[The quality and elan of primary and secondary education have long been regarded as among the achievements of postwar Japan. Journalist Hiratate Hideaki uses the window of increasing teacher suicides to probe recent changes in education that have placed many of Japan's finest teachers on a collision course with their principles, supervisors, and ultimately the Japanese state. The author shows how a combination of the new nationalism, neo-liberal criteria for teacher assessment, and increased demands on teachers have brought about a situation in which large numbers of teachers are succumbing to mental illness, committing suicide, or taking early retirement. These articles appeared in the July 4 and August 29, 2003 issues of Shukan Kinyobi.]

The rebuilding of both a nuclear nonproliferation system and a framework for multilateral consultations in Asia toes the line of postwar Japanese foreign policy.

There is no denying that Japanese diplomacy is being tested by the threat of North Korea's nuclear weapons program. However, the problems of Japanese foreign policy lie not only outside Japan but also within.

Sixteen years ago, in 1987, Ui Jun left his post as an assistant in the engineering department at Tokyo University to go to Okinawa, then becoming an important new front in the anti-pollution struggle. With three of Japan's five most polluted rivers, and with the nation's worst water pollution, tropical Okinawa was simultaneously the crucible of American military bases, Japan's poorest prefecture and its most polluted. Ui's report is the summation of his sixteen years of teaching, research and working in the environmental movement on Okinawa.