On Christmas Day 1991, the Red Flag was hauled down from the Kremlin Tower. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics ceased to exist. Gorbachev's attempted reform of state socialism, his policy of perestroika, had failed. There followed a transformation of all the former European socialist countries and those of the USSR. The major systemic changes subsequently advocated by the reformers were the removal of the dominant Communist Party and its replacement by democratic forms and a move to markets in place of centralised planning.

Seven months after the Democratic Party of Japan's triumph in the national elections of 30 August 2009, Hatoyama Yukio's government is meeting with so much trouble that rumours have begun to circulate that it is doomed.

The factsheet that follows, prepared by Nan Kim in conjunction with members of the National Campaign to End the Korean War, provides an informative overview of the dangerous military standoff that has been unfolding on the Korean Peninsula ever since South Korea conducted a 4-hour artillery exercise on November 23. The exercise was conducted on Yeonpyeong Island, populated at the time by 1,000 South Korean soldiers and 1,300 civilians, about 12 kilometers from North Korea's coastline. The North – which had demanded that the South cancel the exercise prior to its start, and then according to reports repeatedly called for a halt as the South continued its exercise – responded with direct shelling of the island. This resulted in the killing of two South Korean soldiers and two civilian contractors working on a military base. (Pyongyang later expressed regret for the civilian deaths.). See CSPAN report here.

This paper assesses the social implications of employment opportunities in manufacturing for rural young unmarried Vietnamese women. Interested in the ways in which intimate relations, identities and structures of exchange within the family are reconfigured through the migration and work experience, we interview young, single daughters who had obtained employment as garment factory workers in Hanoi. Our focus is on the ambiguities and shifting perceptions women express when coming to terms with significant changes in their everyday life.

Over the last few decades, there has been extensive research on various atrocities committed by the Japanese Imperial Forces in China and various parts of Southeast Asia during the Asia-Pacific War: massacres, torture, rape, sexual slavery, and ill-treatment of prisoners of war (POWs) and medical experiments on prisoners. As a result, we now have considerable knowledge about war crimes committed in many parts of Asia. This is primarily thanks to continuous and comprehensive investigation by a small group of Japanese historians who specialize in Japanese war crimes, as well as contributions by international researchers.

Ko Un was born in 1933, which means that today he is nearer 80 than 70. He is surely Korea's most prolific writer and he himself cannot say for sure how many books he has published in all. He guesses that it must be about 140, volumes of many different kinds of poetry, epic, narrative, and lyric, as well as novels, plays, essays, and translations from classical Chinese.

India and Japan are poised for a rapid advance in their bilateral relations with rich economic and strategic overtones. Straws in the wind suggest that India-Japan ties could reach a historic high by the year's end, well before Tokyo and New Delhi celebrate 60 years of their diplomatic relations. Though Japan and India have been in touch with each other for the last 1500 years, modern diplomatic relations were established on April 28, 1952.

Owing to its diverse geology, geography and climate, Japan is a country rich in biodiversity. However, as a result of accelerated development over the last century, and particularly the post-war decades, Japan's natural environments and the wildlife which inhabit them have come under increased pressure. Now, much of Japan's natural forest, wetlands, rivers, lakes and coastal environments have been destroyed or seriously degraded as a consequence of development and pollution. Despite increasing awareness of the importance of preserving Japan's remaining natural environments and wildlife, habitat destruction (both direct and indirect), inadequately controlled hunting, and introduced species pose a threat to these. This paper explores these factors, and the underlying forces—political, legislative and economic—which have undermined efforts to preserve Japan's natural heritage during the post-war decades.

In 1979, Kim Min Gi and other activists from South Korea's democracy and labour movements clandestinely released the collective radio play “Light of a Factory” (Kongchang'ui Bulbit). This work was used to mobilize factory workers into the broad-based minjung or people's movements that were challenging the dictatorship. The play documented the lives of Korean workers and the suppression of their desires under the authoritarian regime. The plot centered on female workers in an export factory who decide to organize a union. It was loosely based on real struggles such as the massive strike by female employees at the Y.H. Trading Company in 1978-9; a strike which spilled over into the struggles of the Korean democracy movement. The music was a cacophony of different styles and influences: from US camptown progressive rock, to Western and Korean folk music, to shaman ritual and other traditional styles. Cassettes of the play were rerecorded on home stereos and passed around from hand to hand.

The Korean War technically ended in 1953 with the signing of an armistice agreement. But not only has there been no peace treaty, but inter-Korean military confrontation and heightened tension have continued, often resulting in overt military clashes. Defying the new security architecture followed by the demise of the Cold War system, the Korean peninsula still remains as its last relic without any clear signs of conflict termination. Suspicion and mutual distrust emanating from the protracted conflict have further accelerated fierce conventional arms races on the Korean peninsula. Taking advantage of its economic growth and industrial maturity, South Korea has been maintaining an edge over the North in this arms race. Meanwhile, North Korea has responded to the widening disparity in conventional forces by venturing to play the nuclear weapons card. As a result, peace and security on the Korean peninsula have become all the more precarious and uncertain. Against this backdrop, the article examines the patterns of military spending of the two Koreas, compares their conventional military capabilities, and traces implications for weapons of mass destruction on the Korean peninsula. The article concludes with some policy suggestions for denuclearization and peace-building in Korea.

An unexpected note of poignancy greets visitors to the museum of the world's largest car company. In the cavernous lobby, a lone trumpet plays the mournful opening bars to Over the Rainbow, a plea for escape from the dreary, difficult realities of the present. The song is performed by Partner Robot, Toyota's showcase humanoid robot, on a giant screen that hangs over a showroom full of the company's world-beating products, cars that have become household names: Prius, Lexus, Corolla.

This essay presents extracts from the autobiography of Kurahashi Ayako, My Father's Dying Wish (Paulownia Press 2009; original Japanese edition, Kempei datta chichi no nokoshita mono, Kobunken 2002). Kurahashi's father, who had been a military policeman during the war, made a dying wish in 1986 that an apology to the people of China be inscribed on his gravestone. The extracts of her testimony presented here clarify how the request forced her to confront the painful issue of taking individual responsibility for war actions, and how the decision by members of the war generation to testify must always be understood within the context of how that testimony will be received by family and friends.

[Editor's note: See the Japanese film footage of the devastation of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 and its aftermath, the Bikini tests of July 1946 and the rapturous account of the American announcer shown in an American newsreel below. This film includes the first images of hibakusha seen in the United States.]

This Chapter 3 from my newly published American War Machine describes America's Operation Paper, a November 1950 program to arm and supply the Kuomintang remnant troops of General Li Mi in Burma. Operation Paper itself was relatively short-lived, but it had two long-term consequences that have not been adequately discussed.

Back in 2008, a small but significant piece of news circulated in South Korea about a magazine “secretly published by North Korean journalists” as one headline read. This was hardly covered in the Western media, but it seems the news has finally reached across the Pacific with the publication of the magazine's first English edition in October 2010. On the evening of October 18, 2010 Ishimaru Jiro – editor and publisher of Rimjin-gang magazine – was invited to speak at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at NYU in “a discussion about journalism in and about North Korea” (according to the event flyer). The Nation published an article on November 15, 2010, seductively titled “North Korea's Citizen Journalism” featuring the publication.

This essay looks at the use of testimony by manga artist Kobayashi Yoshinori, a prominent neonationalist voice on war issues. It focuses on three themes to assess his 1998 manga Sensōron (On War): Kobayashi's stated position on the validity of testimony as evidence, how testimony is used within Kobayashi's arguments, and the inherently autobiographical nature of Kobayashi's writings. It reveals a key nationalist hypocrisy: while the rejection of personal testimony by victims of Japanese war actions as evidence on historiographical grounds remains central to nationalist denial strategies, testimony is used freely and uncritically to support nationalist agendas.

One afternoon in the mid-1980s, Kimura Hiroko was taking a rest from sightseeing on a park bench in Adelaide, southern Australia. As she was enjoying the warm sunshine, she spotted the words “Japs go home” carved into the wood. This was the height of the bubble years and Kimura was aware that some people resented Japanese companies buying up Australian land, but she hadn't known the hatred ran this deep. “From that moment on,” she says, “I made up my mind to do something to bring together Australian and Japanese people.”

On August 28, 2009 the Okinawa Association of America marked its 100th anniversary by hosting the musical King Sho Hashi–Dynamic Ryukyu at the Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center in Los Angeles. The poster promoting the event characterizes it as “an ultra modern kumiodori musical in Japanese and English,” and the main visual image of the poster features a young man wielding a sword. The sword is not poised for violence. Instead it is held backwards, blade against the forearm, as a dance prop. The following passage from an article describing the musical quotes from its producer: “Discussing his purpose in creating the work, producer and stage director Daiichi Hirata said, ‘For Okinawans, King Sho Hashi was the first historical figure to have a truly positive impact on the country. I want to take that passionate Okinawan tradition and convey it to future generations using King Sho Hashi as the motif’.” The promotional poster for the musical says of Shō Hashi that “His vision united a kingdom.”

It was 1951 and Rozella Switzer, post-mistress of McPherson, Kansas, a prosperous, conservative, nearly all-white oil town of 9,000 people on the Eastern edge of the wheat belt, had not seen the Nigerians coming. That Fall, seven African students, all male, in their early- and mid-20's, had arrived in the area to attend McPherson College and Central College. The accomplished young men, who counted among themselves a one-time math teacher, a surveyor, an accountant, a pharmacist and a railway telegrapher, had come with high professional aspirations to acquire training in agriculture, engineering and medicine; within months, they were treated to a fairly typical round of Jim Crow hospitality, from half-wages at the local laundry to the segregated upper-balcony of the local movie house. While at least one of the men had been warned by his father that Christians “‘don't practice what they preach’,” the students were apparently unprepared for the Midwest's less metaphorical chill; with the arrival of winter, officials at McPherson College telephoned around town to gather warm clothes for the men, which is how they came to Switzer's restless and expansive attention. A widow in her 40's Switzer, according to Time, “smokes Pall Malls, drinks an occasional bourbon & coke, likes politics and people.” She was also “curious about the African students” and invited them to her home for coffee, music and talk.

Agriculture in Japan suffers from a wide range of problems, including a low food self-sufficiency rate of only 41% and an inflexible farmland market. Rather than seriously tackling these problems, the Japanese government has chosen to compensate farmers through import restrictions, subsidies and price supports. These measures, aimed at addressing the widening urban-rural income gap and assuring the Liberal Democratic Party's rural base, raised Japanese rice prices to among the highest in the world and further reduced food self-sufficiency. Japan's farm support initiatives began in the 1960s and were promoted by Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei as “Nihon Rettō Kaizō Ron” (Remodeling the Japanese Archipelago). The large infrastructure projects launched under this program provided public works jobs in rural and urban areas that boosted incomes of rural communities but did little to stay the decline of agriculture.