This three part New Year essay was commissioned by the Okinawan daily Ryukyu shimpo and published on January 6, 7, and 8, 2009, under the title “Satsuma shinko 400 nen – “Gekijo” kokka to shite no Okinawa,” (400 Years since the Satsuma Invasion: Okinawa as ‘Theatre’ state“).

For Japanese text, carried here with permission from Ryukyu shimpo, see the headings of each section.

A recent article in Nature asked provocatively: Is China ready for GM rice? The title reflects widely shared anxiety over genetic engineering in agriculture. The use of the term “GM” specifically conjures a politically charged object: “GMOs” or “genetically modified organisms.” Is anyone ready for FrankenFoods? Strawberries with fish genes? Human cloning? The question has an ominous overtone, though both reporter and venue are identified with science. The question derives its energy from the decision of the Chinese Government to go full speed ahead with genetically engineered rice to confront what the state constructs as a gathering Malthusian crisis of hunger. What the article does not tell the reader is that the farmers are way ahead of the government: ready and able. Transgenic rice – officially unauthorized within China – has for several years been showing up in exports from China to Europe, to Japan, to New Zealand – and probably many other places that simply are not checking.

From September 1945 to November 1946, the Singapore-based British Southeast Asia Command under Vice-Admiral (later Lord) Louis Mountbatten assumed responsibility for taking the Japanese surrender in Java. A similar role was assumed by the British in taking the Japanese surrender in southern Vietnam. Indonesian and Vietnamese nationalists viewed both events – correctly — as a cover for the return to power of, respectively, Dutch and French colonialists at a time when the British were vying to recover their own empire in Malaya, Singapore, India and elsewhere. On Java, nationalists around Sukarno and Mohammed Hatta, having sidelined the veteran revolutionary Tan Malaka, declared independence on 17 August 1945, ambiguously in the Jakarta house of a Japanese admiral. With demobilized former Japanese auxiliaries coalescing into a putative independence army, today's TNI, became a law unto themselves.

Words don't really do justice to the brutality of recent downturn in Korean and Taiwanese exports.

These look a lot like charts of financial variables after a bubble bursts, not charts of the level of exports. That isn't good.

Looking just as the monthly data risks being misleading. There is a lot of seasonality in Taiwan's exports. They usually dip in February. It is a short month, it often corresponds with the Chinese new year and the data isn't seasonally adjusted. A small dip in December after the end of the Western holiday season also isn't unusual. But such a big dip in December is most unusual. Plotting the rolling 3m sum eliminates the big February dip. The current downturn is real.

Where there are soldiers, there are women who exist for them. This is practically a cliché. History is filled with examples of women as war booty and “camp followers,” their bodies being used for service labor of various kinds, including sex. Contrary to common assumptions in the West, prostitution is not “part of Asian culture.” Just about every culture under the sun has some version of it during times of war and times of peace.

In some ways, military prostitution (prostitution catering to, and sometimes organized by, the military) has been so commonplace that people rarely stop to think about how and why it is created, sustained, and incorporated into military life and warfare. Academic interest and analysis of this issue gained momentum only in the last twenty years and still remains scant and sporadic. Even as interest in women and gender as categories of analysis has increased in many academic disciplines, there is still a question of intellectual legitimacy, that is, whether prostitutes, prostitution, and sex work warrant serious scholarly attention and resources, especially for students of international politics. After all, it is a highly personal and therefore subjective matter and prone toward the proverbial he said/she said contestation. To boot, many have turned the feminist emphasis on women and agency on its head by glibly claiming that most military prostitutes sought out the work and life of their own free will and therefore are exercising their agency. In this view, it is primarily about women's personal decisions and responsibility to face the consequences; governments and other institutions of society need not be held accountable.