During the next three months, North Korea will unload its nuclear reactor at Yongbyon, removing fuel rods that can be reprocessed into plutonium for more nuclear weapons. Once again, Pyongyang is offering to negotiate a freeze that would prevent further reprocessing, as it did in June, 1994, leading to the Agreed Framework, and as it has repeatedly offered to do in the six-party talks.

There are dozens of brilliant war photographers, but there is only one Yoshito Matsushige.

For many years, Matsushige, 92, worked for a major metro daily called Chugoku Shimbun. He may not have been the greatest war photographer ever but he is unique: he took the only photographs in Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, the day the first atomic bomb was detonated over the city, killing 150,000 people.

September 8, 2005, marks the sixtieth anniversary of the arrival of US soldiers on the Korean peninsula to accept the surrender of Japanese forces. There will likely be little fanfare accompanying this event. At the end of World War II, Koreans viewed the Soviets and the Americans equally as liberators, and neither occupation force was expected to stay long on Korean soil. The special relationship between South Korea and the United States was forged by later events: the formation of the Republic of Korea (ROK) under American auspices in August 1948, the Korean War of 1950-53, and the Mutual Defense Treaty of 1954. The US-ROK alliance was, as the North Koreans and Chinese like to say of their own relationship, a “friendship cemented in blood,” marked by memories of shared sacrifice. It also involved the stationing of tens of thousands of American troops in South Korea. For over forty years, the purpose of this alliance was seen by both sides as clear and unambiguous: defending South Korea, as part of the “free world,” against the threat of the North, backed by China and the Soviet Union. The loosening of cold war alignments and the Soviet collapse in the late 1980s and early 1990s problematized but did not fundamentally alter this sense of shared purpose. But in the last ten years, and especially the last five, the US and South Korea have drifted increasingly farther apart in their views of the North Korean threat, and the nature of US-ROK relations more generally. While new critical attitudes toward the US in South Korea are often portrayed in the Western media rather simplistically as “anti-Americanism,” in fact they reflect a changing and increasingly complex relationship between America and Korea, between the ROK and North Korea (DPRK), and between Korea and its regional neighbors. The cold war is, in fact, finally and belatedly ending in and around the Korean peninsula, and with it the structure of international relationships it created.

The firebombing of Tokyo, or for that matter the bombing of any city, whether it be Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden or London, cannot be fully comprehended unless it is examined in the context of the history of indiscriminate bombing throughout the twentieth century.

[This posting consists of a two part article by Wall Street Journal Correspondent Jess Bravin on the rights, and abuses of those rights, of POWs under the Japanese in World War II and under the United States in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay, and the pertinent legal and criminal issues. The analogy should be a chilling one for a nation that pioneered, in the wake of World War II, in pressing charges of prisoner abuse and insisting on responsibility both of the immediate perpetrator of violations of human rights, on up through the chain of command to the highest authority. See also the article by Utsumi Aiko, Japan's leading specialist on World War II POW issues, which addresses Japan's policies toward prisoners.]

Cultural stereotypes are enduring lenses through which many of us understand others. Increased immigration and international travel as well as education in media literacy and critical thinking can help to erode such stereotypes. At the same time, the post-9/11 encouragement of “us versus them” attitudes reinforces stereotypes, especially the most negative ones. Given the tragic history of exoticizing others, one would anticipate that social scientists would be particularly careful to avoid doing it in their work. Instead, sweeping generalizations backed up by questionable methodology and tendentious argument appear to be on the rise. At the very least, they are not getting the scrutiny they deserve. This review examines some contemporary stereotypes in recent culturalist work on East Asia by North American researchers.

A Japanese government survey published in early 2005 estimates that the number of fatherless families has skyrocketed, hitting 1.22 million in fiscal 2003. This is the highest number ever recorded and represents a 28.3% increase from the previous survey conducted five years earlier (see note 1 for full survey details). The figures also show that the vast majority of children in these households live far below the poverty line, creating a rapidly expanding underclass of impoverished families.

[In the following article, published in the May/June 2005 issue of FOREIGN POLICY, Robert McNamara makes a powerful case for ending the U.S. government's reliance upon nuclear weapons as an instrument of U.S. policy. Pointing to their enormous destructiveness, the likelihood that they will be employed deliberately or accidentally, the immoral and illegal nature of their maintenance and use, and their incitement to proliferation, the former U.S. secretary of defense argues for prompt action “toward the elimination – or near elimination – of all nuclear weapons.” Unfortunately, he argues, the Bush administration is moving in precisely the opposite direction, by turning its back on treaty commitments to nuclear arms control and disarmament and, instead, promoting a U.S. nuclear buildup.

[Among the debates critical of Japanese textbook nationalism that have raged in Korea, China and internationally in recent months, this is a rare example of a self-reflexive discussion among Korean historians of the logic and limits of nationalist perspectives on their own history and that of East Asia.]

For weeks, Japan's textbooks have been sparking strong criticism in Korea and China for whitewashing Japanese colonial rule. But, historians say, Korea's textbooks, published by the government for students in the first to 10th grades, also exhibit strong nationalism.

To introduce this symposium on World War II in the Pacific, I reflect on the differences between this, the 60th anniversary, and the memorable 50th anniversary in 1995.

First, we are well aware of the passing of many members of generations who, as adults, experienced the protracted wars of the 1930s and 1940s. 60th anniversary commemorative practices are marked by this awareness. At the site of the German surrender in Holland, for example, the march of veterans and former resistance fighters in May will “be the final one there” “because of the aging of the participants.” (NYT 3/27/05, p. 6). In Japan, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki Peace Museums have stepped up efforts to gather narratives and artifacts of the atomic bombings in anticipation of the sixtieth anniversary. One critic noted, “it is almost certain that events to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary will be the last chance for surviving hibakusha to appeal to the world to oppose … genocide by weapons of mass destruction” (Yuki Tanaka, The Hibakusha Voice and the Future of the Anti-Nuclear Movement). In local newspapers, we see prominent calls for readers to send their memories of VE Day and also of VJ Day.

In late October 2004, nearly 200 people from around Japan gathered at a public hearing in Osaka to discuss the future of nuclear power. Sponsored by the Atomic Energy Commission, which is responsible to the prime minister, members of the “public” who were present included pronuclear power utility company executives on one side of the room and antinuclear activists on the other.

[What keeps the US and the world economy afloat at a time when US balance of payments and budgetd eficits have soared to unprecedented levels? As The Economist noted in its September 23, 1999 edition, “Never before in history have central banks wielded so much power.” That power has only increased, as central governments continue to withdraw from economic management by reducing redistributive taxes, transfers and regulations, thus leaving even more decisions to central banks, the market and lower levels of the state. As central bankers become more influential, it is reasonable to ask what lies behind their decisionmaking and how they might be held more accountable. The long series of asset bubbles over the past decade suggests that there is something fundamentally wrong in the governance of the financial side of the economy. This is the context for Richard Duncan's analysis of the strategy of Japanese and Chinese central banks in underwriting US deficits. Duncan takes no position on the larger debate over central bank governance, but instead offers a fascinating, speculative glimpse into their decisionmaking processes. Duncan asks whether it is possible that central bankers in Japan and America made a political decision to coordinate their policies. Duncan concludes that central bankers stopped a spiral into deflation. From another perspective, however, unelected officials propped up the fiscal irresponsibility of the Bush regime as well as poured more froth on the worsening bubble-trouble hangover from the 1990s. Japan Focus]

[This is part of a continuing series of reports and assessment of the US firebombing of Japan from March through August, 1945.]

The air armada of B-29 planes, their silver skins gleaming under a Japanese moon, thundered over Tokyo on March 10th, 1945 to scorch that sleeping city and Japanese empire's headquarters.

May 4 2005 marked the 76th anniversary of the iconic Chinese patriotic protest movement. It was the day in 1919 when students led popular protests against Japan's imperial ambitions in China. It was also a seminal moment in the historical construction of modern China, prefiguring and also influencing the rise of the Communist Party itself in 1921, and marking a stage in the cultural and social transformation that remains at the heart of modern Chinese identities.

[Part I of a two part series on the treatment of prisoners of war examines Japan's World War II treatment of prisoners and the verdicts of the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal punishing prisoner abuse. Utsumi Aiko is Japan's leading specialist on World War II POW issues. See also the two part article by Wall Street Journal correspondent Jess Bravin on the rights, and abuses of those rights, of POWs under the Japanese in World War II and the United States in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay. The articles raise important issues about responsibility: the responsibility of the soldier who commits abuses of prisoners, and the officials at the highest levels who frame policies of degradation and atrocities. The analogy should be a chilling one for a nation that pioneered, in the wake of World War II, in pressing charges of prisoner abuse and insisting on responsibility both of the immediate perpetrator of violations of human rights, on up through the chain of command to the highest authority.]

With Japan and its neighbors still at odds over history, German freelance journalist Gebhard Hielscher says Tokyo should take bold measures to clarify that it has atoned for its wartime aggression.

The former Far East correspondent for the daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung proposes that Japan follow Germany's lead and come up with legislation that offers compensation to individuals that suffered under its wartime policies, even if only a token sum. Hielscher says Japan must also conduct joint historical research with its neighbors, as Germany did, so that all sides can at least learn to accept one another's different perceptions.

On August 6, 1945, the day that was to prove the blindingly bright dawn of the atomic age, Little Boy, a 9,700 pound baby with the look of “an elongated trash can with fins,” had already been loaded into the specially prepared bomb bay of a B-29. The night before, in large letters, mission commander Col. Paul W. Tibbets, jr., had had painted under the pilot's window, “Enola Gay,” the name of his beloved mother, who had supported him against his father in his desire to enter the U.S. Air Force. The mission was blessed on the spot by a Protestant chaplain, who delivered an impromptu prayer he had scrawled on the back of an envelop, asking the Almighty Father “to be with those who brave the heights of Thy heaven and who carry the battle to our enemies.”

From Washington to New Delhi, Caracas to Moscow and Beijing, national leaders and corporate executives are stepping up their efforts to gain control over major sources of oil and natural gas as the global struggle for energy intensifies. Never has the competitive pursuit of untapped oil and gas reserves been so acute, and never has so much money as well as diplomatic and military muscle been deployed in the contest to win control over major foreign stockpiles of energy. To an unprecedented degree, a government's success or failure in these endeavors is being treated as headline news, and provoking public outcry when a rival power is seen as benefiting unfairly from a particular transaction. With the officials of numerous governments coming under mounting pressure to satisfy the needs of their individual countries – at whatever cost -the battle for energy can only become more inflamed in the years ahead.

As the government emphasizes patriotism as part of the national school curriculum and discussion continues apace over revising Article 9, some Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) lawmakers are calling for changes to the Constitution that may put equal rights and individual freedom at risk.