Neo-nationalists forced the cancellation of the theatrical launch of a Chinese-directed movie about Japan's controversial war memorial Yasukuni in early April, 2008. In the weeks that followed, the incident became a cause célèbre, with some 30 film, media, and civil liberties organizations issuing declarations of protest. A number of theaters throughout Japan signed on to screen the film, and its Tokyo premiere was scheduled for May 3.

In the last week of 2007, Japanese Prime Minister Fukuda Yasuo made an official visit to China. The tone of the trip was set by positive rhetoric on both sides and at one point, Fukuda expressed his conviction that now “Bilateral ties have become increasingly complementary, and one cannot do without the other.” Fukuda is working under the assumption that closer Sino-Japanese relations are a key to the future of Japan and East Asia. This article shares that view. As Slavoj Zizek and other contemporary philosophers have noted, imagination has an important impact on political realities. To build a progressive international relationship, the future of that relationship must first be imagined, diverse visions contested, and concrete strategies for a way forward defined. Given the extraordinary degree of economic connectiveness between Japan and China and the seeming ability of both markets to complement the strengths of the other within an expansive regional economy, there are compelling incentives When Koizumi stepped down in September 2006, his successor, Abe Shinzo, quickly chose to visit China in early October. That trip was reciprocated in the following April when Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao went to Japan. Fukuda's trip to China in late 2007 extends the constructive diplomatic chapter inaugurated by Abe.

April 9, 2008 marks the 66th anniversary of the fall of Bataan which resulted in the largest surrender by the United States Army in its history. Over 77,000 American and Filipino troops were to become victims of one of the most brutal episodes in the Pacific War—the Bataan Death March.

On March 28, 2008, the Osaka District Court dismissed a lawsuit against Nobel Prize-winning author Oe Kenzaburo and his publisher for publishing accounts of the Japanese military ordering “group suicides” of civilians during the Battle of Okinawa. The plaintiffs, a former garrison commander and the brother of a late former commander, had claimed the descriptions in Oe's Okinawa Notes (Okinawa Noto, Iwanami Shoten, 1970) and in the late Ienaga Saburo's The Pacific War (Taiheiyo Senso, Iwanami Shoten, 1968; translation, Pantheon, 1978) were defamatory.

Here it goes again. Uncles with harsh oversmoked voices from Indonesia's House of Representatives - that is synonymous with corruption and laziness – droning on about morality and about “how to protect the nation” from the ills of pornography. This time they have succeeded. While the nation was off guard, distracted by soaring food prices, a collapsing road system and general hopelessness, the House of Representatives on March 25th 2008 passed a bill banning all pornographic websites, threatening to jail users and providers who will now face up to three years in prison or a substantial fine. To be sure, Indonesia is still “softer” than Saudi Arabia, but the new bill is as tough or even tougher than anti-pornography laws in many other Muslim countries. What are the nation's priorities?

From a Western-centric point of view, the United States and its allies are pushing Iran into a corner.

When I first read Inoue Hisashi's novel My Friend Frois in “All Yomimono” magazine some 25 years ago, I was immediately taken with its importance as a recreation of Japanese history. As always with Inoue's work, what also struck me was his erudition, insight and wit.

On 23 June 2006 the UN proudly launched its Peacebuilding Commission (PBC) seeking to reverse a situation where international efforts to rebuild war-torn societies had, more often than not, failed. In the words of its charter, the PBC will “marshal resources at the disposal of the international community to advise and propose integrated strategies for post-conflict recovery, focusing attention upon reconstruction, institution-building, and sustainable development in countries emerging from conflict.” As an advisory body made up of 31 member countries including four permanent members of the Security Council, and currently chaired by Japan, the PBC purports to offer tailor-made solutions to target countries making the transition from war to peace.

Among the many false assumptions around North Korea is the claim that this country and its leadership are not predictable. The opposite is true; North Korea has one of the most predictable regimes on earth. Speculations about the future are an extension of the past. The bigger the knowledge base of past experiences is, the easier such an extrapolation becomes. As a byproduct of the totalitarian system, political leadership in North Korea exhibited enormous stability and continuity. In fact, since 1948 it had only two leaders, both from the same family, the same party, and operating under the same agenda. We had six decades to study that system and its behavior. Compare this to the ten very different leaders of South Korea with their shifting agendas.

The controversies that continue to swirl around the Nanjing Massacre, the military comfort women, Unit 731 and other Japanese military atrocities rooted in colonialism and the Asia Pacific War are critical not only to understanding the dynamics of war, peace, and terror in the long twentieth century. They are also vital for understanding war memory and denial, with implications for peace and regional accommodation in the Asia Pacific region and the US-Japan relationship.

“Many people asked me what happened to me in Vietnam to make my eyes open to the horrors of war. Many things happened. … But I'd like to share with you one thing that changed my life forever.

Mario Katosang, Palau's minister of education, is no stranger to foreign travel. His ministry forged close cooperation with Japan. He is also regularly flown to Taipei and his ministry received a total amount of $1 million in 2006 and 2007 for infrastructure improvements to government-run schools. The government of Taiwan gives generous scholarships to the students of Palau and recently it began supplying the small Pacific Island nation's schools with brand new PCs.

The big media-related news story on April 1 was the ongoing controversy over the documentary feature “Yasukuni,” screenings of which had been canceled by a number of movie theaters in Tokyo and Osaka out of fear of rightwing protests. That night, NHK's regular 7 p.m. news bulletin did not mention the film, but it did feature a report on the public broadcaster's reply to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications that it would “accept” the government's request for NHK to promote Japan's “national interests” in its overseas broadcasts.

The demolition of a French empire at Dien Bien Phu is inspiration to a Taliban aiming to erode the resolve of the United States and its allies, writes Paul Rogers.

There have been many suggestions among media and military analysts since 2003 of possible parallels between the war in Iraq and the United States imbroglio in Vietnam that ended so humiliatingly in 1975. The argument is most prominently made by critics of both wars, though it has also been articulated by defence analysts and officials concerned that the US learns the “right” lessons from its costly Vietnam experience.

I would like to provide some context for the article “Patients Adrift: The Elderly and Japan's Life-Threatening Health Reforms” by Hiratate Hideaki, recently translated from Shukan Kinyobi for publication in Japan Focus. Japan has a long and honorable tradition of muckraking reporting on its medical care system. To illustrate that point with a personal anecdote: My colleague Naoki Ikegami and I published a book about a decade ago called Japan's Medical Care (Nihon no Iryou, Chuuou Kouron Shinsho) itself a translation of a book we published in English called The Art of Balance in Health Policy: Maintaining Japan's Low-Cost, Egalitarian System (Cambridge University Press). Although it pointed out quite a few problems, the overall tone of our book was as positive as the English title indicates. Many Japanese readers told us it was the first time they had ever read anything good about their own medical care system. They were used to reading magazine articles and books full of pitiful anecdotes and unrelenting criticism.

For nearly half a century, Ishimure Michiko (b. 1927) has been an important voice in Japanese environmental literature. She first came to national attention as a result of her writings on the ongoing environmental disaster of Minamata Disease. Caused by the methyl mercury and other poisonous industrial wastes dumped by the Chisso Corporation into the harbor at the town of Minamata, the debilitating neurological syndrome first began appearing in the mid 1950s, but won widespread attention only in the 1960s, thanks to the efforts of local residents and activists. Ishimure's 1969 book Kugai jÅ do: Waga MinamatabyÅ (available in English translation by Livia Monnet as Paradise in the Sea of Sorrow: Our Minamata Disease) played a major role in alerting the public to the disaster and its horrific consequences. An intricately constructed jeremiad, the work weaves together narratives of Ishimure's personal encounters with victims of the disease, quotations from scientific reports, poetic evocations of landscape, and folkloric reconstructions of a local culture devastated by industrial modernity. Ishimure would continue to write additional installments of Kugai jÅ do, and in 2004 the work was finally published in its completed form as a trilogy. In addition to her non-fiction prose, Ishimure's poetry and fiction have also won acclaim, including her 1997 novel, Tenko (forthcoming in English translation by Bruce Allen as Lake of Heaven). MB

A source of serious interstate tension between some members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and China for much of the 1990s, territorial disputes in the South China Sea became less contentious in the early 2000s: A less assertive stance by China being a critical component in Beijing's Southeast Asian “smile diplomacy,” a diplomatic offensive designed to assuage the ASEAN countries' security concerns vis-à-vis a rising China. Recent controversies, however, have underscored the seemingly intractable nature of the dispute and the continued sensitivity over sovereignty issues, particularly between the main protagonists: Vietnam, China, and the Philippines. In the first part of a two-part series, this article examines the impact of the dispute on Vietnam's relations with the PRC.