Takeda Shinpei was invited to create an art installation at Centro Nacional de las Artes, located in Mexico City. This chapter is a vivid telling of Takeda's process working on this piece, part of his Alpha Decay series which foregrounds voice vibrations of survivors of the U.S. atomic bombings. Takeda details the ways in which he drew from his own memories of adolescence, reckoned with voices of the “hibakusha,” and channeled these complex and haunting intersections through his body into his art. Takeda thus weaves a powerful yet honest and vulnerable narrative that shares reflections on method and ethical praxis.

Muslim migrants in Japan suffer from the lack of access to burial grounds when 99.9% of the nation is cremated. Muslims are usually met with opposition from the local community where cemetery construction is planned. Using ethnographic data, the study shows how Muslim associations inadvertently fail to respect the codes of Japanese rurality when seeking a cemetery in a community to which they do not have membership, leading to a conflict. This paper closes with policy prescriptions for the central government in ensuring the cultural rights of immigrant minorities in Japan.

J. Mark Ramseyer's 2020 article “Contracting for Sex in the Pacific War” provoked numerous highly critical responses from the general public and the scholarly community. Our group composed a report that analyzed the article and concluded that it should be retracted because it misused and distorted evidence. After more than two years of investigation, during which Ramseyer published a response to his critics, the editors of the International Review of Law & Economics decided not to retract the article, but to keep a statement of concern attached to the final published version. In this follow-up report, we explore the legacy of the original article as it relates to problems of academic integrity and historical denialism in public discourse. We highlight Ramseyer's persistent strategies of obfuscation and suggest how historians might continue to address the problem of deliberately misleading scholarship masquerading as “academic freedom.”

In this paper, I look into the lesser-known history of “comfort women” in the Philippines. I engage with the following questions: how did the trafficking and sexual exploitation of Filipino women emerge as part of state policy in the Japanese Empire? How was it dealt with in the aftermath of the war, especially in the face of shifting post-war alliances and the changing place of Japan in the geo-politics of the Cold War? How did events in the international arena, in turn, affect diplomatic relations between the Philippines and Japan, specifically with respect to aid and trade? Finally, how did the market forces at play affect state policy in the Philippines?

“The Dog with Vanishing Spots” is a 1939 work of detective fiction by Miyano Murako. One of only a few women writers of detective fiction in the prewar period, Miyano presents a work in tune with the state of the genre during its Golden Age, while also displaying the interest in character psychology that figured prominently into her writings. The result is a mystery of lost dogs, stolen jewels and murder in the continental city of Dairen, all centered on a character that just might be the lone instance of a teenage female sleuth in Japan's prewar detective fiction canon.

Raising awareness about the extent of sexual violence in Japan and the damage inflicted on individuals is essential to change the status quo. This article draws on quantitative and qualitative data to reveal the reality of sexual violence and victimization, which has been poorly understood and largely ignored in Japanese society. The quantitative data is drawn from a landmark 2022 survey of sexual victims conducted by NHK that collected over 38,000 responses. Raising awareness about the harm caused by sexual violence is necessary, but not enough. It is a scourge that is symptomatic of Japan's patriarchal social system where attitudes, norms, values, and practices render many people marginal and vulnerable to abuse. This includes the social norms of “masculinity” and “femininity,” the education system, the labor market structure, and a tax and social security system based on a division of labor that reinforces a strict division of gender roles. Due to the harmful consequences of widespread sexual violence on people and the economy, it is incumbent on the government to offer more support for relevant services, especially civil society organizations that have been playing a key role in helping victims. In this pivotal transition from ignoring to addressing sexual violence, it is also essential to engage the police and judicial officials in ways that enhance sensitivity towards victims, and to take actions that increase accountability.

Rabson discusses the new book, Base Towns: Local Contestation of the U.S. Military in Korea and Japan with the author, Claudia Junghyun Kim, who traces contentious politics surrounding twenty U.S. military bases across Japan and Korea—two of the largest U.S. base hosts in the world. Kim's book focuses on the municipalities hosting these bases and differing levels of community acceptance and resistance over time. The following excerpt from the book introduces key actors who shape base-community relations and their many twists and turns.