As the current Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh risks his administration on a bid to override massive public opposition to entering into a nuclear power deal with the United States, hyped as an “historic” accord that will emancipate India's economy and boost its international status, Japan Focus examines a decade of India-Pakistan maneuvering for advantage in the South Asian nuclear sweepstakes. MS

As Japan and India move toward bilateral security cooperation, it is not surprising that Prime Ministers AsÅ▯ TarÅ▯ and Manmohan Singh have vigorously denied that the arrangements were aimed at counterbalancing China. But will Beijing read it in this way?

Japan's revised ODA Charter, a 2003 revision of the original 1991 set of principles governing Japan's Overseas Development Assistance, proscribes aid to countries producing weapons of mass destruction. Thus it is all the more perplexing that in September this year, Japan joined the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group, which controls the export and sale of nuclear technology, to approve a waiver on trade with India. In joining the Washington consensus on this issue, Prime Minister AsÅ▯ is obviously moving into uncharted waters if he is seen as abandoning Japan's non-nuclear principles and pandering to Japanese companies eager for a slice of India's nuclear energy market. It is worth recalling that India's failure to ratify the NPT continues to raise public hackles in Japan, just as Prime Minister Hashimoto RyutarÅ▯ suspended all but humanitarian aid to India in response to India's nuclear tests conducted in May 1998.

Japan's Yasukuni problem is inseparable from the fact that nationalism is the dominant ideology of our era. This is abundantly clear in media representations, memorials, museums and popular consciousness during and after wars and other international conflicts. This is true not only of Japan but also of South Korea, China and the US, among many others. And it is surely nationalism—stimulated and emboldened throughout Asia following the end of the era of US-Soviet confrontation, the rise of China as a regional and world power, and aggressive US actions associated with the “war on terror”—that constitutes the most powerful obstacle to resolution of the issues that divide nations and inflame passions in the Asia Pacific and beyond. Throughout the twentieth century, nationalism has everywhere been the handmaiden of war: war has provided a powerful stimulus to nationalism; nationalism has repeatedly led nations to war; and war memory is central to framing and fueling nationalist historical legacies. This article considers Yasukuni Shrine and Japanese war memory and representation in relationship to contemporary nationalism and its implications for the future of East Asia.

Japanese politics are characterized by two related paradoxes: first, that the word “conservative” is usually applied to those who insist on the need to remake Japan's postwar society, including its constitution, and who in other words are actually radicals, while those who insist on “conserving” Japan's postwar democratic institutions are labeled radicals or leftists; and second, that those who most insist that Japan subordinate itself to the United States describe themselves as “nationalists,” while those who seek to prioritize Japanese over US interests are suspected of being somehow “un-Japanese.” It is an Alice in Wonderland confusion!

The “Declaration for Greater East Asian Cooperation” was a wartime booklet and elementary text published for use in Japan's Asian and Pacific colonies and occupied territories. Through the presentation of attractive images of children and people of many lands and cultures, the images convey the noble mission that informed Japanese wartime propaganda—that Japan would unite fellow Asians under its leadership to throw off the yoke of exploitive Western imperialism. The text also reveals the imperialist assumptions that Japan shared with those same imperialist powers, but here cloaked in a rhetoric evocative of Confucian benevolence.

The United States has pushed the international non-proliferation regime to the breaking point.

Anxiety over US attempts to define and direct the international non-proliferation regime may be provoking some dangerous decisions in the Middle East.

“Many people asked me what happened to me in Vietnam to make my eyes open to the horrors of war. Many things happened. … But I'd like to share with you one thing that changed my life forever.

As a study of the influence and nature of popular nationalism in Japan, this article examines the relationship between nationalism and history in Kobayashi Yoshinori's bestselling manga comic, Sensoron (On War, 1998). Sensoron heralded the recent trend of nationalistic manga targeted at younger generations and has been instrumental in popularizing the ideas of new-generation rightists and historical revisionists over the last decade. Kobayashi explains his strategy as “using the language of daily life in order to discuss politics and ideas”, adding that he created Sensoron as “something that intellectuals cannot write — something that young people find pleasure to read and get completely absorbed in, and yet is not light but deep”. He also emphasizes that what he writes is based on the “common sense of common folks (shomin no joshiki)”. Such an anti-elitist strategy, along with constant caricaturizing of academics, journalists, political activists and politicians as “uncool old men (dasai oyaji)” as well as his well-constructed and marketed charismatic personality, has proved very successful. Indeed, via the popular medium of manga, Kobayashi has ostensibly “created a discourse that is more influential than that of any other “theorist” in the 1990s”.

A geopolitical convulsion measuring six points on the Richter scale is bound to produce aftershocks. The reverberations of the conflict in the Caucasus are beginning to be felt. We may be unwittingly bidding farewell to the “war on terror”. In any case, the international community has lost interest in Osama bin Laden.

It doesn't get much more Japanese than this. The large, white-feathered crested ibis — a wader with a downward- curving bill, a face bare of feathers and bright- red skin and legs — is a worldwide symbol of Japan (though the national bird is the pheasant). The birds grow up to 78 cm long, have a plume of feathers on the back of the head, and the flight feathers are tinged with red, a celebrated feature that was also the cause of their downfall.

An impression is being created that there is a “rift” between the United States and Britain regarding the reconciliation track involving the Taliban. The plain truth is that the US, Britain, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are in this murky game together.

Richard Tanter, director of the Nautilus Institute Australia, writes that while the violence of the attempted coup in East Timor is shocking, it should not be a surprise. East Timor has been moving into multi-dimensional crisis for several years. He points out that the present crises in East Timor have at last three axes that have led to today's events: rule by the gun; increasing and apparently intractable impoverishment and corruption; and deeply eroded legitimacy of all the major political players. Australia faces a profound dilemma of avoiding on the one hand a turn to East Timor, more than any other post-Cold War UN-led peace-building operation was the model of global stewardship. Unless the triple crises of East Timor are effectively addressed in short order the effects will be felt far wider.

Mario Katosang, Palau's minister of education, is no stranger to foreign travel. His ministry forged close cooperation with Japan. He is also regularly flown to Taipei and his ministry received a total amount of $1 million in 2006 and 2007 for infrastructure improvements to government-run schools. The government of Taiwan gives generous scholarships to the students of Palau and recently it began supplying the small Pacific Island nation's schools with brand new PCs.

Nakata Takako, 85, runs a small furniture store in Osaka. She lives alone in a wood-frame building that contains both her residence and the shop. Married during the war, she and her husband started the business after the war ended. They raised two daughters. Her husband died some 25 years ago, and she has run the business alone since then.

After ratification by the Japanese parliament (Diet) one month earlier, the Japan-Indonesia Economic Partnership Agreement (JIEPA) came into force on July 1, 2008. Indonesia's first such bilateral trade agreement appropriately takes effect during the 50th anniversary of bilateral diplomatic relations. For Japan it follows similar agreements with some of its other production centres and resource suppliers in Southeast Asia.

Li Ying's documentary film “Yasukuni” opened in Tokyo on May 3, without incident but under heavy police protection. The original launch of the film, scheduled for April 12, was postponed when four theaters in Tokyo and another in Osaka cancelled their screenings of the film after conservative members of the Japanese Diet raised questions about the film's political stance (See also David McNeill and John Junkerman, Freedom Next Time. Japanese Neonationalists Seek to Silence Yasukuni Film.

On a scorching July 7, 2008, officers of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces visited Nanjing for an artillery demonstration, a visit barely mentioned in the Chinese media even though it was the first time Japanese soldiers had returned to the scene of the crime since Japan surrendered in 1945. Unlike in recent years, there were no special commemoration rites on this anniversary of the 1937 Marco Polo Bridge incident. This reflected the Chinese leadership's decision to turn down the heat on history in the wake of President Hu Jintao's spring 2008 visit to Japan and the subsequent inking of an agreement on gas field development in disputed maritime territory near the contested Senkaku/Diaoyutai Islands.

Jakarta~ At 4 PM on January 13, 2008, the main entrance to Pertamina Hospital in South Jakarta is besieged by scores of journalists. Almost all are local, as Indonesia rarely attract international media conglomerates, unless there is a deadly landslide, tsunami or airplane crash. Some reporters place the lenses of video and photo cameras against the glass of the hospital entrance, hoping to spot at least some action.

By virtually every measure, the war in Afghanistan is getting much worse for both the western coalition and for the Afghan civilian population. The strategic benefits are minimal to non-existent, the risks of a widening war alarming, and the moral and humanitarian consequences appalling. Strategic confusion, institutional inertia and self-interest provide most of the answer as to why the US remains in Afghanistan. Australia's commitment shares the same strategic confusion, mixed with a diffuse paternalistic enthusiasm not too far distant from a nineteenth century imperialist ideal of civilising the natives. The US, and its allies, will leave, without any definable or honourable victory. The Afghans will stay. If the current logic of expansion of the war engulfs Pakistan, withdrawal and defeat will take place eventually, but later, and after an infinitely more catastrophic and dangerous war. Could a new US administration transform these outcomes?

Pio d'Emilia, Far East correspondent for Sky TG24 Italy and a veteran contributor to the daily Il Manifesto has just returned from Georgia, where he was “embedded” with the Russian army. The experience gave him a very different perspective on the way the conflict between the Russian Army and a Western-backed ally was reported by the Western and Japanese press. Japan Focus posts his account of the assignment and a short interview on why he thinks much of the media got it wrong on Georgia.