While China was at the center of Japan's war, by 1942 Japan had occupied much of Southeast Asia, home of many ethnic Chinese. Often Chinese nationalists in those places were potential leaders of resistance to Japan. On the other hand, Japanese authorities knew that educated Chinese could be useful in subordinating other Southeast Asians to the Japanese empire, since they had played this role for European imperialists. Hayashi Hirofumi's “The Battle of Singapore, the Massacre of Chinese and Understanding of the Issue in Postwar Japan” and Vivian Blaxell's “New Syonan and Asianism in Japanese-era Singapore” both discuss the complexities of Japanese occupation in Southeast Asia. Hayashi shows that killing ethnic Chinese was explicit Japanese military policy because Chinese were assumed to be innately opposed to Japanese empire, showing the military's skepticism about Pan-Asianism. Nonetheless, as Blaxell shows, other Japanese simultaneously worked to win the support of two groups, Chinese and Eurasian Christians (usually part Chinese) through construction of two model villages, New Syonan and Fuji Village. In both cases, the actual ways that Japanese Singapore functioned was far more chaotic and contingent than high-level policy would suggest. The ironic contrast between Japanese war crimes happening side-by-side with Japanese attempts to find Chinese allies to build a new Asia was common everywhere.

When, in mid-2005, Japan's Yomiuri newspaper began to publish a series of articles on the question of “war responsibility”, the event attracted nationwide and even international interest. Now the newspaper series has become a book, published in a two-volume version in Japanese and in a one-volume abridged English translation entitled Who Was Responsible? From Marco Polo Bridge to Pearl Harbour. There can be no doubt that these publications mark an important moment in the long and vexed history of East Asia's “history wars” - the ongoing conflicts between Japan and its neighbors (particularly China and both Koreas) about memory of and responsibility for Japan's 20th century military expansion in Asia.

Paul Scalise, a supporter of nuclear power, addresses the challenges facing Japanese energy policy following the Fukushima disaster. He begins by acknowledging the massive change in public opinion on nuclear power, even pointing out Son's solar belt as one of the most popular new proposals. However, he questions whether a shift away from nuclear power will put Japan on a sustainable path: “Can Japan achieve a nuclear-free society without risk of rolling blackouts? Are energy security and environmental sustainability fundamentally compatible or mutually exclusive? Is economic efficiency still possible in an energy market that also promotes and subsidizes renewable energy sources?” Scalise reminds us that public opinion should not always dictate policy. Instead, he urges, majority rule should be set aside for what is best for Japan, even if this option may be unpopular.

The disciplines of “area studies” (exploring the language, culture and religious traditions of particular geographic regions) have always been bound up with geopolitics and perceptions of national interest. Not only does academic (and popular) interest in these studies wax and wane according to their role in contemporary politics, but their basic assumptions and orientations are often strongly influenced by those interests. In Michael Penn's interview with Cemil Aydin, they discuss the rise and decline of Japanese Islamic Studies during the 1930s and 40s. Aydin suggests that the preconceptions of Islamicists during that period were strongly shaped by the geopolitical image of Japan as a leading light in Asian efforts to throw off the yoke of Western imperialism. For these scholars, the monotheistic roots of Islam - shared with both Judaism and Christianity - often seemed to be in tension with the twentieth-century political context of much of the Islamic world, which struggled with the domination of Western powers in ways not unlike Asia. Despite the changes in Japanese Islamic Studies since the end of the Pacific War, this perspective (so very different from many of the preconceptions that drive Islamic Studies in the Western academy) not only helps us understand some of the distinctive features of Japanese images of Islam, but may provide a useful vantage from which to re-evaluate our own images of this tradition.

On the east coast of the Malay Peninsula between Mersing and Endau, a few kilometers in from the silvery beaches along the South China Sea, one comes to Kampong Hubong. It is still and hot here. Isolated. Rice fields lie fallow. Coconut palms, bougainvillea, hibiscus, and tall grasses tumble together in the fields. Small buildings of stucco and timber, gone grey with age and monsoon rains, line one side of a short paved street. A couple of Chinese men sit in the shade of the shophouses. They yak in the Hokkien dialect. A red dog yawns.

Despite his recently failed third attempt to become prime minister, Aso Taro remains one of Japan's best-known and most influential politicians. The former foreign minister still aspires to the top post and in two books published earlier this year he has sketched a road map for the nation.

Japan the Tremendous, a bestseller written in a populist tone, highlights the peaceful nature of postwar Japan and calls the country a “fount of moral lessons” for Asia. Arc of Freedom and Prosperity: Japan's Expanding Diplomatic Horizons expatiates on Aso's tenure as foreign minister from October 2005 to August 2007.

The present paper examines the military chaplaincy in the context of a problem which has long intrigued researchers, namely the reasons for the rapid growth of the Christian (Protestant and Catholic) churches in 1950-80s South Korea compared to Japan or Taiwan. The author suggests that, whereas a general answer to the question may be the use of Christianity as a de facto state ideology in the years 1948-1960 and its functioning as an ideology of capitalist modernisation in the 1960s-80s, a particularly important part of government-induced Christianization of South Korea was the institution of military chaplaincy. In 1951-1968, Christians—despite being a numerical minority!—monopolized the chaplaincy in the military, and fully utilised this monopoly, “solacing ” vulnerable youth forcibly conscripted for military service and making many “church family members”. The loyalties won in such a way, often lasted for life, thus providing the churches with new recruits and the hard-core anti-Communist state—with docile anti-Communismt Christian subjects.

The Japanese administration of Formosa from 1895-1945 changed the island's social landscape forever; not least by bringing the Austronesian First Nation people of eastern and central Taiwan under the administration of the modern nation-state for the first time. The Taroko tribe of Northeastern Taiwan (formerly part of the Atayal tribe) was the last tribe to submit to Japanese rule, but only after the violent subjugation of an anti-Japanese uprising in the 1930s. Shortly thereafter, however, Taroko men were recruited into the Japanese Imperial Army. The names of those who died during the war are now honored at the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, a situation that occasionally becomes the object of protests by Taiwanese politicians. This article, based on field research in a Taroko community in Hualien, looks at how social memories of the Japanese administration have contributed to both Taroko identity and to various other forms of nationalism in contemporary Taiwan. How do Taroko individuals and collectivities remember the Japanese? How do these memories articulate with nationalist ideologies in the larger Taiwanese society?

The history of Islam in Japan dates back roughly a century (the first Japanese to go on pilgrimage to Mecca did so in 1910, and the earliest Japanese mosque dates to 1935). The largest growth in the numbers of Muslims living and worshipping in Japan took place during the so-called “bubble economy” of the 1990s, when foreign workers (many from Islamic countries) entered Japan for employment. Despite subsequent restrictions placed on such workers, a number remained in Japan, marrying Japanese citizens and starting families. In his interviews with Muslim foreign workers and Japanese converts to Islam, Kawakami Yasunori suggests something of the intersection of personal experience and political context shaping this newest chapter in the history of Japanese religion. Even as some Japanese join the Islamic community as converts, and Muslim groups put down roots by building mosques and other long-term institutions, some Muslims retain a sense of connection with their countries of origin, and consider returning for the sake of their children's traditional upbringing.

Kawabata and Kitazawa's article addresses the Battle of Okinawa, which was fought as a war of attrition; the Japanese government leaders knew that the more they prolonged a battle in Okinawa, the longer they would be able to stave off invasion of mainland Japan. One of the horrors of war that unfolded during the nearly twelve-week conflict was the Japanese military's abandonment of the civilian population. The number of civilian causalities reached around 100,000, among the highest total for any single battle in the Pacific Theater during the Asia-Pacific War. During the battle the Japanese Imperial Army encouraged Okinawan civilians to kill themselves rather than surrender to American forces, asserting that the Americans would rape, torture, and sadistically kill them. Over one fourth of the Okinawan civilian population died and many of these deaths have been attributed to the Japanese army's direct orders to commit suicide. The army distributed grenades and poison and instructed families on how to commit group suicide. Even though many survivors of the battle have recounted their experiences, the Japanese Education Ministry in 2007 challenged their accounts, insisting that the military leaders had not demanded that Okinawans die for the emperor. The Education Ministry called for the removal of the term “group suicide” (shudan jiketsu) from history textbooks, a step that most Okinawans view as an attempt to whitewash history. The authors of this article recount several survivors’ stories of the battle, including the Japanese army's encouragement that they commit suicide. Okinawans believe it is important to remember their treatment by the Imperial Army as well as the horrors of civilian suicides, because it is part of a longer legacy of colonization and discriminatory treatment by those from the mainland.

The final reading is Erik Esselstrom's essay “The 1960 ‘Anpo’ Struggle in The People's Daily: Shaping Popular Chinese Perceptions of Japan during the Cold War.” After World War II and the victory of the Chinese Communists in 1949, the U.S. government enlisted Japan as an important Cold War ally in the effort to “contain” China. While this arrangement was in some ways favorable to Japan, it was extremely unpopular among Japanese citizens who wanted to create a less antagonistic relationship with China.

As a recently retired sociology professor in the United States, Ivy Lee became actively involved with global efforts to redress Japanese war crimes a few years before Kajima Co.'s controversial settlement in 2000 with Chinese forced laborers from the notorious Hanaoka worksite. Kajima's approach to resolving the Hanaoka injustice raised serious doubts about its corporate sincerity, but the professional honesty and good faith of Japanese lawyers who provided pro bono representation for the Chinese victims were also called into question by some critics in ways that suggested the need for careful investigation.

Japanese lawyers and activists supporting compensation lawsuits for Chinese forced labor in wartime Japan once called Chinese attorney Kang Jian the “window.” The term acknowledged Kang's pivotal role in coordinating between plaintiffs typically located in the Chinese countryside and Japanese legal teams pressing claims on their behalf in a dozen courtrooms across Japan over the past decade.

However, the close cooperation between Kang and the Japanese Lawyers Group for Chinese War Victims’ Compensation Claims broke down in April 2010, at least temporarily, following the out-of-court compensation agreement by Nishimatsu Construction Co. with forced laborers from its Shinanogawa worksite in Niigata. Late in the process of hammering out the settlement fund worth 128 million yen (about $1.28 million), the five plaintiffs’ Japanese lawyers began negotiating with Nishimatsu on behalf of the larger group of Shinanogawa victims who had not participated in litigation. Flanked by Kang, these five plaintiffs rejected the Nishimatsu pact at a press conference in Beijing the day after it was finalized in Tokyo.