The Japanese consider themselves a compassionate people when it comes to an animal's fate. Memorial stones have been erected in whaling villages since the early Edo Period, as they are today at slaughterhouses. Buddhist priests are hired to read the sutras before altars set with incense and piled with fruit to pray for the souls of animals killed for food.

These rituals are called ireisai or kanshasai. They testify to the deep sentiment of gratitude that Japanese people feel toward the animals that sustain them.

Well, they may feel gratitude to animals they kill—and the affection (and money) lavished on pets in this country is obvious everywhere in Japan—but are Japanese people conscious of cows, pigs and chickens as creatures deserving of humane treatment while alive?

It is commonly stated that the 1964 and 1988 Olympics were “turning points” for the integration of Japan and South Korea, respectively, into the global community. It was anticipated that the Beijing Olympics would be a “turning point” for China. Now that the Beijing Games are over, we can ask whether anything “turned,” and if so, in which direction? This essay deals with a central paradox of the Olympic Games – they reinforce nationalism and internationalism at the same time. A one-sided focus on nationalism, such as characterized much of the media coverage of the Beijing Olympics, can lead to the erroneous conclusion that the Olympic Games exacerbate rather than moderate political conflicts. Wishful thinking that the Beijing Games would be a turning point for human rights and democracy led to the conclusion by China watchers in the West that the Beijing Games were not the turning point that was hoped for. However, reflection on what actually “turned” in Japan and South Korea helps us to see what we should actually be looking for in the case of China. This retrospective suggests that the interplay between nationalism and internationalism was similar in all three Olympic Games, and offers a more optimistic prospect for China's peaceful integration into the international community.

The economic outlook in Japan is very grim, as these brief overviews (links below) indicate. Right now, Japan has the worst growth outlook in Asia. That is a surprising fact, if one recalls that this is a country presumably dusting itself off from the collapse of its own bubble nearly two decades ago. After such a long period of economic crisis, Japan should be renovated and ready to thrive. But instead, it may be in worse shape than even the US (though clearly not Iceland and much of Eastern Europe). Japanese financial institutions were not big players in the CDOs, CDSs and the other toxic assets that have ravaged the capital bases of banks in the US and much of Europe. Rather, Japan's key policy failure would appear to be over-reliance on exports as the engine of growth, while hoping that the fruits of this growth would trickle down into the rest of the economy and bolster demand. But in the rest of the economy, deregulation of labour and other markets had seen firms shifting to insecure employment (especially part-time and contractual staff) and rolling back pay, thus crimping the level of demand. And that weak domestic demand was of course blunting domestic-oriented businesses' incentives to invest (cf. export-oriented businesses' incentives to invest). With the startling 35% drop in exports in December 2008, it's as if someone kicked the chair away from a man who was standing on one to test out what it felt like to have a noose around his neck.

It is becoming clear that the bailout measures of late 2008 may have consequences at least as grave for an open society as the response to 9/11 in 2001. Many members of Congress felt coerced into voting against their inclinations, and the normal procedures for orderly consideration of a bill were dispensed with.

The excuse for bypassing normal legislative procedures was the existence of an emergency. But one of the most reprehensible features of the legislation, that it allowed Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to permit bailed-out institutions to use public money for exorbitant salaries and bonuses, was inserted by Paulson after the immediate crisis had passed.

Since the decades of authoritarian anticommunist rule ended in the late 1980s, and the geopolitical order of the cold war collapsed in the wider world shortly thereafter, there have been several important changes in the political life of South Koreans. One notable change is found in the domain of ritual life or, more specifically, in the activity of death commemoration and ancestor worship. In increasing numbers of communities across South Korea, people are now actively reshaping their communal ancestral rites into a more inclusive form, introducing demonstratively into the ritual domain the politically troubled memories of the dead, which were excluded from the public sphere under the state's militant anticommunist policies.

When the wastes of Qyzylqum and Karakum blossom in early spring, the enchanting sight can pain one's heart. But the killer deserts are deceptive in appearance, especially Qyzylqum, which is in the tract of land between the two great rivers in Central Asia - the Amu Darya and Sirdarya.

In the spring of 1220, when Genghis Khan abruptly rode out of the Qyzylqum with a few hundred Mongol horsemen to take the Amir of Bukhara by surprise, the Amir never imagined that the desert would so easily concede safe passage to a Mongol stranger. Bukhara - one of the biggest cities at that time along with Cordoba, Cairo and Baghdad - paid heavily for the desert's treachery. Bukhara took over two centuries to recover from “God's wrath”, which the austere Khan insisted he was administering to the slothful, opulent city for its sinful ways.

On September 15, 2007, Higashionna Takuma and Makishi Yoshikazu were en route from Okinawa, Japan to San Francisco for hearings in what had come to be known as the “dugong lawsuit,” scheduled to be held two days later in the US district court for the northern district of California. Higashionna, eco-tour guide, and Makishi, award-winning architect, both well-recognized environmental activists in Okinawa, Anxious and excited about the public hearing and eventual outcome of the lawsuit, Higashionna half-jokingly said, “Among the many environmental suits you have been associated with, this may be the most winnable. Because it is taking place in the US.” Smiling, Makishi responded, “You may be right. In the Japanese courts I lose, but I may win this case because it is taking place in the US.” “Democracy may be more mature in the US than in Japan.”

[The original Korean text is available here]

Lee Hae-young

On December 3, 2010 South Korea and the United States announced that they had reached agreement on a new KOREA-US FTA with comprise agreements on both automobiles and agriculture. The agreement may face difficult hurdles in the legislatures of both countries that must ratify it. This article examines the process and politics that led to the agreement.-U.S. Free Trade

After the launch of a three-stage rocket in April and the second nuclear test in May 2009 it seems less realistic than ever to think about opening and reform in North Korea. Inter-Korean relations are deteriorating almost daily. Hard-line orthodoxy has been returning to North Korea since late 2005 at an alarming pace as the country enters an era of socialist neoconservativism that emphasizes self-reliance and mass campaigns, cracks down on previously promoted market activities and stresses anti-imperialist struggle more fiercely than throughout most of the last decade.

Prime Minister Aso Taro's admission that his family company employed prisoner-of-war labor during the final months of World War II may one day be seen as a milestone in Japan's struggle to contend with its own national history. In response to persistent questioning by an opposition lawmaker on the floor of the national parliament on January 6, Aso acknowledged the truth of recent disclosures of POW work at the Aso Mining Company in 1945.

This is the first installment of Daniel Ellsberg's personal memoir of the nuclear era, “The American Doomsday Machine.” The online book will recount highlights of his six years of research and consulting for the Departments of Defense and State and the White House on issues of nuclear command and control, nuclear war planning and nuclear crises. It further draws on 34 subsequent years of research and activism largely on nuclear policy, which followed the intervening 11 years of his preoccupation with the Vietnam War. The author is a senior fellow of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. His earlier Building a Better Bomb: Reflections on the Atomic Bomb, the Hydrogen Bomb, and the Neutron Bomb is available here.

Mark J. Valencia and Nazery Khalid of the Maritime Institute of Malaysia write that the “vigilante” approach inherent in unilateral and multilateral initiatives to deal with piracy in the Gulf of Aden region has “provided an opportunity for naval powers to demonstrate their prowess, feel each other out, and establish the precedent of unilateral individual and group intervention in such situations.” Cooperative action amongst the littoral states of Southeast Asia has reduced piracy in that region: “the littoral states have invited co-operation from outside powers – as long as it on their terms and does not involve the independent use of armed force.” Valencia and Khalid conclude that “it is this strategy which must be pursued with increased vigour and vigilance if piracy and the new bogeyman of maritime terrorism are not to become internationally accepted excuses for foreign interventions.” Richard Tanter

The Japanese government announced on 15 December 2009 that it was postponing indefinitely any decision on the contentious issue of a “Replacement Facility” for the Futenma Marine base in Okinawa. The decision to make no decision was low-key and at first glance may seem inconsequential. Its symbolic importance, however, is huge, signalling a possible changing of the tide of history in East Asia, above all in the US-Japan relationship.

Take a look at a map of the world. The 40th parallel north runs just north of Morioka and Akita in Japan and stretches to Turkey – past Ankara – via the Central Asian city of Samarkand, Uzbekistan. Meanwhile, the 25th parallel north passes Okinawa Prefecture and goes through Karachi and Riyadh and south of Cairo. The 30th parallel east is seen west of Cairo and the 75th parallel east appears east of Islamabad.

How is it that today in the diverse, multi-ethnic polity of Malaysia (where government figures give a population breakdown of 65% Bumiputra, 26% Chinese and 8% Indian), a single ethnic group completely controls - and occupies virtually all positions in - the judiciary, public administrative organs, the police, the armed forces and increasingly the universities? While Malays constitute a majority of the population of this nation, their presence in all these spheres of power far exceeds their ratio within the general population. How did this situation emerge and how has it evolved?

Korean students secretly planned a rebellion in the 30th Division of the Japanese army based in Heijyo (now Pyongyang, in North Korea). Cheon Sanghwa, a staff officer, was a participant in the plan. He fought against Japan for an independent Korea. [2] By sabotaging the Japanese army from inside, he contributed to Japan's defeat in the Second World War. This was in 1944. Now eighty-seven years old, he lives in Seoul. This year is the 65th anniversary of Korean students departing for the front. These students, who were not subject to the normal draft, were forced to volunteer for the Japanese army. Wishing for the independence of their country from Japan, they must have felt conflicted over volunteering. This is “the verbatim record” of the life and death experiences of Cheon Sanghwa.

Genius recluse, über-perfectionist, lapsed Marxist, Luddite; like the legendary directors of Hollywood's Golden Age, Miyazaki Hayao's intimidating reputation is almost as famous as his movies. Mostly, though, Japan's undisputed animation king is known for shunning interviews. So it is remarkable to find him sitting opposite us in Studio Ghibli, the Tokyo animation house he co-founded in 1985, reluctantly bracing himself for the media onslaught that now accompanies each of his new projects.

Unquestionably, Singapore has economically thrived in the space created by its independent status as an island Republic. The Federation of Malaysia, from which Singapore was expelled in 1965, has also levered itself into the highest ranks of developing countries. Nevertheless, separation has not healed the wounds on either side of the boundary exposed by the failed merger (1963-1965). To be sure, atavisms from the past continue to feed Singapore's siege mentality, just as Singapore's astute political leadership reads lessons from a history of local radicalism, ethnic chauvinism, and international influences including the pull of global Islam and its influence upon local Muslim minorities. No less, in the official narrative, a sense of China-centeredness on the part of the majority population has survived the birth of the Republic and presents the contours of an enduring challenge around identity formation.

One of Japanese Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio's first public acts, in September, was to propose a 25% cut in the country's carbon dioxide emissions by 2020, relative to 1990 levels. This forthright declaration from Japan, long a laggard in dealing with climate change, captured world attention in the fraught lead-up to the December 7 to 12 Copenhagen meeting. The Obama people may yet fail to deliver, but unlike the Bushies they won't have a slavish Japan backing them up. Hatoyama's policy announcement has also earned the wrath of Japan's emissions-intensive industries, hitherto largely left to design their own voluntary agreements. They and their allies in the media and academe insist there is no hope for achieving such a cut without ruining the economy.

I think the Constitution of Japan is well formulated. The preamble starts out saying that we pledge perpetual peace: we are “resolved that never again shall we be visited with the horrors of war through the action of government.”

And, rather than defining peace just in this narrow sense, it goes on to say “all peoples of the world have the right to live in peace, free from fear and want.” This means that it advocates “the right to live in peace,” while apparently holding within this vision poverty and starvation, disaster and disease, or various kinds of gaps as factors leading to social disintegration and conflicts.