I would like to approach “Instability, the Crisis of Politics, and Social Movements” from the standpoint of political theory, Japanese history, and the present situation. This is not a topic specific to Japan, but one that is universal. I will begin by offering reflections from the standpoint of thought. Given that even what is universal will find different expression depending on place and era, I will also address the history and present-day circumstances of Japanese society. But by history, I shall be referring to developments since the 1970s.

In November 1968, the Mitsukoshi Department Store in Kobe found itself at the center of a major controversy. At the beginning of the month, it had joined with Mitsukoshi stores in Osaka and Tokyo in exhibiting and offering for sale reproductions of a selection of historical maps as part of a special event to mark the centenary of the Meiji Restoration. The idea was to give interested members of the public a chance to imagine, through the maps, what different areas of the country had been like at the time of the Restoration—at that moment, in other words, when Japan as a whole stood at the threshold of modernity.

There are many ways that an economy can be greened. Building vast new renewable energy manufacturing industries is one pathway – as pioneered by China. Deploying extensive renewable power generation systems is another pathway – as demonstrated by Germany with its Energiewende. Yet another route is pursuing R&D led strategies and strategic initiatives via the military, as shown by the US. Now Korea demonstrates another pathway, one based on liberalization of its power generation system (to promote competition) and development of the IT-enabling of its electric power grid (smart grid) with a characteristic modular approach to smart grid construction, utilizing microgrids.

This issue of The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus is the first of three special online issues that can be read in conjunction with a 2015 special issue of the Review of Japanese Culture and Society (Volume XXVII). Together the issues offer examples of Kyoko Selden's literary translations and writings that span Japanese history, literature, and multiple genres. The two journals were venues through which Kyoko shared much of her work. These poems, stories, novellas, essays, plays, memoirs, and biographies—drawn from her more than twenty books and fifty short pieces—exemplify her belief in the humanizing power of literature and art, concern for the human toll of historical events, and gentle humor. They reveal new dimensions of established authors while ensuring that marginalized voices are heard. The selections highlight Kyoko's emphasis on women writers and her interlocking themes: war and peace, classical literature and art, Ainu traditions, Okinawan literature, atomic cataclysm, music, education, and childhood, among others. We have prioritized texts that have not been published and those that were first circulated in private venues; included are a few of her many contributions to the Asia Pacific Journal and Japan Focus. We have completed translations that Kyoko did not have a chance to finish before her passing in January 2013.

Horrified by the sight of the lynching of African Americans, Abel Meeropol wrote a poem called Strange Fruit that is perhaps better known in the form of the 1939 rendition by Billie Holiday. African Americans continued to suffer lynching for many decades after the American Civil War—mostly in the South, but also in many other states all around the country. Being black meant risking being turned into a strange fruit hanging from a poplar tree, giving off the smell of burnt flesh as it swung in the southern breeze. Being black meant close proximity to death—by accidentally stumbling into a white person, by not adhering to prescribed etiquette, by not addressing a white person properly, or simply by making eye contact with a white woman. In a word, lynching could and did take place at the whim of certain white people. Hardly any explanation, let alone justification, was required. In some states, a lynching would be announced in advance in the local newspaper so that white people could gather and enjoy a picnic while watching it. Men and women, old and young, and boys and girls participated, eager and curious witnesses to the spectacle of black bodies being beaten, severed, carved, sliced, burned, and mutilated. Today, half a century after the passing of the Civil Rights Act, great numbers of black Americans die at the hands of police or while in police custody, reminding us that to erase a belief and the system that it is founded upon takes more than the declaration of a new law.

Japan assisted the U.S. and NATO-led, UN-mandated war in Afghanistan (2001-continuing), and contributed to the more exclusively U.S.-led, and controversial “coalition of the willing” that supported America's intervention in Iraq (2003-11). Japan defined its goals as humanitarianism, reconstruction, and reconciliation. Its actions included:

• • Deploying Marine Self-Defense Forces (J-MSDF) for refueling for coalition members in the Indian Ocean (2002-2010);

• • Deploying 600 Ground Self-Defense Forces (J-GSDF) to the southern Iraqi city of Samawah in Iraq (2004-2006). The non-combat troops were involved in reconstruction efforts and protected by UK and Australian troops;

• • Deploying about 200 Air-Self Defense Forces (J-ASDF) troops to the Ali Al-Salem Air Base in Kuwait to airlift humanitarian aid and reconstruction equipment to Iraq (Jan. 2004-Dec. 2008);

• • Dispatching JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency) volunteers and other development and technical specialists to conduct massive reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan (under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, or MOFA);

• • Facilitating six multinational dialogues in Japan between the Taliban, the Government of Afghanistan, and other nations.

• • Facilitating reconciliation seminars among Iraqi Sunni and Shi’ite members of parliament, held in Japan;

• • Pledging monetary reconstruction aid to both conflicts. Japan is the largest national donor after the USA for reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan; from 20042005, during its deployment to Iraq, Japan was the largest humanitarian donor to Iraq.

This month the media and social networks are busy remembering Fukushima on the fifth anniversary of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown, but what we are really observing is the beginning of the work of forgetting Fukushima. Fukushima is taking its place alongside the many forgotten nuclear disasters of the last 70 years. Like Mayak and Santa Susana, soon all that will be left of the Fukushima nuclear disaster are the radionuclides that will cycle through the ecosystem for millennia. In that sense we are internalizing Fukushima into our body unconsciousness.

Documents from the United States Marine Corps reveal that lectures purported to improve Marines' understanding of Okinawa instead disparage local residents and politicians, downplay military crimes and mislead service members about the island's 27-year occupation by the U.S.

Located in the center of Okinawa Island, Kadena Air Base is the largest United States Air Force installation in Asia.

Equipped with two 3.7 kilometer runways and thousands of hangars, homes and workshops, the base and its adjoining arsenal at Chibana sprawl across 46 square kilometers of Okinawa's main island. Approximately 20,000 American service members, contractors and their families live or work here alongside 3,000 Japanese employees. More than 16,000 Okinawans own the land upon which the installation sits.

So rank are the injustices wrought upon Okinawa, and so long continuing, that I am led to conjecture that the reason the world pays so little attention to the issues and makes such muted criticism of the governments largely responsible for the injustices must be that the situation is so complex and so little-reported as to defy understanding. Historians and political scientists pay close attention to the East China Sea, but tend to see it, and the military conflicts that occur around it, through the prism of the nation state. In what follows, I look at the present and recent past of the “Okinawa problem” through the prism of Okinawa, paying closest attention to how the Okinawan people see their recent past and present. I focus especially on the years of the (second) Abe Shinzo government (beginning December 2012).

On May 31, 2016, the Supreme Court of Japan dismissed the final appeal of seventeen Muslim plaintiffs who, along with thousands of other blameless members of Japan's Muslim community, had been subject to comprehensive police surveillance. The Court left standing lower court judgments that confirmed the Tokyo police had in fact executed an intensive surveillance program against the Muslim community and ruled that they exercised lawful authority in doing so.

On September 11, 2001, a sunny Tuesday morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four American passenger planes in coordinated suicide attack missions directed at landmark sites in America. The first plane, American Airlines Flight 11, hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City at 8:46 a.m. Seventeen minutes later, while all the world's media were covering the story without knowing exactly what happened, a second hijacked plane, United Airlines Flight 175, crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center. At 9:37 a.m., a third plane crashed into the Pentagon. Passengers aboard a fourth plane, United Airlines Flight 93, fought back against hijackers who intended for it to hit a Washington, D.C. target, perhaps the U.S. Capitol; it instead crashed into farmland in Pennsylvania shortly after 10 a.m. In less than two hours, nearly 3000 people of several nationalities perished in the four coordinated attacks.

In his article, “The Zen of Hitler Jugend” (Asia Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, Volume 14, Issue 2, Number 2; January 18, 2016), Brian Victoria presents two Japanese reports and some photos that deal with a visit by a delegation of the Hitler Youth to Eiheiji in November 1940. One of the most important Japanese monasteries, Eiheiji was established in 1244 by Zen Master Dōgen, who was the founder of the Sōtō sect. These newly discovered reports, which were originally published in the Eiheiji periodical Sansho in December 1940 and August 1942, undoubtedly provide interesting source material and are thus worthy of being republished. However, I would like to add some further information about the delegation's visit to Japan and compare the Japanese reports found by Victoria with a report published by the head of the delegation upon his return to Germany. In doing so, I hope to shed light on some striking differences between the perception of the visit to Eiheiji by the monks of the monastery on the one hand and the German delegation on the other.

The territorial dispute between Japan and Russia has its origins in the closing stages of the Second World War. Specifically, after declaring war on Japan on the evening of 8 August 1945 (two days after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima), the Soviet Union launched large-scale offensives against Japanese positions in Manchuria, Korea, and Sakhalin. Even after the broadcast of Japan's surrender on 15 August, the Soviet advance continued. The Soviet forces recovered southern Sakhalin, which had been ceded to Japan in 1905 after Russia's defeat in the Russo-Japanese War. They also reclaimed the islands of the Kuril chain from Urup northwards, which Russia had voluntarily transferred to Japan in the 1875 Treaty of St. Petersburg. Finally, and most controversially, between 28 August and 4 September, the Soviet military occupied the islands of Etorofu, Kunashiri, Shikotan, and the Habomai islets, territory that had never previously been Soviet or Russian.

The Tripartite Pact linking Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan was signed in Berlin on September 27, 1940. Less than two months after the pact was signed, a six-member delegation of Hitler Jugend (Hitler Youth) arrived in Japan. This was actually the second Hitler Jugend delegation to visit Japan, a much larger delegation having first visited in the fall of 1938. In honor of the first delegation's visit, a song was composed entitled Banzai Hitorā Jūgento (Long Live Hitler Youth!). A recording of this song together with photographs highlighting the activities of both the first and second delegations in Japan is embedded below.

Far-reaching revisions to Japan's national security laws became effective at the end of March 2016. Part of the government's efforts to “reinterpret” Japan's war-renouncing Constitution, the revised laws authorize military action that would previously have been unconstitutional. The move has been severely criticized within Japan as being a circumvention and violation of the Constitution, but there has been far less scrutiny of the international law implications of the changes.

Fifteen years ago, Akio Mikuni and I were working on a book that we ended up calling Japan's Policy Trap. At the time, a chorus of prominent foreigners was berating Japan's policy elite for its refusal to take their advice on lifting Japan out of deflation. But we believed that Japan faced more than just a stubborn unwillingness by politicians and bureaucrats to do what needed to be done. That's why we labelled Japan's dilemma a trap; after all, if you can escape from it easily, then it really isn't a trap.

Non-Japanese often see the Japanese as an ethnically homogeneous group, but there are actually a number of different groups constituting the whole, including minority communities in Japan that have robust cultures and interact dynamically with the Japanese majority. The Chinese and Korean migrants who came to Japan during Japan's colonial period (late 19th to early 20th centuries) and their descendants constitute the two largest minority groups in Japan today. As many of them have connections overseas, however, this article categorizes them as “outsider minorities” and distinguishes them from “insider minorities.” The Ainu are one of several “insider minorities,” and this article serves as a useful introduction not just to the Ainu and their modern predicament but also to the challenges facing these other groups. As Roth explains, the “Ainu had a distinctive language, clothing, material culture, and social organization that set them off from other Japanese. A century of assimilation programs, however, [have] destroyed much of what made [the] Ainu distinctive.”

Ikeda Hiroshi wrote an important opinion piece for the Tokyo Shimbun newspaper on February 26, 2016. Ikeda is a Kyoto University emeritus professor of German literature who has devoted his career to researching fascism. His numerous books include The Weimar Constitution and Hitler. Ikeda published this Tokyo Shimbun article at a tumultuous time in Japanese society: the government had shortly before pushed through state secrets and national security laws, and overridden the constitution to allow overseas military deployment. In response, mass rallies were staged outside the Diet building. In this climate, Ikeda's article is an unusual example in the Japanese press of criticism of a reigning government through direct historical comparison with a fascist regime of another country. At the request of the Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, Ikeda provided an original, expanded article on this theme. This article is particularly significant now that both houses of the Japanese Diet have two-thirds of their members supporting constitutional revision after the July 10 Upper House election, and Abe talks about starting debate this fall, with priority given to a emergency decree clause. CN