As the Japanese government moves to beef up the country's military preparedness, once again the issue of the protection of foreigners’ rights has been raised.

Observers of early twenty-first-century Japan commonly note economic, political, and social crisis, on the one hand, and pessimism, lethargy, or helplessness about the possibility of reform, on the other. Yet Japan's civil society was idealistic and energetic in the early postwar decades. What happened? The reform movement that captured much of the vitality of the early postwar decades was either foreclosed, as many were co-opted in the “all- for-growth” economism, consumerism, and the corporation, or crushed in successive waves of repression of dissidence as the cold war order took shape. Political parties sacrificed broad vision and ideals to narrow-interest articulation. While the mass base of the reform movement was discouraged, demoralized, and depoliticized, one minority in the late 1960s turned to violent revolution and another in the late 1980s turned inward to seek spiritual satisfaction. Both paths led to violence. This article looks at the course of the student movement between the late 1940s and the late 1970s, with particular reference to the Japan Red Army, and at the new religious movement Aum Supreme Truth in the 1980s and 1990s. Both adopted “terrorist” tactics, by almost any understanding of that term. However, they were children of their times, reflecting the same deep social, political, and moral problems that Japan as a whole continues to face in the early twenty-first century.

When a 12-year-old Okinawan schoolgirl was raped by three U.S. soldiers in the autumn of 1995, I was governor of Okinawa Prefecture. In my address to the people of Okinawa, I said, “I apologize to you all for failing to protect the girl's human rights and dignity.”

This article explores the relationship between rural villages and Japan's colonies during the wartime period, with particular reference to the emigration of Japanese farmers to Manchuria (Manchukuo). My aim is to identify some of the key characteristics of Japanese emigration during this period and to reveal some of the distinctive features of the Manchurian case. I will focus mainly on Yamato Village in Yamagata Prefecture. The prefecture itself ranked second in the nation as a source of emigrants to Manchuria, and with Ohinata Village in Nagano Prefecture and Nango Village in Miyagi Prefecture it was one of the top three villages in all Japan in terms of the total number of emigrants produced.

The 1990s and early 2000s have been difficult years for many farmers in many parts of the developed world. Their incomes have fallen sharply, and may well fall further as the subsidies designed to boost food production in the aftermath of the Second World War are progressively withdrawn and agriculture is increasingly exposed to unfettered market forces in the national, regional and global arena. Their intensive, industrialized production methods, celebrated in the recent past, are now the targets of criticism on both environmental and food-safety grounds. Theirs is a steadily aging population, as their children vote with their feet and move to urban areas to take up ‘jobs with a future.’ Young men who do opt for farming find it increasingly difficult to find young women willing to marry them, even in some parts of the United States (New York Times 6 May 1999; see also Country Living August 1999 for a response to the bride shortage in rural England). There has been severe population decline in some rural areas, and an influx of former city dwellers in search of the rural idyll in others, who then object to the noises and odors of the farming that still takes place nearby. Protesting farmers have become a familiar sight on the nightly television news. Less visible, but certainly no less significant, is the rising suicide rate among farmers in at least some countries. A debate about the future of farming and of food - in some instances, about the rural landscape itself - appears to have begun among politicians and policymakers, farmers and farmers’ organizations, and consumers and consumer lobbying groups in virtually every OECD country. What the outcome of those debates will be remains to be seen, but it is likely that another great era of change for farmers and farming, comparable to the sea changes of the early postwar era, is in the offing.

In June this year I had the opportunity to visit the inside of the Imperial Palace in Tokyo when I covered the official visit to Japan of Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern as a correspondent for the Irish Times newspaper.

On a sunny morning, I arrived with a small party of photographers and journalists inside the Palace ground, set in 300 sprawling acres of greenery in the very heart of Tokyo, much of it off limits to the public that pays for it. We were met by a kunaicho (Imperial Household Agency) official, a superbly unpleasant and sniffy bureaucrat, who did not feel the need to smile or even greet us in the usual formal Japanese way. He immediately raised a fuss over the dress code of an RTE (Irish television) cameraman, sparking a mad scramble for a jacket before our 11 am deadline to meet the Emperor.

The sentencing of Matsumoto Chizuo (Asahara Shoko) to death on February 27, 2004 marked nearly nine years since members of Aum Shinrikyo carried out an attack with sarin gas on subway lines in Tokyo on March 20, 1995. Asked to write an opinion piece for the Japanese edition of Newsweek that appeared two days before the sentencing, I chose to focus on how the notions of victims and victimizers have structured efforts to understand and come to terms with the Aum Affair.

What is the future of the competition to control the market in commercial aircraft between Boeing and the European Airbus? Does Japan have a role to play in the new generation of aircraft? While Boeing dominated commercial aircraft sales through the 1980s, in the 1990s it has fallen behind Airbus. As Tanaka Sakai shows, the stakes for the U.S., Europe and Japan are high, and the outcomes may deeply affect the ability of Japan and Asia to emerge as a major industrial powerhouse in the decades ahead. Tanaka Sakai, an investigative reporter, publishes the Japanese language weblog http://www.tanakanews.com. His report on Boeing and Japan appeared in the December 31, 2003 issue of Tanakanews. Developments since the publication of this article suggest that Boeing, and the Boeing-Japanese connection are central to a new lease on life for the beleagured company and industry. As the April 18 Asahi Shimbun reported,, Boeing announced the sale of 50 7E7s to Japan's ANA, valuing the sale at $6 billion and giving the airline confidence in moving the plane into production. Of particular interest is the fine print: Three Japanese enterprises, Mitsubishi, Kawasaki and Fuji Heavy Industries will provide 35% of the production of the new plane, centered on the construction of the wings, as well as providing a heavy share of the financing. Is this the way forward for Japan's lagging aircraft industry, or does it seal anew Japanese dependence on American aircraft production, with the U.S. maintaining monopoly control over the engine production? Tanaka suggests another possible scenario: Japanese-Chinese-Korean cooperation at the center of a future Asian regional design. But such a possibility will require major developments within Asian regionalism.

On 12 April, 1996, Japanese Prime Minister Hashimoto Ryutaro and US ambassador to Japan Walter Mondale announced agreement upon the return of the US Futenma Marine Corps Air Station facilities, situated in the city of Ginowan in Okinawa prefecture, to Japan within five to seven years. This surprise declaration was the jewel in the crown of the two governments attempts to quell the surge of anti-US base sentiment that had swept the island prefecture since the rape of an Okinawan schoolgirl by three US soldiers the previous year. It came just days prior to the arrival of then US President Clinton to Japan and the reaffirmation of the US-Japan Security Treaty.

Which country should the islands called Diaoyu by the Chinese and Senkaku by the Japanese belong to, China or Japan? Currently, these islands are under Japanese control, but China also claims sovereignty over them. When signing the 1978 Sino-Japanese Treaty of Peace and Friendship, then Vice-Premier Deng Xiaoping said: “Our generation is not wise enough to find common language on this [Diaoyu/Senkaku] question. The next generation will certainly be wiser. They will surely find a solution acceptable to all.”