Chemical physicist Chris Busby is at the forefront of scientists who are challenging the radiation risk model propounded by ICRP, the International Commission on Radiological Protection, whose standards for allowable radiation doses the Japanese government has adopted for its citizens affected by the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant accident. Busby, Scientific Secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk (ECRR), points out that the ICRP model “deals with radiation exposure from all sources in the same way, as if it were external to the body,” and then takes this dose and multiplies it by a risk factor based on the high acute external doses of the atomic-bomb survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The ICRP method thus fails to take into account a number of ways in which certain internal radionuclides can deliver very high doses to critical targets in cells, particularly the cell DNA. One of these is from “inhaled or ingested hot particles, which are solid but microscopic and can lodge in tissue delivering high doses to local cells.” As a result, internal radiation exposure can be “up to 1,000 times more harmful than the ICRP model concludes.”

This paper traces the social history of the household registration system (koseki seido) in Japan from its beginning to the present day. The paper argues that the koseki has been an essential tool of social control used at various stages in history to facilitate the political needs and priorities of the ruling elite by constructing and policing the boundaries of Japanese self. This self has been mediated through the principles of family as defined by the state and has created diverse marginalised and excluded others. The study includes social unrest and agency of these others in furthering understanding of the role of the koseki in Japanese society. The paper also contributes understanding of nationality and citizenship in contemporary Japan in relation to the koseki.

A Chinese woman said that when her children first started school, she initially had difficulty getting information about their schoolwork as she was not listed on the registration document. ‘They wouldn't accept me as the ‘real' mother because I wasn't listed [on the family registry].'

An American man, who remarried following his wife's death, said his family had the unique situation of having three different ‘registrations’. Separate family registries for his daughter and second wife, and separate registration as an [sic] foreign resident for himself. ‘It was really strange that my daughter was listed as the head of household when she wasn't even in school’.

Ōishi Matashichi, a fisherman aboard The Lucky Dragon #5, in a new book, tells the story of the 1954 Bikini Hydrogen bomb Bravo test that transformed his life and touched off the world anti-nuclear movement. The Asia-Pacific Journal is pleased to offer excerpts from Richard Falk's foreword and Ōishi's riveting account of the bomb which exploded with a force 1,000 times that of the Hiroshima Bomb and left its imprint on the lives of the surviving members of the crew and our understanding of nuclear weapons and US atomic diplomacy.

The poet WAGŌ Ryōichi 和合亮一 was living in Fukushima on March 11, 2011, when the Great East Japan Earthquake struck, sending the entire northeastern Tōhoku region into chaos. After spending a few days in a camp for evacuees, he began documenting his experiences in a powerful and poetic Twitter feed, which seemed to touch a nerve as the nation listened in horror to the stories of the survivors. Wagō's Twitter feed quickly earned over 14,000 followers, and his poignant, pithy statements were frequently retweeted by many others. In this feed, he writes about the sights with the earthquake zone, his horror at the devastation in Minami Sōma (a town where he had worked as a high school teacher), and the need for a new kind of direct and powerful writing to capture the realities of the destruction.

The positive and negative significance of the Tokyo Trial has been passionately debated among Japanese historians and intellectuals. However, the attitudes of the Japanese people in general towards the Trial have been rather apathetic. The Trial was almost absent in Japanese public discourse from the conclusion of the Trial until the 1980s, and according to opinion polls conducted recently, 60 per cent or even 70 per cent of Japanese people are unfamiliar with the specifics of the Trial. Some historians and intellectuals argue that the Tokyo Trial, unlike the Nuremberg Trial, had no direct impact on post-war Japanese society. Nonetheless, a close look at Japanese attitudes shows that the Tokyo Trial has had a subtle but substantial impact on the Japanese sense of history, war responsibility and war guilt, all of which are highly contemporary issues. This long-term societal impact of the Tokyo Trial became clearer in the 1990s and started to be recognised and pointed out publicly from 2005 onwards.

Murakami Haruki's brilliant speech on June 9 in Barcelona, Spain, delivered in acceptance of the International Catalunya Prize, has contributed to the resetting of the anti-nuclear agenda in Japan.

In January 2009, in his acceptance speech for the Jerusalem Prize in Israel, the author had used his podium time to deliver a keenly aimed attack on the Israeli occupation of Palestine. In Barcelona, by turning his sights to “peaceful uses” of atoms, he again gave voice to the Japanese conscience of our era.

I last visited Barcelona two years ago in the spring. An amazing number of readers gathered when I held a book signing. Long lines formed and I still could not finish signing all the books even after one and a half hours. The reason it took so long is that so many of the female readers wanted to kiss me. That was time consuming.