In June 1994, Bill Clinton came close to launching a ‘pre-emptive strike’ against North Korea's nuclear reactors at Yongbyon, about sixty miles north of Pyongyang. Then, at the last minute, Jimmy Carter got North Korea to agree to a complete freeze on activity at the Yongbyon complex, and a Framework Agreement was signed in October 1994. The Republican Right railed against this for the next six years, until George W. Bush brought a host of the Agreement's critics into his Administration, and they set about dismantling it, thus fulfilling their own prophecy and initiating another dangerous confrontation with Pyongyang. The same folks who brought us the invasion of Iraq and a menu of hyped-up warnings about Saddam Hussein's weapons have similarly exaggerated the North Korean threat: indeed, the second North Korean nuclear crisis began in October 2002, when ‘sexed-up’ intelligence was used to push Pyongyang against the wall and make bilateral negotiations impossible.

President George W. Bush has repeatedly presented the American occupation of Japan as the model for Iraq's democratization. Does the Japanese occupation really illuminate contemporary reconstructions in Iraq, Afghanistan and other contemporary war-torn societies? Certain similarities do stand out: as in Japan half a century earlier, the U.S. has proclaimed its intention to return “sovereignty” to a democratic Iraq and assure a democratic transition in Afghanistan while preserving a dominant American military presence in both the Middle East and Central Asia. Yet beyond this obvious similarity lie profound differences in American strategy, goals and commitments, as well as in the nations and peoples it seeks to “reconstruct” and the problems encountered in the two regions and two eras.

On December 19, 2003, Japanese police arrested 54-year-old rightist Murakami Ichiro, along with five accomplices, charging them with violating the Firearms and Swords Control Law.

Murakami is accused of leading a terror campaign, under the banner of the Kenkoku Giyugun (Nation-Building Volunteer Corps), and the Kokuzoku Seibatsutai, (Volunteer Corps to Punish Traitors), which conducted 23 shooting, arson and bomb attacks on targets across Japan over a one-year period beginning in November 2002.

In the battle of Okinawa between one third and one fourth of the Okinawan population was killed in the cross fire between Japanese and American forces. In the early years of the twenty-first century Okinawa is once again facing an acute shortage of medical personnel, particularly on the outer islands which are simultaneously facing aging and depopulation.

About 100 kilometers off the coast of the main island of Okinawa lies Kumejima, in the East China Sea. A 77 year old medical practitioner, known as an ikaiho (medical assistant or paramedic), is still practicing his craft on the island. For over half a century the lives of those living on the island have rested in his hands. With few medical facilities the people of Kumejima, and of the other outlying islands, face new difficulties as they look to their future.

A Japanese history textbook for junior high school students, created by the members of the ‘Atarashii rekishi kyokasho o tsukuru kai’ (hereafter referred to as ‘Tsukurukai’; Society for History Textbook Reform)1 and approved by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in spring 2001 (we shall use the edition published for the general public), depicted the Showa Emperor over two pages at the end of its ‘Personality Columns’. The first part of this column, entitled ‘The Showa Emperor - a life lived with the Japanese people’, reads:

‘On the day of the demise of the Showa Emperor’

On the morning of 7 January 1989 (the 64th year of Showa), when the Showa Emperor (124th Emperor: 1901-1989) passed away, many people assembled in front of the Imperial Palace on hearing the news. An old lady of sixty-eight years old who had been exposed to the radiation in Hiroshima and was then living in Tokyo said, ‘I have a feeling that I have always been sharing hardships with the Showa Emperor’. Just like this old lady, in front of the Palace as well as in all parts of the country, various kinds of people including youths, elderly people, housewives and salaried workers quietly pondered over the true meaning of the era of the Showa Emperor. (p. 306)

It is often said that 9/11 has changed the world. Certainly, the world being swayed by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in the wake of that event appears to prove the saying correct.

But as far as the basic structure of today's international politics is concerned, the world underwent a drastic change when the Cold War ended. 9/11 served as a catalyst to make the structural change all the more manifest.