On 3 April 2013, the People's Daily published a commentary on the violent death of two protesting farmers in Henan, crushed in two separate incidents by vehicles used to clear their land for development. ‘Besides the open questions about the administrative violations,’ wrote the author, ‘there remain other things to be asked: has the expropriation followed the appropriate procedures? Is it legal to build a hotel or any permanent structure on basic agricultural land? And if there are problems, who is going to evaluate them, who is taking responsibility?’ For people to feel that they have obtained justice, the article argued, ‘the greatest efforts should be made to protect the life of every citizen’. These episodes were followed just a few days later by a major incident in which 300 employees of Bureau No.13 of the Ministry of Railways attacked farmers who were picketing land earmarked for expropriation.

Metropolitan Tokyo, the world's largest cityregion and site of the 2020 Olympics, lost its Governor (Inose Naoki) to a YEN 50 million political-donation scandal on December 19. Gubernatorial elections are set for February 9, with the official campaign period set to begin on January 23. There are at present three main candidates, one on the left (Utsunomiya Kenji), one on the far right (Tamogami Toshio) and one roughly in the centre (Masuzoe Yoichi). They may soon be joined by a powerful, potentially winning challenger stressing green power.

Yabuki Susumu, in a series of articles and talks, has rigorously mined the historical record of China (PRC/ROC)-Japan-US relations to illuminate the background to the dangerous conflict that presently threatens to bring war to the Western Pacific in the wake of Japanese nationalization of three of the Senkaku islands in September 2012. While other important issues add to the gravity of the conflict, including enlarged territorial claims by China, Japan and Korea in the form of advancing and defending competing claims to ADIZ in the East China and South China Seas, Yabuki shows the long trajectory of competing claims over the Senkaku dispute and the evolving policies of China, Japan and the United States in shaping it. Since so much of the international discussion of the issues has focused on China-Japan conflict, a particularly important contribution of the present paper is its clear presentation of US recognition at the highest levels of the significance of the competing territorial claims, and its maneuvering in negotiations with Taipei, Tokyo, and Beijing to shape the outcome.