[Tsuneishi Keiichi of Kanagawa University had already been unearthing secrets about Japan's biological warfare (BW) program for a quarter century when he made a vital discovery about Unit 731 in summer 2005. The two memoranda he discovered from July 1947 were written by Brig. Gen. Charles Willoughby, head of GHQ's intelligence unit during the American Occupation, and found in the U.S. National Archives. The documents shed new light on GHQ's carrot-and-stick method of obtaining BW data at the outset of the Cold War as the arms race against the Soviet Union heated up. The Americans offered the Japanese scientists far more carrots—in the form of cash payments and other rewards as well as immunity from prosecution—than was previously understood.

[For the government of Japan to act deliberately in defiance of international agreement, and to devote considerable diplomatic effort to securing the revision of that agreement by pressure, including the use of substantial financial inducements, on small countries, means that there has to be a substantial issue at stake.

It can hardly be science, since virtually no one accepts the claim that scientific purpose warrants the annual killing of over 900 whales. It can hardly be economic, since although the meat of the captured animals is widely sold, the revenue to the Japanese government is trivial and most likely outweighed by the costs. It can hardly be culture and tradition, since Japanese traditional culture, strongly Buddhist influenced, deplored the killing and consumption of animals and the practise was confined to a few, relatively remote villages. So, if scientific, economic and cultural rationale isruled out, what can the reason be?

Speaking on May 4, 1902, at the newly opened Arlington Cemetery, in the first Memorial Day address there by a U.S. president, Theodore Roosevelt placed colonial violence at the heart of American nation building. In a speech before an estimated thirty thousand people, brimming with “indignation in every word and every gesture,” Roosevelt inaugurated the cemetery as a landscape of national sacrifice by justifying an ongoing colonial war in the Philippines, where brutalities by U.S. troops had led to widespread debate in the United States. He did so by casting the conflict as a race war. Upon this “small but peculiarly trying and difficult war” turned “not only the honor of the flag” but “the triumph of civilization over forces which stand for the black chaos of savagery and barbarism.” Roosevelt acknowledged and expressed regret for U.S. abuses but claimed that for every American atrocity, “a very cruel and very treacherous enemy” had committed “a hundred acts of far greater atrocity.” Furthermore, while such means had been the Filipinos’ “only method of carrying on the war,” they had been “wholly exceptional on our part.” The noble, universal ends of a war for civilization justified its often unsavory means. “The warfare that has extended the boundaries of civilization at the expense of barbarism and savagery has been for centuries one of the most potent factors in the progress of humanity,” he asserted, but “from its very nature it has always and everywhere been liable to dark abuses.”

[This is an updated report on the attempt to secure redress for Chinese wartime forced labor following the March 29 verdict issued by the Fukuoka District Court.]

Chinese forced laborers have been waiting for a verdict for sixty years. They received it on March 29. The Fukuoka District Court judge announced the ruling-all claims rejected—and left the packed courtroom in less than one minute. Forty-five Chinese survivors of forced labor in wartime Japan, ranging in age from 74 to 91, had been seeking individual compensation of around $200,000 and a published apology from the Japanese government, Mitsubishi Materials Corp. and Mitsui Mining Corp.

TOKYO - Energy-hungry Japan is revving up its drive to secure uranium abroad as global demand for nuclear power rises amid stubbornly high oil and gas prices and growing environmental concerns. Major Japanese trading and energy firms are looking at multibillion yen investments in uranium mine projects, with electronics conglomerate Toshiba in February purchasing Westinghouse, the US power plant arm of British Nuclear Fuels, for about US$5.4 billion. Meanwhile, the government, which attaches great importance to nuclear power as a key to ensuring national energy security, is also considering assistance to help domestic firms in the intensifying global competition for fuel at nuclear power plants. Among those measures are financial aid and more investment-insurance coverage by government-affiliated organizations. Japan is already the world's third-largest nuclear power nation in terms of the number of civilian nuclear plants in operation. Uranium prices are climbing as energy-hungry China and India are stepping up construction of nuclear power plants to fuel their high-flying economies, while some industrialized countries, including the US and Britain, are moving to build new nuclear power plants after many years of suspension following nuclear accidents at Three Mile Island in the US in 1979 and Chernobyl in Ukraine in 1986. Nuclear power generation has begun to come under the spotlight again due to growing environmental concerns as well as the high prices for oil and gas. Nuclear power plants generate much less carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas widely blamed for global warming, than coal-fired facilities. Renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power generation are not available in sufficient amounts - and at affordable prices.

For centuries a backwater of Portuguese colonialism at the eastern end of the Indonesian archipelago, East Timor should have won its independence on 28 November 1975 when the majority FRETILIN party declared independence. Days later, ahead of a Portuguese withdrawal, Indonesian forces advancing from Indonesian West Timor invaded and occupied the half-island nation. Declassified documents reveal that, fearful of the emergence of a “Southeast Asian Cuba,” the US Ford Administration abetted the invasion, just as the US emerged as the largest arms supplier to the pro-Western government of General Suharto. Nevertheless, the United Nations never recognized the illegal Indonesian invasion and FRETILIN and supporters, including East Timor's former colonial overlord, Portugal, waged a successful diplomatic struggle to re-engage the decolonization/independence question.

The nuclear test by the DPRK has led to a predictable deluge of hype and hypocrisy, amidst a dearth of informed and sensible comment. Politicians, and journalists, have reveled in the situation. North Korea is a convenient whipping boy, with few friends. It tends to be excoriated across the political spectrum. Since it is a small country targeted by the world's superpower, which, though hemorrhaging and perhaps in relative decline, still possesses such formidable political, economic and military power that no country, or international civil servant for that matter, dares openly speak up, even if they so desired. Politicians have hastened to express moral outrage even if, and perhaps especially if, they come from countries which have many nuclear weapons and have conducted tests. Journalists have been having a field day, many delighting in the opportunity to write lurid stories unencumbered by the need to check facts and qualify opinions. Under the circumstances, it is more necessary than ever before to keep a clear head and try to disentangle fact from fantasy, to unearth what has been going on, and what is likely to happen.

[The following dialogue reads rather like the classic dispute between the Pacifist and the Realist (“To protect the peace, prepare for war”; “But one mustn't …”) carried to a higher level. But quantity becomes quality: when you are talking about nuclear weapons, the conversation is no longer the same as when you are talking about swords or even firearms. This is what Emmanuel Todd doesn't seem to grasp, while Yoshibumi Takamiya (at least partly) does.

Major trends that are gradually changing the fortunes of nations and reshaping world history are not easy to identify. There are three key reasons for this. First, many important trends unfold so insidiously that they are recognized only ex post once the developments reach a breaking point and a long-term trend ends in a stunning discontinuity. Second, we cannot foresee which trends will become so embedded as to be seemingly immune to external forces and which ones will suddenly veer away from predictable lines. Third, what follows afterward is often equally unpredictable: the beginning of a new long-lasting trend or a prolonged oscillation, a further intensification or an irreversible weakening.

[China and East Asia are experiencing a harbour construction boom as the region gains a position of ascendance in global trade. Nazery Khalid - Research Fellow, Center for Economic Studies and Ocean Industries. Maritime Institute of Malaysia - reports that 7 of the world's 20 busiest terminals are in China. The port to watch is Shanghai, which is poised to overtake its main rivals (Hong Kong and Singapore). In 2005, Shanghai handled 443 million tons of cargo in total and 18.09 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) of containers, an increase of 24.2 percent compared with the previous year (Hong Kong handled 23.2 million TEUs and Singapore 22.43 TEUs). The Shanghai region is expected to handle 35 million TEUs of container traffic by 2010. This is because the port of Ningbo will continue its own frenetic expansion of capacity as well as install the world's longest bridge (the US$ 1.4 billion Hangzhou Bay Bridge) to cut the travel time to Shanghai to two hours. In addition, Shanghai is adding a deepwater facility in nearby Yangshan and working out deals with other North China ports to provide international service for them.

TOKYO - Japanese businesses are on an investment spree of greenhouse-gas reduction projects abroad, especially in Asia, as the nation is in hot water over its target for slashing emissions of such gases under the Kyoto Protocol on global warming.

The “credits” these firms earn in return for gas reduction investments in developing countries can be counted as cuts in their own emissions - and in turn, for Japan - under a system called the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), one of three Kyoto mechanisms introduced under the protocol to help industrialized countries meet their reduction targets. Developing nations that take part can receive technology transfers from their industrialized partners.

Hikikomori is a Japanese term that, like sushi and sake, or more to the point, hibakusha, has entered the world lexicon. It refers both to the phenomenon and the individuals who suffer from “acute social withdrawal,” defined by the Japanese government as youths who isolate themselves in a single room of their parents’ home for six months or more. Estimates of the number of hikikomori vary widely, from several hundred thousand to over a million, but there is no denying that it is a major, and growing, problem confronting contemporary Japanese society. Most of the hikikomori are teenagers, eighty percent of them male, who often begin by refusing to go to school and then cut themselves off from social interaction entirely.

The Straits of Malacca is one of the world's busiest and most important shipping lanes. It is a vital artery linking the region's economy with the rest of the world. Carrying a third of world trade and half of its oil supplies, security in the Straits is a concern of everyone with a stake in the waterway. Located in one of the world's most vibrant economic growth areas, the Straits is a pivotal link in international trade and transportation. It is therefore not surprising that security in the Straits is a matter of grave concern among the littoral states and internationally.

This article offers an holistic perspective on security in the Straits of Malacca. It attempts to counter the tendency by some analysts to view security in the Straits from the restrictive lens of piracy and terrorism, two issues which have dominated discourse on the subject of late. It lays out the extent of the challenges faced by the littoral states in managing security in the Straits and advocates a comprehensive approach in carrying out the task.

[Australia's John Howard is drumming up more army battalions for future crises in the South Pacific. But as Hamish McDonald reports, this is addressing only the symptoms of the malaise in countries like Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu, the result of populations abandoned halfway between tribal custom and the global economy.]

The Pacific Project exposed U.S. sailors to biowarfare and chemical agents. Forty years later, some of these sickened warriors are still ‘lost’ at sea.

Mention that you're a biologist at a party, and half the people in the room will begin to yawn. The other half will be intrigued, and someone will say that they always wanted to be Jacques Cousteau. Go on to tell them that you study seabirds on tropical isles, and visions of paradise will dance in their heads. The mystique, if not the money, holds a strong allure.

The trial of Charles I in 1649 secured the historic gains of the English civil war – the supremacy of parliament, the independence of judges, individual freedom guaranteed by Magna Carta and the common law. From a modern perspective, it was the first war crimes trial of a head of state. The arguments in Westminster Hall resonate today in the courtrooms at the Hague and even in the Iraqi Special Tribunal – Saddam Hussein's opening words to his judge were, in translation, a paraphrase of those of Charles I: “By what power am I called hither… I would know by what authority, lawful I mean….”

[Since the publication of Tanaka Sakai's February report on the US road to war with Iran, vigorous international debate has been touched off by allegations of a critically important Israel lobby in US politics and the making of US policy in the Middle East. Tanaka offers an independent critical Japanese perspective on the forces driving US policy toward Iran, one that goes beyond discussion of the Israel lobby to consider the interaction between fundamentalist Christianity and fundamentalist Islam that has been driving the region and world toward Armageddon. But Sakai looks beyond the US-Islamic clash to examine the doctrinal roots of the Shia-Sunni divisions within Islam and their implications for the future of Iran and the region. In particular, he considers whether divisions internal to Islam will trump the deepening divide between Islamic and Christian fundamentalists. In either event, the prospects for Iran and the Middle East remain dark. MS]