In Part I of this series on D.T. Suzuki's relationship with the Nazis, (Brian Daizen Victoria, D.T. Suzuki, Zen and the Nazis readers were promised a second part focusing primarily on Suzuki's relationship with one of wartime Japan's most influential Nazis, Count Karlfried Dūrckheim (1896-1988).

However, in the course of writing Part II, I quickly realized that the reader would benefit greatly were it possible to present more than simply Dürckheim's story in wartime Japan. That is to say, I recognized the importance, actually the necessity, of introducing Dürckheim's earlier history in Germany and the events that led to his arrival in Japan, not once but twice.

Sven Saaler and Christopher W. A. Szpilman's “Pan-Asianism as an Ideal of Asian Identity and Solidarity, 1850-Present” deals with Pan-Asian ideas in a broad context, from the earliest encounters with Western imperialism and nationalism to contemporary concepts of “Asian Values.” They argue that Pan-Asianism only became part of Japan's mainstream political vocabulary in the 1910s, and it was problematic from the start. Unresolved questions included: Did Japan want to lead Asia in resisting European imperialism, or did it want an alliance with Great Britain? How should Asia fit into a European-dominated world? How did Korea and China, both of which Japan had long and complicated relationships with, fit into the vision of a Japanese-led Asia? Saaler and Szpilman also make clear that as time went on, Japanese proponents of Pan Asianism increasingly imagined the future as one of Japanese domination over the rest of Asia rather than equal partnerships, and they also found themselves winning increasing support from the Japanese government. The authors provide a thorough survey of the varieties of Japanese Pan-Asianism's leading thinkers and texts, (as well as many Chinese and Korean responses), briefly touching on all the issues discussed below.

By any measure, Japan's modern empire was formidable. The only major non-Western colonial power in the twentieth century, Japan at the height of its empire controlled a vast area of Asia and numerous archipelagos in the Pacific Ocean. Its reach extended from Sakhalin Island north of the Japanese archipelago to the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific and expanded into Manchuria, areas of China, Korea, and much of Southeast Asia and Micronesia. Over the more than seven decades of Japanese colonial rule (1869-1945), Japan successfully naturalized two colonies (Ainu Moshir/Hokkaido and the Ryukyu Kingdom/Okinawa) into its national territory. The massive extraction of resources and extensive cultural assimilation policies radically impacted the lives of millions of Asians and Pacific Islanders. The political, economic, and cultural ramifications of this era are still felt today.

Japan has not only suffered from dismal macroeconomic performance over the past two decades, but it has lost its edge in areas of its greatest competitive strength, such as electronics, especially information and communications technology (ICT) hardware Japanese electronics firms have declined by many standard measures of industrial performance, such as market share, exports, and profits.

In 2011, the recently established South Korean broadcasting network Channel-A launched Ije mannareo gamnida (Now on My Way to Meet You), a program whose format brings together a group of a dozen or more female talbukja (North Korean refugees) on a weekly basis. These women interact with host Nam Hui-seok, an additional female co-host (or, in the earlier episodes, two), and a panel composed of four male South Korean entertainers. Episodes typically open in a lighthearted manner, with conversation about daily life in North Korea alongside mild flirtation between the Southern male and Northern female participants, often involving song and dance, but climax with a talbuk seuteori, an emotionally harrowing narrative from one of the border-crossers detailing her exodus from North Korea. Via this framework Ije mannareo gamnida attempts to nurture the integration of North Korean refugees into South Korean society; personalization of their plight occurs in conjunction with reminders of a shared Korean identity maintained despite the regime they have fled, which is depicted as cruel, repressive and backward. The show has proven a minor hit within South Korea and received coverage from local and global media (see, e.g., Kim 2012; Choi 2012; Noce 2012).

Like all catastrophes, 3.11 generated pain and imagination, heroes and villains. Political entrepreneurs with motivation and resources were quick to do battle for control of the event. They spun narrative explanations for the tragedy across a broad horizon of meanings and values, all conforming to their own preexisting preferences and to what they believed would be effective with the Japanese public. Existing enemies were enemies still, but newly villainous. The stakeholders, thus rearmed, used these narratives aggressively in an effort to shift the still unformed preferences of a general public struggling to make sense of otherwise unfathomable events. But 3.11 is not alone in this respect. This chapter locates the dueling narratives of 3.11 in their historical and comparative contexts to derive guidance for understanding how disasters can be used by politicians and their allies as well as by citizens.

The June 7-8 meeting between U.S. President Obama and Chinese President Xi must have disappointed Prime Minister Abe, who is intent on using the Senkaku issue to induce the United States to create a new cold war regime against China, as well as many politicians who champion a hard-line anti-Chinese stance.

The two leaders discussed at great length North Korea and cyber issues/cybersecurity and also economic issues and military-to- military relationships. Over dinner on the first night, the talk focused on North Korea, but the Senkaku issue was also brought up. In the discussion, the United States did not change its previous stance that, although the Senkaku Islands are covered by the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty, the U.S. does not take a position on the sovereignty issue, calling for a solution through dialogue. The Japanese media reported that “Japanese and U.S. diplomatic sources” later revealed that Obama had warned China not to engage in threatening actions. However, the very fact that the United States invited the Chinese leader to the United States to hold a two-day summit is evidence that the U.S. is not contemplating a “new cold war” or “war over the Senkaku Islands.”

Does it make sense to refer to a Chinese “tributary system?” A number of influential Western scholars, including John Wills Jr., James Hevia and Laura Hostetler, have argued that it does not—largely on the grounds that previous China scholars, John K. Fairbank “and his followers” in particular, have overgeneralized its historical significance. The result, however, has been that much of Fairbank's painstaking and valuable research on the structure and functions of the tributary system has been ignored. Although Fairbank may well have overestimated the degree to which Chinese assumptions about tribute shaped Qing policy toward foreigners, it seems unhelpful and misleading to suggest that they were of no consequence whatsoever.

Article summary: This article introduces Ikeda Manabu and his art, and situates his work within the history of imagining disasters in Japanese art by introducing prominent Japanese works, including disaster prints from the Edo and Meiji periods and nuclear art by Domon Ken, Fukushima Kikujiro, and Maruki Iri and Toshi. The article will ultimately consider what Ikeda's art means to the larger discourse of contemporary Japanese society and art.

“Atoms for Peace” was a U.S. government policy in the 1950s promoting nuclear power around the globe as a safe source of energy. The U.S.A. sponsored an “Atoms for Peace” museum exhibit for Hiroshima in 1956 as part of this immensely successful effort to convince the Japanese public of the benefits of nuclear power. The effectiveness of this initiative is remarkable, considering the three previous nuclear disasters and the antinuclear movement they sparked. The exhibit was able to accomplish the transformation of public opinion by stressing the differences between nuclear power and nuclear bombs. Zwigenberg condemns the “Atoms for Peace” project for making the world lose sight of the dangers of nuclear power. He contends that the exhibit's festive and fashionable atmosphere misrepresented nuclear power, since it ignored the problems of nuclear waste and potential malfunctions.

In Okinawa, as perhaps anywhere else, the past exists uneasily alongside the present. It can pass unnoticed, occasionally rising for a moment of recognition, slipping away again under the weight of the routine tasks of daily life. And like the unexploded bombs that still lie close to the surface of the Okinawan landscape, it can erupt into the present, casting its shadow over a future not yet experienced. Memories, wrenching and traumatic, can tear the fabric of the everyday, plunging those who experience them into despair and even madness. They haunt the present with their melancholy demands for repression, making their presence known in the prohibitions that they have engendered.

You only have to spend a day in Seoul to realize that appearances do matter in contemporary South Korean society. Advertisements for various cosmetic surgeries are conspicuous everywhere—from taxis (fig. 1) to public transport and underground stations (figs. 2 and 3), all evidence that the industry is booming.

The election campaign for the Tokyo metropolitan government (TMG) does not begin, officially, until January 23, with the voting scheduled for February 9. But there is already an enormous amount of spin in the Japanese press and social media, as well as in the lamentably meagre coverage offered by English-language media and bloggers. I won't pretend to be objective about the election and assessing the associated reporting and commentary. Like 455 of Japan's 1789 local governments, I personally think Japan should get out of nuclear power, or at the very least reform its power markets-separating generation from transmission-before undertaking any restarts. Japan's best option is green and smart growth, and it is incredible to watch a TMG campaign unfold focused on that opportunity.

Japan's searing summer of 2013 saw the lid slide further off Fukushima Daiichi and its Pandora's box of radioactive and political crises. The company in charge, Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), already Japan's most distrusted firm, was irredeemably exposed as dangerously incompetent. A slew of reports concerning leaks of high-level radiation led to increasingly concerned appeals, from within Japan and from overseas, for the Abe Shinzo government to take over at Fukushima Daiichi.

Two years after the start of Japan's nuclear disaster, parents fear for their children's future.

Like most fathers, Fujimoto Yoji frets about the health of his young children. In addition to normal parental concerns about the food they eat, the air they breathe and the environment they will inherit, however, he must add one more: the radioactive fallout from a major nuclear disaster.

When Miyazawa Kenji was writing his stories and poems nearly a century ago, Japan was a country with a two-pronged mission: to become the first non-white, non-Christian nation to create a modern prosperous state — and to be the leader of an Asian revival.

The Japanese people were obsessed with their cultural identity and their place, as an imperial power, among the first rank of nations in the world. It was an obsession that would lead them to prosecute an aggressive and brutal war in Asia and the Pacific.

I was eight or nine when M samchon (“Uncle M”) arrived at our house in Japan on one of his regular late-night visits. In fact, it seemed as if he chose to visit at this hour, as if he was hiding from something or someone. Although he was not really related to us, he came from the same part of Korea, Jeju Island, and we referred to him using the term samchon, a Jeju term used when addressing uncles and aunts. He spoke in the Jeju tongue, which was unlike any of the other versions of Korean that I had heard at that time. Although my father was born in Jeju, even he had a hard time communicating with our samchon. This was because my father had grown up in Japan, his parents having taken him back to Ōsaka, where they ran a small business, soon after he was born. The visitor's Japanese was quite poor, but it was slightly easier for me to understand than Jeju-style Korean. Using the few words that I was able to understand, I could figure out that his childhood friend, Beomdori (Mr. Beomdol to us kids), was in the process of slowly recovering his speech. Given that Uncle M was in his late twenties or early thirties, my childishly inquisitive mind found it odd that a grown-up, such as Uncle M's friend, was learning how to speak. Not to speak a foreign language, like Japanese, but to speak, period.

It is widely assumed that the Japan-U.S. military alliance plays a key role in securing peace in Northeast Asia. It not only shores up procedural democracy in Japan and South Korea but also assures Japan's neighbors, China in particular, of Japan's commitment to pacifism. Close analysis of the current stage of neonationalism and neoliberal austerity economics in Japan, as exemplified by the government that recently took over in Tokyo, conveys a different impression.