Ever since German and Japanese leaders were prosecuted, convicted, and punished after World War II at Nuremberg and Tokyo, there has been a wide split at the core of the global effort to impose criminal accountability on those who commit crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, and war crimes on behalf of a sovereign state. The law is always expected to push toward consistency of application as a condition of its legitimacy. In the setting of international criminality the greatest danger to widely shared values is posed by those with the greatest power and wealth, and it is precisely these leaders that are least likely to be held responsible or to feel threatened by the prospect of being charged with international crimes. The global pattern of enforcement to date has been one in which the comparatively petty criminals are increasingly held to account while the Mafia bosses escape almost altogether from existing mechanisms of international accountability. Such double standards are too rarely acknowledged in discussions of international criminal law nor are their corrosive effects considered, but once understood, it becomes clear that this pattern seriously compromises the claim that international criminal law is capable of achieving global justice.

This article focuses on the content and implications of a fascinating and inspiring October 1 presentation by Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) at Aizuwakamatsu City, a smart city project involving just over 130,000 residents in Fukushima Prefecture, the area battered by the 3.11 triple disaster of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown. The presentation was titled “Data Will Change ICT.” ICT is an acronym for “Information and Communications,” a core area of innovation evident in the everyday ubiquity of smart phones and other mobile devices. The MIC presentation offers a summary of the Japanese political economy's performance in this strategic area as well as its impressive further potential. The presentation also reveals that Japan's ICT-centred growth strategy was officially launched by the Abe cabinet on June 14, 2013.

This journal article was written by Nakasatomi Hiroshi in 2011 after the Great Tohoku Earthquake and nuclear disaster. Nakasatomi currently lectures in constitutional law at Tokushima University, but at the time of the disaster he was working at Fukushima University, and living in Fukushima City with his family. The article describes the response of Fukushima University to the nuclear disaster, and efforts by students and staff within the University to build more critical awareness of the situation and foster more activist approaches. Following the article, there is a ‘sequel’ piece written by Nakasatomi in 2014 describing criticism he attracted from Fukushima City residents during and after his one-year campaign at the University on nuclear safety after the disaster. In this sequel, he seeks to clarify a misunderstanding about his political stance on the issue of voluntary evacuation, which has circulated on internet forums and damaged his public reputation for the past year. Today, Nakasatomi and his family live in Kyoto, and have become leading figures in the Kansai anti-nuclear power movement, including in a class action civil case against TEPCO. In addition to this, Nakasatomi speaks to civic groups nationally on the issues of constitutional revision that have arisen in Japan over the last 12 months. He is also an active member of the People Against Pornography and Sexual Violence group, which is also the affiliation of the translator.

Kitara is Sapporo's state-of-the-art concert hall in the middle of picturesque Nakajima Park. On 2 July 2014 I went there with different expectations than usual. I was not going to hear a professional orchestra playing a masterpiece of the classical repertoire, but an amateur choir singing a little-known choral work called Akuma no Hōshoku (The Devil's Gluttony), composed by Ikebe Shinichiro with words by Morimura Seiichi, a leading novelist. The piece was about Unit 731, Japan's infamous chemical and biological warfare unit located near Harbin in northeastern China (Manchukuo) in the years 1934-45, which murdered 3,000 people in gruesome vivisections and medical experiments.

In the early 20th century Japanese Pan-Asianists were often explicit supporters of movements of national liberation. They supported Filipinos trying to free themselves from Spanish and American colonialism and Chinese trying to free themselves from the Unequal Treaties, Manchu rule, and China's general “backwardness.” Yet even then the story was complicated.

Sato Kazuo, in “Sun Yat-sen's 1911 Revolution Had Its Seeds in Tōkyō,” not only describes some of Sun's activities but gives a concrete example of the contradiction at the heart of Japanese Pan-Asianism by discussing two of Sun's friends. Miyazaki Toten is rightly remembered as a democrat who wanted to “promote reforms in Japan as well as the rest of the world through the revolution in China.” Sun was also aided, however, by Utsunomiya Taro who saw the 1911 revolution as a chance to split China into smaller units that could more easily be dominated by Japan. At that point there was no clear consensus among Japanese on what Japan should become, but all sides used China to project their visions of a Japanese future.

A single sentence buried among 7000 pages of documents recently released by the Pentagon might well be the needle in the haystack that conclusively proves the U.S. military stored toxic herbicides, including Agent Orange, on Okinawa during the Vietnam War. American veterans have long claimed that large volumes of these chemicals were present on the island and hundreds of them are suffering from serious illnesses they believe were triggered by their exposure. But the U.S. government has repeatedly denied their allegations, insisting it has no records related to the issue.

Super-storm Haiyan made a devastating landfall in the east-central Philippines on November 8, leaving behind a trail of death and destruction that has draped the whole country in a pall of grief. The Philippines has since been reeling from this disaster. The typhoon buffeted the most vulnerable of Filipinos, 40% of whom live below the poverty line (i.e., $1.25 a day). Many of them fished for living. Their livelihood compelled them to live dangerously close to the shoreline of western Pacific. The highest ground on which some of them found their perch was just one meter above sea level. When the storm swelled, with waves as high as six meters, its poor victims were defenseless. The crashing walls of water swept away all that they possessed. The cumulative losses in lives and livelihoods, homes and hearths, businesses and infrastructure have no parallel in Philippines history, just as Haiyan has no precedent in the annals of meteorology. As of now, 13million Filipinos, of whom 5 million are children, have been scarred by the destructive fury of Haiyan, while 600,000 have been rendered homeless. The number of deaths may climb past 10,000.

Blaxell treats the naturalization and Japanization of the land formerly known as Ezochi (literally “land of the barbarians”) into Hokkaido. Blaxell discusses the transformation of the urban space of Sapporo in the 1870s and 1880s by Japanese working with American advisors. The result was neither Japanese nor American, but distinctly modern and evocative of the imperial age. Blaxell touches upon the simultaneous erasing of the indigenous people, the Ainu, from the land during this re-conceptualization of Hokkaido as Japanese space and land. (The policies directed toward the Ainu after Hokkaido's colonization are discussed in Hirano Katsuya's article in Part II.) Blaxell uses the importation of a quintessentially Japanese characteristic—rice—to the unforgiving climate of Hokkaido and its eventual acculturation as an example of how the processes of colonization helped to naturalize a landscape as Japanese. Her article encourages us not to take for granted the geographic space—whether urban or “natural” —and understand how it is the result of both constructive (for some people but not others) and destructive human actions.

For a number of years, The Asia-Pacific Journal has paid attention to Okinawa as the point where major contradictions within the national, regional, and global system are sharpest, and to Okinawan civil society as the seed-bed of some of the most advanced democratic thinking in contemporary Asia, with great significance for the future of Japan, the region and the US-Japan relationship.

In July 1969, a leak of chemical weapons on Okinawa sickened more than 20 U.S. soldiers and laid bare one of the Pentagon's biggest Cold War secrets: the storage of toxic munitions outside of the continental United States.

Public outrage following the Okinawa accident forced the White House to launch Operation Red Hat — codename for a mission to remove the chemicals from the island.

“It is in maternity that woman fulfills her physiological destiny; it is her natural ‘calling,’ since her whole organic structure is adapted for the perpetuation of the species. But […] human society is never abandoned wholly to nature“

-Simone de Beauvoir

Morita Seiya wrote this book chapter in May 2013 during a campaign by People Against Pornography and Sexual Violence (PAPS) against an exhibition of works by Aida Makoto at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo. As described in two earlier articles published by Japan Focus in 2013, the Museum attracted criticism for promoting art with misogynistic, paedophilic and anti-disability values. PAPS members met with Museum directors to discuss their concerns, but the meeting achieved no resolution to the issue.

Despite centuries of subjugation by larger neighbours—Joseon Korea, Imperial Japan, and South Korea—Jeju island society has maintained a distinct identity and a measure of autonomy. Relations with both Korea and Japan have at times had devastating effects on the islanders, but also contributed to the dynamism of Jeju island society and opened up new routes for islanders to continue traveling as a vital part of their social life.

Tension in and around Okinawa rises. The Abe Shinzo government repeatedly assures Washington that the base it promises to construct for the US Marine Corps at Henoko in Northern Okinawa will proceed, come what may. The process of construction of a massive new military facility on a region that is at Okinawan law reserved for the very highest level of protection for its rich biodiversity is described in joint US-Japan communiques as “commitment to reducing the base hosting impact on Okinawa.” In plain English, this means that Henoko construction has been made a condition for the return of the existing Futenma Marine Air Station in Ginowan City, upon whom, as a result, the “burden” would be lessened. Yet from 1996 to today, Okinawa has consistently and effectively resisted all such attempts.

What follows is an account of a return visit to Tiananmen Square in commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the peaceful demonstrations and violent crackdown that I witnessed in Beijing in 1989.

Initially I had planned to go to Hong Kong, as I had been invited to join the well-publicized commemoration in Victoria Park where the people of Hong Kong have held a candlelight vigil for the lost souls and lost dreams of 1989 on an annual basis for a quarter of a century now. In past years I have marched with the conscientious objectors of Hong Kong, lit candles in the warm tropical air and drawn strength from the distant but principled and persistent expression of solidarity with the uprising at Tiananmen.

Japan is more fluid than it has been in years. The end of Japan's “nejire kokkai” (“divided Diet)” via Abe's resounding win in the July 21 Upper House elections was hailed in many circles in Japan and internationally as heralding three years of stability in government. But perhaps this sense of stability has very weak foundations.

Despite its far-reaching influence (for better and for worse), the doctrine of karmic cause-and-effect is hardly the only religious resource on which modern Japanese have drawn to grapple with suffering and evil. Reflecting on the devastating aftermath of the 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear catastrophe in and around Fukushima, Brian Victoria describes some of the religious ideas and practices that have continued to shape Japanese responses to disaster. Buddhist temples hold a virtual monopoly on the Japanese funeral industry, but Buddhist doctrine - which affirms suffering as a feature of all experience - also offers a framework within which to make sense of pain and loss. Yet, as he notes, the Buddhist tradition is not alone in this respect. Not only do Shinto shrines join Buddhist temples in offering protective rituals and amulets designed to avert catastrophe, but Shinto religious ideas provide a framework for understanding and reacting to disaster, if not always in the most socially progressive fashion. He finds that, like the Buddhist law of karma, the Shinto notion of ritual impurity (tsumi) has led to regrettable cases of discrimination, as those exposed to the “pollution” of radiation are shunned by society. Yet these unfortunate instances are matched by inspiring stories of those, like the abbot of Joenji temple in Fukushima, whose religious commitments have led him to compassionate service.

US military bases south of Kadena are slated to be returned to Okinawa, although that is only to happen at various times up to “2028 or later,” and their environmental restoration is an important local issue. Article IV (1) of the US-Japan SOFA (Status of Forces Agreement) is understood to exempt the polluter, namely the US Government, from the responsibility for environmental restoration. Although the US-ROK SOFA includes the same article, both the US and the Republic of Korea (ROK) Governments understand that the US Government bears some measure of responsibility for environmental restoration. This paper examines this difference between Japan and Korea in the interpretation of SOFA and makes some recommendations, based on the Korean experience, for environmental restoration of US military bases in Okinawa.

This is the text of an interview with Kinjo Shigeaki (85) about his experience as a survivor of the compulsory mass suicides which occurred on Tokashiki Island, Okinawa in late March 1945. The interview took place on April 23rd 2014.

I am from the Kerama Islands, about 30 km off the coast of Naha, the capital of Okinawa. There are about 10 islands in the group.