In Japan's public disillusionment following the triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, the Asahi Shimbun, the nation's second-largest daily and the “quality paper” favored by intellectuals, launched a bold experiment to regain readers' trust.

The Abe administration's aim to further weaken the parameters of Article 9 by seeking legal grounds to engage Japan's military in collective self-defense activities sent Tokyo-based Japanese of all ages to the streets in protest this past summer. Tens of thousands of protesters gathered repeatedly in front of the National Diet Building and prime minister's residence to voice their opposition to this to demand, as emphasized by Students Emergency Action for Liberal Democracy (SEALDs), a politics based on Japan's postwar Constitution. With media focus on events that took place in the nation's capital and at the level of the state, local interests and opinion is sometimes overlooked. This article introduces translations of two opinion pieces published in two local Japanese newspapers, the Okinawa Taimusu (Okinawa Times), out of Naha, Okinawa, and the Kahoku Shinpō published in Sendai.

Aerial bombardment has undergone many changes in the past century, in its technological characteristics, in the harm it has inflicted on civilians, and in its legal status. The trajectories of development in these three areas are complicated and interrelated. Although the practice of firebombing cities seems part of a distant past, and an evident violation of current legal norms, the continued maintenance of thousands of nuclear weapons makes worse destruction an ever-present possibility. While the increasing accuracy of bombing methods, especially by drones, makes it easier to protect innocents from harm, broad definitions of what constitutes a military target continue to put civilians at risk. Moreover, the ease with which major powers use drones outside of recognized sites of armed conflict makes resort to force more likely.

Japan's prison system is renowned for its safety and order. There has not been a prison riot there in decades, and figures about escapes from and assaults at its penal facilities are far lower than in other developed nations. Such features have not gone unnoticed; foreign policy makers increasingly look to Japan for lessons in how to improve their own prisons. Whilst various aspects of the Japanese prison system have been investigated by legal experts, government agencies and human rights organizations, however, a gap remains with respect to how Japanese prison policies are formulated. This article provides a study of the decision-making process, focusing on the political events triggered by a sequence of inmate injuries and fatalities in Nagoya Prison following the turn of the century, which culminated in the 2005/6 reform of the 1908 Prison Law. Whilst this study reveals the scope of the discretion that the Ministry of Justice enjoys over prison management, it also shows the capability of the legislature to hold the former to account when called to do so, and the potential for civil society to impact policy-making in Japan.

Much has been written on the government of Japan's determination to provide a new base for the United States Marine Corps at Henoko on Oura Bay in northern Okinawa and to transfer the existing, obsolescent, dangerous and inconvenient Futenma Air Station to it. When the agreement to “return” the Marine Corps' Futenma Air Station to Japan was first reached (April 12, 1996), it was to occur “within five to seven years.” As the 20th anniversary of that agreement loomed early in 2016, the Marine Corps' “Marine Aviation Plan 2016” amended the already several times pushed back transfer/reversion date to “fiscal year 2025” (October 2024-September 2025). Admiral Harry Harris, Commander-of US Pacific forces presented that date in evidence to Congress early in 2016. But even as that 2025 date was being reluctantly accepted in Washington, at the beginning of March 2016, Japan despatched its top security official, Yachi Shotaro, to Washington to seek the Obama government's understanding (and presumably also its permission) for a further substantial delay. Once the US consented, the Abe government came to an “out-of-court” March 4 agreement (discussed in this paper and in the following opinion essays by Okinawans) with Okinawa Prefecture, that involved a complete and indefinite suspension of site works at Henoko. Lt. General Robert Neller, commander of the US Marine Corps, told a Senate military affairs committee meeting that that suspension could be expected to last a further 12-months. President Obama, advised of the impending delay, merely responded with “So there will be nothing happening for a while then.”

Introduction

Recently, the influential American political pundit, Bill O'Reilly, demonstrated that no nationality or ethnicity holds a monopoly on retrograde views of slavery, on what it means as a human being not to have possession of one's own life. In response to first lady Michelle Obama's evocative observation that her African-American daughters were growing up in a house built by slaves — a house, moreover, they loved — O'Reilly tried to negate this moment's deep significance by quipping that the slaves who built the White House were “well fed and had decent lodgings.”

“To Hell and Back” is a phrase that can bear a pretty heavy metaphorical load when it comes to talking about the atomic bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. It’s also the title of a book by Charles Pellegrino.

This essay examines why nationalism seems to be on the rise in Asia and beyond at a time when globalization is also becoming more salient, by focusing on the political dynamics that propelled both changes in Japan in the post-Cold War era. The more open and liberal type of nationalism that appeared in Japan in the 1980s to the mid-1990s was followed by an abrupt revisionist backlash beginning in the late 1990s. This illiberal, authoritarian turn in contemporary nationalism was confirmed and accelerated during the premiership of Koizumi Jun'ichiro (2001-06), when further neoliberal reforms were simultaneously implemented. I argue that the New Right transformation of Japanese politics –the combined ascendancy of economic liberalism and political illiberalism—is the driving force of contemporary nationalism in Japan.

The Japanese government has described the North Korean rocket launched on February 7 as “a long range ballistic missile disguised as a satellite launching vehicle.” Even after it was confirmed that a satellite was in orbit it has kept that rhetoric. As the Japanese public, as well as journalists, generally lack knowledge of missiles, they are easily manipulated by government misinformation.

Yagasaki Katsuma, emeritus professor of Ryukyu University, has been constantly sounding the alarm about the problem of internal exposure related to nuclear weapons testing and nuclear electricity generation. Since the explosion at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant (NPP), he has drawn on his expertise to conduct field research, and to support those who evacuated to Okinawa. We asked him to reflect on the five years since the accident at Fukushima Daiichi, and to lay out the issues that lie ahead.

Kyoko Selden translated the Japanese contributions to the catalogue for the exhibit on Japan: The Shaping of Daimyo Culture, 1185-1868, held at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. from October 1988 to January 1989. This expansive exhibit was the first anywhere, including Japan, to present the artistic legacy of daimyō (regional lords) from the rise of warrior rulers at the end of the Heian period in the twelfth century to the dissolution of the feudal system in 1868. Featured were portraits, calligraphy, religious sculpture, painting, armor, lacquer, ceramics, textiles, tea-ceremony utensils, and artwork related to Noh theater. The following two excerpts convey Kyoko's appreciation of art, her ability to translate classical poetry and various genres of prose across the centuries and her knowledge of Japanese history and culture.

The inaugural 2014 Kyoko Selden Memorial Translation Prize was shared by Hiroaki and Nancy Sato for So Happy to See Cherry Blossoms and David Pearsall Dutcher for Sagoromo, his translation of the entirety of the eleventh century Japanese court fiction, Sagoromo Monogatari. The Asia-Pacific Journal is pleased to make excerpts from this second prize-winning translation available to its readers. We do so not only in view of the translation's vivid and fluent rendering into English of the rather archaic classical language of the text, but because of its scholarly significance. Little known and read today except by specialists, Sagoromo Monogatari, a work written in close proximity to the Tale of Genji, and in some ways modeled after it, was for centuries one of the most widely read texts in its genre, as made evident by the fact that over one hundred hand-written variants survive today.

The Asia Pacific Journal is proud to offer its readers a preview of John W. Dower's new book, Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor/Hiroshima/9-11/Iraq (New York: Norton 2010). In the first days after the Al Qaeda attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, prominent American news sources reacted by invoking the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt's description of the event as an act of “infamy.” That analogy caught the attention of many people, but Dower has thought more deeply than most about the underlying issues. The resonances between the past and the present are profound and disturbing.

On 8 July 2016 it was announced in Seoul that the US would, as had long been anticipated, deploy an initial unit of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system in South Korea. The announcement was made at a press conference hosted by the South Korean Deputy Minister of Defense Ryu Je-seung and the Chief of Staff of US Forces in Korea (USFK) who has the significant, if unfortunate, name of General Vandal. The decision did not attract much attention in the international media being overshadowed by the Brexit drama in Europe, shootings and electioneering in the US, and Obama's last NATO summit in Warsaw.

The Diene Report of 2005 represents an instance in which an international organization investigated Japanese official treatment of minority communities in Japan in relation to international standards, and their findings strongly supported the Ainu activists. The United Nations sent Doudou Diene, their Special Rapporteur, to Japan to look into discrimination and racism. Diene's report harshly criticized the racism that exists in Japan and suggested that improved measures are necessary to protect the Ainu and other minorities there. This article is a response to his report by five Japanese individuals who have long been committed to countering discrimination and racism in the country. Four of the five contributors agree with the overall content of the Diene report and provide further information. They see the report as a small but positive impetus that will help the 21st century activism that further counters discrimination and racism in Japan. On the other hand, William Wetherall criticizes the report as seriously flawed, because he thinks it misunderstands the main aspects of the issue.

After Ashikaga Tadayoshi (1306-52), Chief of the Royal Left Stable, had passed Yamanouchi, he summoned Fuchibe, provincial Governor of Iga, and said to him, “We have withdrawn from Kamakura due to lack of troops, but if we raise enough troops in Mino, Owari, Mikawa, and Tōtōmi, and, if we then quickly attack Kamakura, we can destroy Sagami Jirō Tokiyuki easily. But Prince Moriyoshi (1308-35) will always be an enemy of the Ashikaga family. Although there has been no royal edict to execute him, I want to seize this opportunity. Rush back to Yakushidō Valley and stab him to death.”

The essay “Specters of East Asia” is the contribution of playwright, actor, and scholar Choi Jinseok to the volume Still Hear the Wound. It is based on a presentation made by Choi in March, 2007, at the Sakima Art Museum in Okinawa, whose courtyard faces directly onto the U.S. Marine Air Station Futenma, itself bordered by winding roads and chain-link fences. While protests over construction of a new airstrip in the coastal fishing village of Henoko swelled and continued in Okinawa, protests which continue in 2016, the museum hosted workshops in 2004 and 2007 as part of a series of events organized by the Asia, Politics, Art Project founded by poet/philosopher Lee Chonghwa of Seikei University, Tokyo. Its members were scholars, critics, and young artists dedicated to exploring, through art, often marginalized and suppressed memories of colonial violence shared across national boundaries in East Asia.

Frank von Hippel, one of the world's leading specialists on nuclear weapons, has provided us—and the presidential candidates—with an important challenge: How are we going to get the stalled nuclear disarmament process moving forward once again? Answering the challenge is particularly problematic because it requires navigating between the national security fears of U.S. political leaders and the apparent disinterest in further nuclear disarmament on the part of the Russian government. Even so, a case can be made for cutting back the deployed U.S. nuclear arsenal.

The “Okinawa problem” to which the APJ has paid so much attention over recent years continues to evolve, and the contradiction between the national governments of Japan and the United States on the one hand and the prefectural government and people of Okinawa on the other to intensify. The following paper was drafted by Hideki Yoshikawa and issued on May 19 in the name of the US Working Group section of the “All Okinawa Council.” The “All-Okinawa Council” is an Okinawan mass organization set up in July 2014 representing local communities, civil society groups, local assemblies, and business establishments, to press for reduction of the burden of the US military presence. It has constituted a major plank in support of Governor Onaga's insistence that no new base be built in Okinawa for the Marine Corps.