During the six months of World Expo 2010, Shanghai looked exceptionally clean, even spectacular, thanks to the city's face-lifting projects and a moratorium on construction and factory emissions for the Expo period. After two decades of relentless rebuilding, Shanghai's cityscape is dominated by clusters of sleek but soulless high-rises, while the city's major streets accommodate a mix of native and expatriate residents. In contrast to this uninspiring International-style architecture and the city's heterogeneous street crowds, the Expo site displayed an array of stunning architectural spectacles for the relatively homogenous crowds of predominantly domestic visitors.

This article by Softbank CEO Son Masayoshi outlines the thinking of one of Japan's most innovative capitalists and public-spirited citizens. Having helped create a competitive market in telecommunications, Son is now aimed at liberating and greening Japan's YEN 16 trillion electricity industry. In addition to the efforts he outlines in the article, Son inaugurated his Japan Renewable Energy Foundation on September 12. This Foundation is to be led by Tomas Kaberger, the former Director General of the Swedish Energy Agency. It includes a stellar cast of international experts on renewable energy, associated support policies (especially the feed in tariff), and other aspects of the ongoing energy revolution. Through these initiatives and the plan for a “solar belt,” described in this article, Son has been instrumental in defining a new direction for Japan in the wake of Fukushima. Without Son putting renewable energy so squarely and credibly on the public agenda, Japan might have succumbed to the enormous pressure from Keidanren, METI, TEPCO and other elements of the nuclear village to maintain the unsustainable status quo.

This article profiles the extraordinary story of two generations of Japanese and Japanese American artists—graphic artists, and a TV actor and theatre producer—in Japan and the United States across the divide of World War II. It offers observations on activism and opportunity through profiles both of success and the limits of Japanese integration on the American screen in Hollywood and TV.