KONO MICHIKAZU This year I was in Nanjing on August 15, the anniversary of Japan's surrender in World War II. I was with you, in fact, attending the opening of an exhibit that was the product of three years of effort on your part: “My August 15,” an exhibition by Japanese manga artists at the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall. One should probably note here that a contentious debate continues to rage between Japan and China, and among Japanese scholars as well, over the facts of the so-called Nanjing Massacre, including the number of victims and the authenticity of certain documents. And the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall, which has “300,000 Victims” engraved in large letters near the main entrance, is regarded by many in Japan as a kind of rallying point for anti-Japanese sentiment in China. What a bold, pathbreaking idea, to choose this memorial hall, and the symbolic date of August 15, to exhibit cartoons describing the wartime suffering of the Japanese, whom the Chinese have tended to view solely as aggressors!

With a proud high-heel clatter not becoming a military runway, she rushes forward, followed by her children with slightly shy looks on their faces. A pilot in flight suit awaits them, arms spread. Embraces, kisses, tears. …

“It is incredible how as soon as a people become subject, it promptly falls into such complete forgetfulness of its freedom that it can hardly be roused to the point of regaining it, obeying so easily and so willingly that one is led to say that this people has not so much lost its liberty as won its enslavement.”

There can be little exaggerating the vertiginous decline of US print journalism. Daily newspaper sales (of about 379 titles) down by 10 million to 30.4 million over the last decade; over 15,000 US journalists sacked across the country in 2008; some of the most venerable titles in print media, including The Boston Globe, teetering close to extinction; circulation of others, such as the once invincible New York Times, plummeting – down by 7.3 percent in the six months ending September 30, 2009, according to the U.S. Audit Bureau of Circulations.