On 14 October 2004, a suit filed by 45 plaintiffs against the Japanese state and Kumamoto prefecture was successful in the Supreme Court in Osaka. The case concerned the mass poisoning almost half a century ago of residents of the town of Minamata in Western Japan, when mercury contained in effluent from the Chisso Corporation's factory contaminated the Shiranui Sea and then accumulated in the bodies of those who ate its fish and shellfish. The Supreme Court found the national and prefectural government authorities responsible for administrative malfeasance. The status of the plaintiffs as Minamata sufferers, till then persistently denied by the authorities, was upheld, and compensation was ordered. This was an action launched in 1982, preceded by a long and anguished course on the path of the plaintiffs, and in the twenty-two years that has passed since the suit was launched twenty-three of the fifty-nine died (the bereaved families of fifteen of them persisting in the action), and the average age of the survivors came to be over seventy. The authorities, responsible for protecting the rights and health of the people, had caused these citizens continuous pain by denying them their just rights.

In two communities in Nagano Prefecture an increasing number of citizens are complaining of swollen lymph glands and muscle pain, and at the same time deformities are appearing in plants. The causes have not been clarified, but some people suspect that the electromagnetic waves from mobile phone base stations may be a factor.

Upon his arrival at Seoul's Incheon airport in September 2003, Song Du Yol, professor of philosophy and sociology at Germany's Munster University, was arrested and indicted for offences under South Korea's National Security Law. Prosecutors demanded a fifteen-year sentence. In March 2004 he was found guilty and sentenced to seven years in prison. On appeal, this was reduced to three years, suspended for five years, and on 21 July 2004 he was released. Though now free, he is still not completely free from the web of the National Security Law, and a final “not guilty” verdict still lies somewhere in the future.

Japan's 1930s Manchukuo project concentrated the idealism, imagination, and energy of a generation of Japanese intellectuals who wanted a better world. Today, the ideal in whose name Manchukuo was founded remains to be accomplished and again compels attention: how to construct a peaceful, just, cooperative order in East Asia, especially among the three regions of China, Korea and Japan.

Eight months have passed since the Japanese Self-Defense Forces have been deployed in Samawa. Contrary to the Japanese government's intentions, discontent with the performance of the Self-Defense Forces among the citizens of Samawa has rapidly increased. This is a report of the local situation.

The Necessity to Reorganize the Security in a large conference room on the twenty-second floor of the Environment Ministry, Minister Koike Yuriko bowed deeply to the plaintiffs and supporters of the Kansai Minamata Disease Suit. “I am very sorry,” she said and left the room.

In 1945, J. Robert Oppenheimer declared, “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds,” after he witnessed the first nuclear explosion under the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos National Laboratory. His statement, a line from the Bhagavad-Gita, displayed his own apprehensions with helping to create weapons capable of overwhelming destruction Almost 60 years later, Los Alamos, located in northern New Mexico, once again stands at a major crossroads in nuclear weapons development, but this time around lab officials do not openly harbor the same reservations as Oppenheimer. In fact, Los Alamos, in its own entrenched institutional interest, has been driving drastic changes in national nuclear weapons policy. Now that Bush has been reelected and Congress has drifted farther right, these troublesome developments are sure to continue.

A fighter of the former Japanese navy is on display on the first floor of the Yushukan war memorial museum at Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo. It is a Mitsubishi Zero-type shipboard fighter model 52, one of the Zero fighters. The plane can also be viewed from the outside through a glass wall.

As signs of life slowly return to the long- comatose Middle East peace process, Japan is working hard to contribute to regional stability. Victory by Mahmoud Abbas, the moderate chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, in the Palestinian presidential election was warmly greeted by Tokyo. Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro promised, “Japan will work actively to support the Palestinian Authority's efforts at peace.” Koizumi is keen to heighten Japan's regional profile as part of its efforts to gain a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. Foreign Minister Machimura Nobutaka is slated to go to the region for talks with Abbas. Japan also immediately pledged to extend an additional US$60 million in financial and humanitarian aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA). Tokyo is already the highest contributor to the PA and it is estimated that this latest package will bring the total amount of its financial assistance to the PA to about US$90 million in fiscal 2004, easily doubling its figure for 2003.

[This article discusses the Japanese political landscape in the wake of the important House of Councillors election held on 11 July 2004, and the prospects for the emergence of a new political formation.

In the July election, half the seats in Japan's Upper House were contested. The absolute number of seats was less than last time, however, because of the completion of a two-phase program that cut 10 seats from the House. This reduced the total to 242. Of these, 96 were decided by a system of proportional representation, while 146 were elected from 47 prefectural constituencies.

Half a century ago, General Douglas MacArthur, proconsul in the US occupation, was acclaimed as a benevolent liberator even while patronizing the Japanese people, whom he described soon after leaving Japan as “12-year old children.” Today, proconsuls from Washington fly regularly in to Tokyo to inspect and instruct, as if Japan were a peripheral dependency, even though its economy now is roughly equal in scale to those of Germany, France and Britain combined. Japan's leadership basks in the glow of such patronage, seemingly satisfied with the role of satrap, for all the world like the one-time leaders of East European satellite states in the Soviet empire.