In April 2011, U.S. veterans spoke out for the first time about sicknesses related to Agent Orange exposure on Okinawa during the Vietnam War era ( here ). Since then, dozens of retired service members have alleged that toxic herbicides were stored and sprayed on the island ( here ) - as well as buried in large volumes on Futenma Air Station ( here ) and, what is now, a popular tourist area in Chatan Town ( here ). Japanese former base workers have corroborated veterans’ accounts and photographs seem to show barrels of these herbicides on Okinawa. U.S. military documents cite the presence of Agent Orange there during the 1960s and ‘70s ( here and there ).

In March 2011 disaster struck the TEPCO Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. This incident compelled me to re-examine exactly how Japan became a nuclear energy giant, despite having suffered the consequences of nuclear weapons three times - the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Bikini Atoll hydrogen bomb test. I took a look back at the 1950s when nuclear power generation was first adopted and examined some of the records of the time.

A June 2 article in Bloomberg by the deservedly respected University of California at San Diego Professor of Japanese Business, Ulrike Schaede, makes the argument that Abenomics requires nuclear restarts in order to work. Professor Schaede presents an overview of Japan's present circumstances on energy, and concludes that “Japan has only one viable course of action: It cannot afford not to turn its nuclear-power plants back on.” In the present article, I suggest that Japan cannot restart its nuclear capacity in the time-frame suggested by Professor Schaede. And drawing on recent research by Japanese and American experts, I shall argue that Japan's best bet is in accelerating its efficiency and conservation programmes.

Tension in and around Okinawa rises. The Abe Shinzo government repeatedly assures Washington that the base it promises to construct for the US Marine Corps at Henoko in Northern Okinawa will proceed, come what may. The process of construction of a massive new military facility on a region that is at Okinawan law reserved for the very highest level of protection for its rich biodiversity is described in joint US-Japan communiques as “commitment to reducing the base hosting impact on Okinawa.” In plain English, this means that Henoko construction has been made a condition for the return of the existing Futenma Marine Air Station in Ginowan City, upon whom, as a result, the “burden” would be lessened. Yet from 1996 to today, Okinawa has consistently and effectively resisted all such attempts.

As I was researching Nineteen Eighty-four in Chinese, I wondered whether Orwell ever wrote about China. His interest in India, where he was born in 1903, is well known, and he served in the Burma Police after leaving school and before becoming a writer, but my guess was that China didn’t concern him greatly. But when I went to the British Library to check in his massive, 20-volume Complete Works [CW], I was surprised to discover that he wrote quite a lot about China and its fate under Japanese occupation, in particular when he was working for the BBC's Eastern Service during World War II.

On June 10, 2014, the Article 9 Association marks its tenth anniversary, more than ever embattled and determined. As illustrated by Alexis Dudden’s recent article on this site, “The Nomination of Article 9 of Japan's Constitution for a Nobel Peace Prize,” business people figure in the broad swath of “Japanese people who conserve Article 9” recognized as worthy of consideration for the Peace Prize by the Norwegian Nobel Committee. Shinagawa Masaji, the subject of this memorial tribute by prominent modern literature scholar and executive secretary of the Article 9 Association Komori Yoichi, was surely the dean of progressive financial leaders of the postwar era. English-language readers who follow Japan are likely to be aware of the political clout of Keidanren (Japan Business Federation), which not so incidentally supports Constitutional revision. Miho Matsugu's generously annotated translation* of Komori's tribute to Shinagawa following his death in August of 2013 provides a glimpse of an association, Keizai Doyukai, or Japan Association of Corporate Executives, that has often projected a contrasting sense of mission. Given the neo-liberal furor reigning over the ever bellicose US and its client state Japan (to borrow Gavan McCormack’s designation, as in “Japan’s Client State (Zokkoku) Problem”), we are right to be painfully aware of the limited capacity of capitalism to benefit all human beings-not to mention our home the earth. It is all the more refreshing, then, to learn not only about Shinagawa's commitment to the “no-war clause” but also his years of union activism and espousal of “revisionist capitalism.” His example prompts wide-ranging comparison, whether to Nordic models (see the intriguing comparison recently published on this site of Sweden and Japan's policies in the face of financial crisis) or in another era of US capitalism, Henry Ford's brand of investment in anti-union employee well-being and espousal of pacifism, albeit a pacifism fundamentally flawed by anti-Semitism.

In April 2014 Prime Minister Abe unveiled Japan's new national energy strategy, reinstating nuclear energy as a key source of energy even as the shambolic cleanup and decommissioning at the Fukushima Daiichi lurches from one blunder to the next malfunction, and radiation contaminated groundwater flows into the ocean. This is a major milestone in the comeback of nuclear energy despite a seemingly endless cascade of damning revelations about lax safety practices and perfunctory oversight since the three reactor meltdowns in March 2011. As a result, 2014 may be Japan's last nuclear free summer for the next few decades as pressure is mounting to restart some of Japan's 48 idled reactors.