Alongside its enormous “black” energy system, China is building a renewables energy system that is now the largest in the world. Following our previous articles on this topic in the Journal, we continue to report the latest trends in development of this renewables-based system, again focusing principally on the electric power system, and utilizing three sources of data from Chinese and international sources – capacity data (GW), electrical energy generation data (TWh) and investment data. We highlight that while the Chinese energy system as a whole is shifting in a green direction, at its leading edge (where new capacity is being added, and fresh electrical energy generated) it is turning green very rapidly. This provides a foundation for predicting future directions for the system as a whole, and eventual reductions in absolute carbon emissions. We note that China's increasing reliance on renewables is consistent with a concern to enhance energy security, based on the observation that renewables are products of manufacturing rather than of extractive activities.

The great earthquake that struck off the Pacific coast of Japan's northeast region on March 11, 2011, and the tsunami it created, destroyed wide swaths of the coastal regions, killing 16,000 people, with more than 2,600 people missing. The tsunami also disabled a nuclear power plant in Fukushima and forced large numbers of people to evacuate or flee the affected areas. Three years later, more than a quarter million people still live in temporary housing or elsewhere not in their own homes. Nearly 50,000 Fukushima residents continue to live outside the prefecture.

*16 November 2014: Okinawa prefecture elects as new Governor Onaga Takeshi, who campaigned on the core policy of stopping construction of a base for the US Marine Corps in Northern Okinawa

*17 November 2014: Yonaguni Island town assembly votes to hold a referendum on the national government's project to construct a base for the Japanese Ground Self Defense Forces

*18 November 2014: Prime Minister Abe Shinzo announces his intention to dissolve the Lower House and conduct general elections on 14 December

I have been writing about deep politics since 1993, when I gave the example of how the United States after World War sent American mafia figures to fight communism in Italy, thereby creating a corrupted politics that was soon out of control - as bad as the influence the mafia once possessed in cities like Marseille, or Chicago.

East Asia's relationship with the Middle East today is based mainly on economics and is devoid of grand political projects of solidarity and intellectual dialogue. Countries such as China, Japan and Korea present the Middle East with a model of state-led capitalist neoliberal economic development. At the same time, the redemptive transformation of East Asia into a globally powerful region offers a trajectory of development diverging from the Middle East, struggling with political turbulence, regime crises and regional wars both cold and hot.

History is, in many ways, a product of the present, meaning that contemporary myths and circumstances have a way of shaping how we understand the past. As Gregory Smits makes clear, this is no less true of contemporary Okinawa than it is elsewhere. Both at home and abroad, a widely held image of Okinawa presents it as possessing a timeless “peace culture” that contrasts with the warrior culture-infused history of mainland Japan. Smits demonstrates that this is a myth, and that the establishment of the Ryukyu Kingdom (1429-1879), which united what had previously been separate island kingdoms, involved military violence. He reviews the evolution of the military aspect of governance of the Ryukyu Kingdom period. From there, he discusses what he sees as the roots of the pacifism myth, which he claims began with nineteenth century accounts by Western visitors to Okinawa. Smits’ debunking of the peace culture myth, in turn, highlights the effects on Okinawan discourse of the more recent experiences of war and subordination that are discussed in subsequent articles in this collection.

This article extends the reader's gaze beyond the Metropolitan Core (Tokyo-Osaka) that dominates the English language literature on Japan. It is important to understand rural, small town and smaller city Japan because most Japanese do not live in the Core and most of the land area of the Japanese archipelago lies outside the boundaries of Japan's urbanized confines. There is a very different dynamic in rural and small town Japan where there has been a dramatic level of depopulation and aging and economic stagnation. In contrast, the metropolitan core is still growing, and looks prosperous and modern even after two decades of economic stagnation. To bring out distinctive features of the “other” Japan, the one hidden behind the metropolitan core, consider changes in land use, demography, the rural and small town economy, transportation, communications and architecture. The relative neglect of this topic is striking because regional Japan is both idealized as a repository of “traditions” and values while also denigrated as backward. The declining “other” has been subjected to extensive government policy interventions, but as I argue here, these frequently have been misguided. Significantly, the “other” Japan remains an important arena of identity politics in a nation that has experienced massive socio-economic convulsions in the post-World War Two era.

On December 1, 2014 the rapidly expanding domain of renewable energy burst through a stubborn bottleneck of vested interests and outmoded ideas. Germany's biggest utility, E. ON, announced it would abandon fossil fuel and nuclear power to create “a new business model based on renewables, intelligent grid systems, energy management and other services.” If its plans go forward as proposed, E. ON's portfolio in what it calls “the new energy world” will include about 20 gigawatts of renewable generation in operation or in the pipeline, over 1 million kilometers of transmission infrastructure, and 33 million customers on the sales end. In an era of paradigmatic changes in energy technology and business models, and particularly in all aspects of electricity (i.e., from generation through distribution and to consumption), E. ON's announcement still came as a surprise even to the German authorities. Experts are struggling to grasp the enormity of the implications of E. ON's move for power systems, climate policy, financial markets, regulatory regimes, and other important aspects.

This is a revised, updated and abbreviated version of the introduction to the two volume collection by the authors of Pan-Asianism. A Documentary History Vol. 1 covers the years 1850-1920; Vol. 2 covers the years 1850-present, link. The economic and political power of Asia, the world's largest continent, is increasing rapidly. According to the latest projections, the gross domestic products of China and India, the world's most populous nations, will each surpass that of the United States in the not-too-distant future. China's economy, like Japan's, is already larger than that of any single European country. With this new economic might comes growing diplomatic influence. The twenty-first century, many pundits agree, will be an Asian century. This undisputed Asian success story, together with its accompanying tensions and discontents, has attracted much media and scholarly attention. Yet for all this talk of Asia, there is no consensus on what Asia actually stands for as a whole. Is the vast Asian landmass a single entity? There has never been—and perhaps never will be—universal agreement on this question.

The dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea has remained raw and menacing since its latest eruption as a result of the purchase of three islands by the Japanese central government in 2012. In contrast to the aftermath of the 2010 incident, the Chinese side under the new leader Xi Jinping has widened the dispute by political, military and propaganda means, and the Abe government has hardened its stance by insisting that “There is no territorial dispute” and “There never was any understanding of shelving the dispute”. Rather there was an attempt to political and military counterbalancing, which includes strengthening of the military alliance with the US, repositioning Japan's armed forces to the South and reinterpreting Article 9 of the so-called Peace Constitution.

The ravages of World War II and its aftermath in both Europe and Asia provoked one of the most extensive human migrations hitherto witnessed in world history as refugees scurried to escape the destruction. After the guns of war had been silenced and peace restored, these displaced peoples either by choice or force embarked on a long, and often dangerous, journey back to their homelands. Hundreds of thousands of these refugees, many further fleeing post-World War II battles in “liberated” states, died en route. Ben Shephard, in The Long Road Home: The Aftermath of the Second World War (London, Bodley Head 2010), dubs this “largely ignored” story the “war's most important legacy” (p. 4). The figures that Shephard provides of European refugees are mindboggling: as many as 17 million foreigners and Germans displaced within Germany; 11 million Germans returning from their country's occupied territories; millions of displaced peoples from German-occupied territories, including Jews released from concentration camps, returning home.

After 9.11, the United States increased its demand for burden-sharing on the part of allies such as Japan and South Korea. In East Asia, the importance of the US presence in both of those countries as a deterrence mechanism was reinforced as political and military tensions grew due to factors including the intensification of China-Japan rivalry and associated nationalisms, territorial disputes and unsettled historical issues. Yet, even under these circumstances, anti-base movements also grew. At the root of these movements lay the impact of the bases on people's lives. Anti-base movements in Japan and Korea develop around people's everyday lives. Residents seek mitigation of the burdens of foreign military forces and bases. The case of Iwakuni City (Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan) is one example.

A near perfect storm has descended on Australian relations with its nominal strategic partner and largest neighbour, Indonesia, to the point where the Indonesian foreign minister, standing beside John Kerry in Jakarta, said it was “very simple.” “Australia must decide if Indonesia is a friend or an enemy.”

Courtesy of Edward Snowden, the Australian government is discovering that an asymmetry in electronic surveillance capacity does not trump the fundamental asymmetry of power between Australia and Indonesia, which geography, population size and importance in world affairs tilts in Indonesia's favour. NSA documents that the premier Australian intelligence agency monitored and intercepted phone calls by the Indonesian president, his wife, and inner circle of advisors has generated a rapid collapse in relations between the two governments, possibly with long-term effects. The Indonesian government has called for a new intelligence accord, which will prove difficult for the Abbott government, not least because of the role of the NSA in Australian signals intelligence. A review of supervision and oversight of Australian intelligence agencies is urgently required.”

The DPRK is said to be an economist's nightmare. There are almost no reliable statistics available, making any analysis speculative at best. The few useable figures that we have, though, fly in the face of the media's curious insistence on a looming collapse. Food production and trade volumes indicate that the DPRK has largely recovered from the economic catastrophe of the 1990s. Indeed, Pyongyang's reported rising budget figures appear more plausible than Seoul's pessimistic politicized estimates. Obviously, sanctions, while damaging, have failed to nail the country down. There are signs that it is now beginning to open up and prepare to exploit its substantial mineral wealth. Could we soon be witnessing the rise of Asia's next economic tiger?

This paper assesses and compares the impact and historical significance of the firebombing and atomic bombing of Japanese cities in the history of war and the history of disaster. Japan's decision to surrender, pivoting on issues of firebombing and atomic bombing, Soviet entry into the war, and the origins of Soviet-American confrontation, is the most fiercely debated subject in twentieth century American global history. The surrender question, however, is addressed only in passing here. The focus is rather on the human and social consequences of the bombings, and their legacy in the history of warfare and historical memory in the long twentieth century. Part one provides an overview of the calculus that culminated in the final year of the war in a US strategy centered on the bombing of civilians and assesses its impact in shaping the global order. Part two examines the bombing in Japanese and American historical memory including history, literature, commemoration and education. What explains the power of the designation of the postwar as the atomic era while the area bombing of civilians by fire and napalm, which would so profoundly shape the future of warfare in general, American wars in particular, faded to virtual invisibility in Japanese, American and global consciousness?

Much has been written on this site on recent developments in the long-running saga over the U.S. and Japanese governments' plan to construct a U.S. military air base, the Futenma Replacement Facility (FRF), in Henoko, Okinawa, Japan (Henoko plan). On July 1, 2014, 17 years after the plan was first conceived, the Okinawa Defense Bureau (the government of Japan) started the “construction phase” amid protest from local citizens and municipal governments. Just over a month later, on August 14, the U.S. Congressional Research Service released a report, The U.S. Military Presence in Okinawa and the Futenma Base Controversy (the CRS Report). The CRS Report provides a useful and up-to-date (though, as noted below, in one major respect incomplete) file of information, paying for the most part due attention to local, national, and international factors.

Hannah Arendt published The Origins of Totalitarianism, her expansive analysis of the development and spread of totalitarianism in Europe in 1951, in the aftermath of the rise of anti-Semitism and Nazism, the Holocaust, and the violent destruction of life, community, and nation left both in the wake of World War II and amidst Stalinism. Her analysis rooted firmly in Europe, she commented in the preface that, “Never has our future been more unpredictable, never have we depended so much on political forces that cannot be trusted to follow the rules of common sense and selfinterest - forces that look like sheer insanity, if judged by the standards or other centuries.” Over sixty years later, noted Thai historian Nidhi Eoseewong picked up Arendt's work to write two articles about the forms of creeping totalitarianism emergent in Thailand in the long aftermath of the 19 September 2006 coup. 2 While the points of difference between interwar Europe and present-day Thailand are as multiple as the points of resonance, the shape of totalitarianism itself is very similar. By threading his analysis of changes in Thai society over the last ten years through a reading of the chapters on the mass and dictatorship in Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism, Nidhi provides a broad context and framework for understanding present-day developments in Thailand, which mitigate against the very isolation he and Arendt argue is a key feature of totalitarianism. In what follows, I offer an account of the current crisis in Thai politics informed by Nidhi's essays. The translation of the two short essays, “Totalitarian Dictatorship,” and “The Great Mass of the People,” originally published on Prachatai, an independent Thai news and commentary site, follow my account.

Back in the days of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, the “strategic triangle” with the Soviet Union and China was the great game. The idea was to play off the two communist powers against one another, relying on their ideological warfare under Mao, deep cultural differences, and open conflict in border regions to sustain their mutual suspicions and fears of attack. Now the shoe is on the other foot, so to speak: China seems to be in charge of the game, using US-Russia enmity and its own on-again, off-again competition with the US to keep both those countries cooperative with and in need of Beijing.

Close to the lotus-filled expanse of Shinobazu Pond in Tokyo's Ueno Park, a narrow back street leads into a driveway that curves between mossy walls to the top of a small hill. At the summit stands an imposing mansion whose neo-Jacobean facade, fronted by tall palm trees, would look more at home in the streets of a nineteenth century European spa town than in the midst of twenty-first century Tokyo.

Like Smits’ article, the following piece by Tze M. Loo reveals a “forgotten” aspect of Okinawan history; in this case the post-1879 history behind what is contemporary Okinawa's most iconic architectural structure –the reconstructed Shuri Castle that was completed in 1992. Shuri, which is currently the eastern portion of the city of Naha, was the capital of the Ryukyu Kingdom and Shuri Castle its seat of government. Given this background, it is not surprising that the reconstructed castle, a “must see” item on every visitor's checklist, has come to symbolize Okinawa's past as an “independent” kingdom and a culture distinct from that of the mainland. Most Okinawans know that the castle was destroyed during the Battle of Okinawa in 1945 but are unfamiliar with or have “forgotten” the castle's convoluted trajectory in the wake of Okinawa's absorption into Japan in 1879. As Loo shows, in contrast to its current association with Ryukyuan independence and distinctiveness, in the years preceding World War II, Shuri Castle was systematically incorporated into the Japanese Empire's hierarchy of national symbols and placed in the service of Japanese nationalism. In this way, the “other histories” of the castle that Loo outlines reflect the process of Okinawa's assimilation into the Japanese Empire from 1879 to 1945 and the ambiguous, liminal status of Okinawa that was its result.