World War II demonstrated an enormous shift in the technological capability of the United States to bring death and destruction to the civilian populations of its enemies through aerial attack. The American air forces undertook strategic bombing campaigns that pulverized and burned numerous German and Japanese cities, culminating in the nuclear devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This bombing killed hundreds of thousands of civilians. Although the massive killing of noncombatants did not provoke widespread protests or recriminations among Americans at the time, the aftermath was not a simple story of acceptance of the practice as a common and legitimate method of warfare in a new technological age of air power. The experience of the Korean War demonstrated that American moral scruples against targeting civilians did not disappear with the bombing in World War II, as some historians have argued. Instead, American norms about bombing civilians followed a more complicated evolution.

Japan has one of the highest rates of hepatitis C virus infection in the industrialized world. This endemic and the challenges it poses for the future of Japan's healthcare system stem, ironically, from the formation of a modernist settlement beginning in the late 19th century. Modern techno-scientific solutions to political problems inadvertently provided millions of opportunities for hepatitis C to spread in rural communities, among leprosy communities, the traumatized postwar community and into the national blood supply.

This paper uses observations collected “on the ground” inside North Korea to argue that everyday life matters when researching North Korea and that one method of carrying out such research is to travel there as a tourist.

The inception of the U.S.-led nuclear alliance system

From the world's first atomic test on 16 July 1945, uranium, nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons have played a key role in the US-led alliance system. As the former axis powers of Japan, West Germany and Italy as well as other strategically important territories such as South Korea, the Philippines and Taiwan, were incorporated in a US foreign policy designed to confront and contain the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China, nuclear weapons were deployed with the justification of being necessary to deter large Communist conventional forces. In the New Look doctrine of ‘massive retaliation’ introduced under Eisenhower, Truman's policy of targeting roughly seventy Soviet cities with 133 atomic bombs over thirty days (Operation Fleetwood) was magnified to the use of nuclear weapons like normal munitions and therefore increasing their stockpiles and yield capacity. While the PRC was repeatedly threatened with nuclear strikes from air and missile delivery platforms during the Korean War, as was North Korea, and during the crisis in the Taiwan Strait in the 1950s, by late 1960, a single integrated operational plan (SIOP-62) targeted Soviet, Chinese and satellite cities with the simultaneous launch of all nuclear forces without restraint.

A key voice in Japan's proletarian literature movement of the 1920s and 30s, Kuroshima Denji (1898-1943) is best known for his antiwar writings. These include a number of short stories depicting Japan's participation in the 1918-1922 Siberian Intervention, as well as Militarized Streets (Busō seru shigai, 1930), a novel set during Japan's 1928 military intervention in China. Militarized Streets earned the dubious distinction of being censored by both the wartime Japanese state and the postwar U.S. Occupation.

Introductory Note: This is the final article in a three part series on the relationship of D.T. Suzuki and other Zen figures in wartime Japan to Count Karlfried Dürckheim and other Nazis. Part I of this series, “D.T. Suzuki, Zen and the Nazis” is available here. Part II, “The Formation and Principles of Count Dürckheim's Nazi Worldview and his interpretation of Japanese Spirit and Zen” is available here. Readers who have not yet done so are urged to read at least Part II of this series that provides crucial background information for understanding Part III.

Through the first year of his second term as Prime Minister (December 2012-December 2013) Abe Shinzo's government stirred concern on the part of neighbour countries, Japan's key “ally” the United States, and global opinion generally. Despite some suggestion of economic recovery under “Abenomics,” there was something inexplicable about Japan. Abe's revisionist historical views, his commitment to Yasukuni, and his hard-line stance on territorial disputes, had plunged relations with China and South Korea to new depths, while raising the level of tension with the United States. When Abe spoke of “liquidating the post-war” regime so as to replace it with a “new” or “beautiful” Japan, he meant one whose citizens would be expected, indeed required, to love it, with a drastically revised new constitution that would widen state prerogatives and narrow citizen rights, a “national defense army” replacing the existing Self Defense Forces and national security reinforced by a tightened, draconian “secrets protection” law and a Prime Ministerial National Security Council (both now in place). The door also opened to the export of Japanese weapons and nuclear power plants as well as the dispatch of Japanese soldiers to global theatres under a doctrine of “collective self-defense.” His is a vision more radical than that of any previous post-war Prime Minister, including his grandfather, Kishi Nobusuke, Prime Minster 1957-1960, who in 1960 pushed through the US-Japan Security Treaty agreement against massive opposition.

Japan's December 14 general election is essentially a rigged referendum on Abenomics. Despite the dismal economic news, team Abe can hardly lose against the splintered and poorly led opposition parties at the national level. The hapless Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) seems likely to gain some seats; but Abe has defined defeat as the loss of his parliamentary majority, which is simply not going to happen. Electioneering per se is set to begin on December 2. It will almost certainly not feature substantive debate on the stark choices confronting Japan, meaning how to achieve resilient, decarbonizing, resource-lite growth in the world's most rapidly ageing society. There will be no serious discussion of the fact that Japan faces among the direst threats from climate change, the developed economies’ most gargantuan public debt, extreme dependence on increasingly precarious fossil fuels, an unprecedented economic experiment (Abenomics) now clearly in deep trouble, dangerously poisoned relations with important neighbours, and a multiplicity of other challenges that collectively defy precedent. All developed and developing countries face dense clusters of “wicked problems,” particularly on the water-energy-food nexus in an epoch of climate crisis, but surely Japan's are among the most daunting if one strips out the failed states.

The nuclear disaster in Fukushima which followed in the wake of the 3/11 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami has given rise to one of the most significant public health crises in modern world history, with profound implications for how nuclear energy is perceived. This paper analyzes the most dire phase of the Fukushima nuclear crisis, showing how the level of risk was assessed by nuclear experts and state-level actors who worked largely out of view of public scrutiny. In addition to examining how the accident progression in the reactors was addressed and conveyed to the general public, the paper addresses how the exclusionary zones were determined by Japanese and foreign governments in Japan. As the crisis unfolded and efforts to bring the reactors under control were initially proving ineffective, concerns increased that radiation dispersion was unmitigated, and with radiation monitoring by the U.S. military indicating levels significantly beyond TEPCO's conservative assessments, the United States broke with Japan, recommending an 80km exclusionary zone, and initiating military assisted departures for embassy staff and Department of Defense dependents from Japan. These actions deviated significantly from Japan's assessments (which had established a 30km evacuation zone), creating a dynamic where the U.S. provided technical consultation for the nuclear response while striving to maintain a delicate diplomatic balance as they attempted to impose a qualitatively different crisis management response. Because this crisis had significant implications for Japan's international relations, diplomatic considerations have helped to suppress the complex, often fractious relations between Japan and foreign governments - especially the United States - whose collective efforts eventually turned the tide from managing the nuclear meltdowns to ameliorating their long-term consequences. Based on interviews with political officials in both the Japanese government and foreign embassies in Japan, and nuclear experts and military officers who worked the crisis, the paper analyzes how technical assessments drove decision making and were translated into political policy.

Since the turn of the century, Sinohydro has become the world's dominant dam builder. The company is engaged in an ongoing dialogue with International Rivers, having prepared a strong environmental policy framework in 2011. Yet Sinohydro is now considering building a series of highly destructive dam projects. The world's biggest hydropower contractor is at a crossroads.

Christopher Gerteis and Timothy S. George make a case for revisiting Japan's postwar history in the second decade of the twenty-first century. They argue that Japan's problematic responses to the triple disasters of March 2011 warrant re-evaluating the persistent myths of failure and success associated with Japan's “postwar” and “post-bubble” eras.

Little more than two months after the start of bombing operations, Australia's new war in Iraq is following the path of its predecessor, a path marked by Australian subordination to American interests, irrelevance to Australian national interests, casual disregard for Iraqi sovereignty and law, increasingly severe restriction of information provided to the Australian public, and an inclination to escalation.

By shedding light on the enduring social identities of rural settlement communities, often referred to as “natural villages” (自然村) by the current Chinese government, this article provides a new approach to the formation of China's rural collective land ownership system from the 1950s to the present. It reveals how a unique landholding structure, which I term “bounded collectivism,” was initially formed in southwest China as a result of the contestation and negotiation between the socialist state aiming to establish collective land ownership and rural settlement communities seeking exclusive control over land resources within their borders. Significant elements of that collective land ownership system would be perpetuated while accommodating “natural villages” in the three decades since the abolition of the communes and the creation of a system of household contracts.

In the following article, two distinguished experts affiliated with the Open Society Institute examine key aspects of Japan's 2013 “Specially Designated Secrets Protection Act.” (“SDS”) They are concerned with two central problems: defects in the process that led to adoption of the SDS, and shortcomings in the text of the law itself.

Seasoned observers of lawmaking in Japan are familiar with the scenario that played out in the fall of 2013. The SDS bill law was drafted in secret in the administrative offices of government, rather than by the elected representatives of the people in the national legislature. The resulting “government bill” was presented to the Diet for its approval. Because ruling political parties control large majorities in both houses, debate on the floor of the Diet was a mere formality. Opposition party members were allowed to make comments and question government representatives before national television cameras, but the prospect that this would lead to actual revision of the bill was nonexistent.

Frontier studies have long been a sensitive area for historical research in the PRC, largely because of the demands for increasing autonomy in Tibet and Xinjiang-movements that are regarded as “separatist” by the authorities. This sensitivity makes the study of the 1911 Revolution on the frontier particularly difficult, because it was precisely in 1911 that independence movements manifested themselves in Tibet and Mongolia. Both of these regions had been incorporated into the Qing empire, whose emperors acted as patrons of the Tibetan Buddhism revered by Tibetans and Mongols alike. In Mongolia, the Qing court confirmed the status of Mongols nobles, and intermarried with the families of Mongol princes. But the 1911 Revolution created a secular republic, which made these religious and feudal ties difficult to maintain. More importantly, the revolution was launched with an overtly Han nationalist agenda to “expel the northern barbarians, restore China” that left little political space for the political aspirations of other nationalities. As a result, both Tibet and Outer Mongolia declared independence after the Wuchang Uprising.

This study reveals the history of little-known film companies founded by Koreans in U.S. Occupied Japan (1945-1952). At a time when a powerful tide of decolonization and “ethnic renaissance” energized the cultural activities of newly liberated Koreans in both Japan and the Korean peninsula, the practical activities of Korean film companies in Occupied Japan were entangled in the economic, ideological, and cultural realities of the era. While these companies produced few original titles, they were nevertheless active in re-screening existing films in new contexts. A cross-media approach is vital for understanding the full scope of Korean engagement with film in postwar Japan. By studying the censorship records left by SCAP (Supreme Commander of Allied Powers), advertisements in Japanese and Korean print media, and documents kept by the Korean organizations, this paper offers insight into the ambitions, methods, and impacts of Korean film companies. It shows how Korean film producers negotiated vis-à-vis SCAP and Japanese film professionals to project their visions of a Korean national cinema in Japan.

Obama's ‘Pivot to Asia’ in response to the resurgence of Chinese power has undergone significant developments since it was first announced in November 2011. Not least has been the emergence of Australia as a central part of Washington's plans to strengthen American influence and military reach across the Asia-Pacific. While elite and popular support for the US alliance in Australia persists, public opinion polls indicate possible cleavages for challenging the status quo.

Yabuki Susumu, in a series of articles and talks, has rigorously mined the historical record of China (PRC/ROC)-Japan-US relations to illuminate the background to the dangerous conflict that presently threatens to bring war to the Western Pacific in the wake of Japanese nationalization of three of the Senkaku islands in September 2012. While other important issues add to the gravity of the conflict, including enlarged territorial claims by China, Japan and Korea in the form of advancing and defending competing claims to ADIZ in the East China and South China Seas, Yabuki shows the long trajectory of competing claims over the Senkaku dispute and the evolving policies of China, Japan and the United States in shaping it. Since so much of the international discussion of the issues has focused on China-Japan conflict, a particularly important contribution of the present paper is its clear presentation of US recognition at the highest levels of the significance of the competing territorial claims, and its maneuvering in negotiations with Taipei, Tokyo, and Beijing to shape the outcome.

The attached August 7 Bloomberg article, “Japanese Women Armed With Chainsaws Head to the Hills Under Abe's Plan”, legitimately lauds this Abe initiative that promotes women and Japanese forestry, especially high-tech and environmentally friendly forestry. The article reports that 3000 women are entering the wood business in a variety of capacities, including as lumberjacks. Further expanding women's opportunities in non-traditional roles is a no-brainer in any context, but especially in Japan. Japanese women continue to make inroads in construction, higher education and other areas. But their below 70% rate of employment, between 25 and 54 years of age, is lowest among the world's wealthiest countries, and they tend to be concentrated in gendered occupations and held back from managerial positions. The sight of women wielding chain saws might further cut through deeply entrenched stereotypes in the Diet, Keidanren, small business and other men-dense (dense-men?) venues. It may also help keep younger women in the 896 cities, towns and villages that face “extinction” by 2040 due to the continuing flight of young women to Tokyo and the other large city-regions.

Trauma is a site that does not exist. No road leads there. No path leads around it. Trauma is. Inaccessible. Access through words seems to be blocked. How on earth can one speak about something that is impossible to express? What words could one use for a horror that is beyond the possibilities of language? How speak about something that cannot be spoken of-yet “the abundance of real suffering permits no forgetting”?