Otaka Yoshiko was born Yamaguchi Yoshiko in Manchuria in 1920. After joining the Manchurian Film Association in 1938, she starred in films as a Chinese actress under the name of Li Xianglan (Ri Koran in Japanese). Arrested as a spy by the Chinese Nationalists following Japan's surrender, she was arraigned before a war crimes tribunal and acquitted. Following her release, she was active as an actress and singer in Japan and then in the United States. She subsequently served as a television host and journalist covering Vietnam and the Middle East. She served in the upper house of the Diet between 1974 and 1992. This is one in a series of Japanese Lives.

Ever since the October 10 news conference announcing the discovery of a small tablet in China's Tang dynasty capital of Chang'an (now Xi'an), excitement in Japan has run high. Recording the death of a Japanese student in China in 734, the tablet indicates that Jing Zhencheng posthumously received from the Chinese Emperor a high official appointment. It also contains the earliest use of the name Riben or Nippon, the Chinese and Japanese characters for Japan that have been used ever since.

America's unprecedented and growing dependence on foreign capital to finance its ballooning trade and budget deficits periodically merits a piece in the business pages. Readers shake their heads, and then forget about it. Even academic economists tend to shy away from the issue, at least in print. Most recognize that a severe crisis is brewing, but they are wary of looking foolish by writing about it and then watching nothing happen in the short run. And plenty of business economists, convinced that America's deficits and their precarious financing are the pillars of a robust economy, rudely dismiss any cautions as hyperventilating. But some staunchly market-oriented analysts are worth heeding, including Morgan Stanley's Stephen Roach. During America's stock-price bubble, Roach was one of the first to bell the cat. Being a skeptic in an era of blind faith and herd instinct takes guts, but he turned out to be right. For some months Roach has been warning that the US dependence on the inflow of money from Asian central banks is showing dangerous signs of reaching its limits. He points to the increasing role of central banks as the buyer of last resort, and its worrisome parallel in the Black Monday stock market collapse of October 1987. He's warned for months (http://www.morganstanley.com/GEFdata/digests/20040823-mon.html) that a serious crisis is unfolding, especially as it's fed by such ancillary forces as skyrocketing oil prices and the erosion of trust in America. The pangloss crowd dismiss this of course, but reports indicate that Warren Buffet, the world's most savvy investor and its richest man, has already pulled his fortune out of American-dollar investments. If Asian central bankers back off too, we will all painfully relearn that - as economist Herbert Stein used to say - if something is unsustainable, then someday it will stop.

At major intersections throughout Japan one can see the rightist groups with patriotic banners across their chests. They use relentless microphone-amplified diatribes to drive home their message as they stand atop their black vans. Their posters declaring “Worried about the Nation” has become a fixture of the Japanese urban landscape. After the Second World War such figures were considered comical. They seemed but hot-blooded nationalists; marginal crackpots far from the norm and with minimal influence. But before we knew it, the vague sense that perhaps their ravings contained a kernel of truth spread through Japanese society. Ironically, the far right has gained considerable power in Japanese society by insistently holding up the ideal of protecting the imperial system at the very time that civil society has achieved remarkable maturity in Asian nations.

The Japan-United States relationship seems abnormal. “Abnormal” because, even if it didn't begin all of a sudden, since Koizumi came to power, and especially since 9.11, a situation that can only be described as “extreme abnormality” has become the norm.

Nosappu, Japan – Wearing a white windbreaker to protect him from the Siberian wind, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi stood on the bridge of a Japanese coast guard patrol boat on Thursday, scanning the treeless shores of islands occupied by Russia since September 1945. Following close behind was an uninvited escort: a Russian coast guard patrol boat.