childhood memories in Fukushima and the People's Tribunal against Nuclear Power Plants.

This transcription of an interview with famed animated film director Miyazaki Hayao was originally published by Studio Ghibli in their monthly magazine Neppu, in a special issue on Constitutional amendment. With a casual, conversational tone, Miyazaki covers a wide range of topics: he recalls his and his father's wartime experience, speaks about his changing relationship with Japan, and gives insight into the Self-Defense Forces and postwar Japan's politics and economy. Throughout, he presents a strong criticism of the current Abe government, especially their proposal of Constitutional Amendment.