The arrest and prosecution of Nissan executive Carlos Ghosn, together with his dramatic flight from Japan, have focused unprecedented attention on Japan's criminal justice system. This article employs comparison with the United States to examine issues in Japanese criminal justice highlighted by the Ghosn case. The criminal charges and procedures used in Ghosn's case illustrate several serious weaknesses in Japanese criminal justice—including the problems of prolonged detention and interrogation without a defense attorney that have been characterized as “hostage justice.” But in comparative perspective, the criminal justice systems in Japan and the U. S. have some striking similarities. Most notably, both systems rely on coercive means to obtain admissions of guilt, and both systems have high conviction rates. The American counterpart to Japan's use of high-pressure tactics to obtain confessions is a system of plea bargaining in which prosecutors use the threat of a large “trial tax” (a longer sentence for defendants who insist upon their right to a trial and are then convicted) to obtain guilty pleas. An apples-to-apples comparison also indicates that Japan's “99% conviction rate” is not the extreme outlier that it is often said to be. Commentary on Ghosn's case emphasized the weaknesses in Japanese criminal justice. Those weaknesses are real and important, but by many criteria, such as crime and incarceration rates, Japan outperforms the U.S. As for Ghosn's case in particular, this article explores four scenarios of what might have happened to him if his case had occurred in the U.S. It is not obvious that he would have fared better under American law, nor is it obvious that justice would have been better realized.

This essay explores new aspects of wartime Japan's industrial mobilization by analyzing how the country's struggling silk industry persistently exploited the emerging myth of Japan's paratroopers. With the outbreak of the Pacific War, Japan's silk manufacturers suffered from a ban on luxury goods and the collapse of the U.S. export market. After several spectacular Japanese airborne operations, the Dainippon Silk Foundation successfully campaigned for the large-scale production of parachutes. Silk now was a material for military consumption, and silk weaving companies became designated munitions factories that publicly compared the self-sacrifice of their young female workers with that of the death-defying paratroopers.

This article introduces Korea's sipjangsaeng iconography in the visual arts, including its proliferation in Joseon's elite and folk contexts, its codification in the painted screens of the court, and its application in works of art held at various international museums. It considers how Chinese motifs came to be used so widely in Korea; which individuals or groups commissioned and produced the sipjangsaeng design; and why, despite its resolutely Neo-Confucian worldview, the Joseon dynasty played host to the proliferation of a genre emanating largely from a Daoist tradition. To address these questions, it investigates the transnational, ideological, and social contexts that gave rise to Korea's distinctive sipjangsaeng imprint on the longevity theme and highlights the intrinsic importance of symbolism to Korea's cultural heritage, and its contribution to the articulation of artistic identity and difference in East Asian visual culture.

About 16,500 people were sterilized under the now-defunct Eugenic Protection Law (1948-1996) of Japan, whose aim was to “prevent the birth of eugenically inferior offspring, and to protect maternal health and life”. Kita Saburō (pseudonym), was one of the victims. He was sterilized in 1957, at the age of fourteen, while residing at a facility for troubled youths called Shūyō Gakuen in Sendai. This article introduces Kita's testimony about his sterilization, and offers possible explanations of why Kita, who had no disability, was forcibly sterilized.

The interview was conducted on September 12, 2019 in Kita's house in Nerima ward, Tokyo. Interview and translation by Astghik Hovhannisyan.

After the worst drought in a century on the Mekong, Southeast Asia's largest lake, Tonle Sap, saw a late high-water season that further devastated its ecology. Decades of dambuilding on the Lancang have removed sediment crucial to the health of Tonle Sap and the lack of reliability in the flood pulse is damaging to the region's economy and agriculture. Similarly, flood control dams and large hydropower projects such as the Nam Ou Cascade have put further strain on the most productive freshwater fishery in Asia. In addition to the development of large mainstream dams from the Himalayas to Laos, recent data suggests that China has intentionally held back water resources from downriver countries.

Indigenous people are often depicted as helpless victims of the forces of eighteenth and nineteenth century colonial empire building: forces that were beyond their understanding or control. Focusing on the story of a mid-nineteenth century diplomatic mission by Sakhalin Ainu (Enchiw), this essay (the first of a two-part series), challenges that view, suggesting instead that, despite the enormous power imbalances that they faced, indigenous groups sometimes intervened energetically and strategically in the historical process going on around them, had some impact on the outcome of these processes. In Part 1, we look at the story of one Sakhalin Ainu family over multiple generations in order to highlight the strategic place of the Sakhalin Ainu in cross-border relationships – particularly in the relationship between China and Japan – from the early eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century.

At a time when the prospects confronting Hong Kong are overshadowed by the combination of the popular movement for democratic rights and the corona virus epidemic that is challenging Hong Kong as well as China, issues of income inequality and declining economic prospects deeply affect the future of Hong Kong youth. This article documents the pattern of growing income inequality with specific reference to educated youth of Generation Y in spheres such as income distribution, the relative stagnation of income of young graduates, and soaring housing prices that make Hong Kong among the most expensive real estate markets in the world.

The implications of the pandemic for US-China relations are relevant for global peace and prosperity, well beyond the Asia-Pacific. Rather than joining forces against the pandemic, COVID-19 is among the factors that have widened the rift between the United States and China, bringing bilateral relations to their lowest level since Nixon and Kissinger's overtures in 1971. In fact, US-China zero-sum interactions across the geopolitical, economic, technological and political domains have spiralled towards a dangerous race to the bottom. While it is too early to declare a US-China “Cold War”, China's assertiveness and the US maximalist pushback are working in lockstep to reify the Cold War trope past the 2020 US presidential elections.

The paper examines Japan's capital city of Tokyo's “Zero Emission Tokyo Strategy.” Our work shows that Tokyo's strategy is particularly important in light of the 2030 Agenda's emphasis on greenhouse-gas emissions reduction, equitable sustainability, and building holistic resilience against all hazards. The data indicate that Tokyo's ambitions are built on a track record of global leadership in resource efficient water systems, transit networks, and other critical infrastructure. Moreover, Tokyo is part of Japan's zero-emission communities, smart cities, all-hazard resilience, and other multilevel and silo-breaking collaborative platforms. Our analysis also makes recommendations for bolstering Tokyo's strategy, to enhance co-benefits from integrating climate change mitigation and adaptation, in addition to strengthening pandemic response.

Freelance work has proliferated in Japan over the last decade due in part to the Abe administration's encouragement of work style reform to reinvigorate the economy. However, freelancers have heavily criticized the government for treating them unequally in their compensation program for workers affected by the coronavirus. The COVID-19 pandemic and emergency declaration have exposed freelancers' employment insecurity and lack of access to a social safety net during an economic crisis. Intense debates have erupted on social media about how much companies and the government should be responsible for freelance workers' welfare. Defenders of providing lower levels of compensation to freelancers draw on preexisting neoliberal arguments that freelancers, like other irregular workers, are personally responsible (jiko sekinin) for themselves. However, many freelancers have pushed back by arguing that freelance work has become so mainstream that it no longer makes sense to treat it as some unique and separate work category. Being technologically savvy, freelancers have quickly leveraged their familiarity with social media platforms to criticize the unequal economic compensation and to demand increased benefits and recognition for their work in a surprising act of political defiance.

This article spotlights a push for human rights amongst Japanese women and men supporting a marital law revision that will allow spouses to maintain their individual surnames. While proponents of the reform comprise a variety of genders, ages, marital status, value systems, and reasons for supporting the reform, they have all experienced, witnessed or contemplated inequity in society – experiences that have shaped their perspectives on the importance of the individual self and life choices, that have prompted their dissatisfaction with marriage laws, social practices, and norms. The fūfubessei movement, which has been considered as a gender-equality movement, should be viewed from the perspective that individuals have the right to make their own decisions about their lives, including their choice of surname.

Unlike the United States and elsewhere, political comedy is rarely spotlighted in Japan. Through interviews with three comedians, Hamada Taichi, Yamamoto Tenshin (The Newspaper) and Muramoto Daisuke (Woman Rush Hour), this article seeks to understand the practice, reception and standing of political humor in Japan today. What has motivated these comedians to pursue controversial routines that may have hindered their careers? How do they account for the relative lack of political satire in Japan today? The interviews provide a complex picture of media self-censorship and indirect pressure from the government – a picture that is both pessimistic and hopeful for the future of political satire in Japan. Interviews are edited for clarity.

The Japanese military was led throughout its history from the 1880s until the end of World War II in 1945 by a small group of elite officers who graduated from the Army War College and then served as staff officers and/or commanders in the Army Ministry, the General Staff headquarters, and in field armies in Manchuria, China proper, and elsewhere. These officers were trained to do careful research into the comparative militaries, economies and logistics of their own, their allies, and their potential enemies' strength for war. The point of this essay is to explore why highly-trained officers, who learned from their own observations and research about Japan's and its wartime allies' weaknesses vis-à-vis the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and China, ignored what they learned and went to war between 1931 and 1945 with these larger and economically more advanced nations. That is, why did the brains of the Japanese army, with help from many staff officers in Japan's navy and civil bureaucracy, lead Japan into a war it could not win? Did they really believe, as they often said they did, that superior spirit could overcome superior technology and production, or were they motivated by the desire for advancement—wars brought promotions. Or what else may have motivated them? I believe that they knew they could not win the war, but went to war anyway.

With China’s Chang’e 5 rocket launch, which landed on the moon on December 1, the long US-Russian domination of space has a major challenger. The issues extend beyond national pride to a global leadership initiative in rocketry whose implications extend to military, economic and diverse scientific applications at a time of mounting US-China rivalry in all spheres.

As the novel coronavirus swept Japan, religious practitioners of all types responded. This article provides an overview of early-stage reactions by individuals and organizations affiliated with Buddhism, Shinto, New Religions, and other religious traditions in Japan. It features interviews with Japanese clergy and lay followers who contended with social distancing and more dire consequences of COVID-19, and it contextualizes their responses within media coverage, sectarian sources, and historical research. As it highlights trends in religious reactions to the coronavirus, such as a divide between policies enacted by “new” and “traditional” groups, the article discusses reasons for contrasting responses and points to dilemmas that will face Japan's religious organizations after the pandemic subsides.

Since Tokyo 2020 can't really brag about tackling environmental issues, sustainability, cost cutting, or transparency, by default diversity and inclusiveness have become the branding agenda. This could be a positive legacy, but can the Olympics serve as a catalyst for Japan to reinvent itself? Probably not, due to the patriarchal elite's ethnonationalism and aversion to diversity and inclusion.

Elite Japanese and American film teams shot the most important and disturbing film, including rare color images, in the aftermath of the atomic bombings. Then it was buried by U.S. authorities for decades as the nuclear arms race raged.

Yun Isang (1917-95) was one of Korea's most prominent composers in the twentieth century. From 1957, the year he moved to West Germany, to his death in 1995, he had an internationally illustrious career, garnering critical acclaim in Europe, Japan, the United States, and North Korea. In South Korea, however, he became a controversial figure after he was embroiled in a national security scandal in 1967. As part of this incident, dubbed the East Berlin Affair at the time, Yun Isang was abducted in West Germany by the Korean Central Intelligence Agency and charged with espionage for North Korea. This experience of victimization, which also included torture, imprisonment, and an initial death sentence, turned him into a vocal critic of Park Chung Hee and an overseas unification activist in contact with North Korea. This article remembers the moral and political framings of Yun Isang in South Korea against a recurring politics of forgetting that masks the magnitude of violence that was wielded in the name of national security. It traces coverage of Yun in several mainstream newspapers from the first mention of his name in 1952 to 1995. It argues that representations of Yun were mediated by a tension between national artistic progress and national security, one of the central tensions that defined South Korea's Cold-War cultural politics.

This excerpt from the author's recent book Japan at the Crossroads: Conflict and Compromise after Anpo (Harvard University Press, 2018) describes the dramatic climax of the massive 1960 protests in Japan against the US-Japan Security Treaty (abbreviated Anpo in Japanese), which is the treaty that continues to allow the United States to station troops on Japanese soil to this day. Events described include the May 19th incident, in which Japanese prime minister Kishi Nobusuke shocked the nation by ramming the treaty through the National Diet after having opposition lawmakers physically removed by police; the Hagerty Incident of June 10, in which a car carrying US envoys was mobbed by protesters, necessitating a dramatic rescue by a US Marines helicopter; and the June 15 incident, in which radical student activists forced their way into the National Diet compound, precipitating a bloody battle with police during which a young female university student was killed. Shock at these events accelerated a variety of transformations in US-Japan relations and Japanese politics, society, and culture that continue to shape contemporary Japan and which are described in detail in the book excerpted here.

Shortly after the Meiji government assumed administrative responsibilities in 1868, the Iwakura Mission left Japan to circumvent the globe, searching for information on institutions that could centralize a divided archipelago. In so doing, it encountered a world embarking on a new phase of imperial expansion. While the majority of the Mission's participants returned with visions of a large, expansion-oriented Japan, others saw their country's future as a small, neutral state. Debates over the suitability of either vision continued throughout the Taisho period, especially as Japan incorporated territories at its peripheries, including Ezo (Hokkaidō), the Ryūkyū Islands (Okinawa), Taiwan, and Korea. This paper examines the impact of the Mission participants' perspectives, which were informed by their first- and second-hand experience of American and European amalgamation of peoples of diverse cultural, ethnic, and racial origins. How did the participants' experiences influence their views on Japan's future as an expansionist state? What did their experiences teach them about the assimilation of peoples of diverse backgrounds? This paper identifies the legacy of these debates as extending to the present, where Japan seeks to rescind postwar restrictions against extending military powers beyond its borders.