This paper analyzes the animating potential of narrative in Medoruma Shun's Me no oku no mori (In the Woods of Memory, 2009). The novel's narrative structure embodies both the constant circulation of traumatic memories, particularly surrounding sexual violence, and the inevitable gaps in such memories. The text draws the reader in turn into its spiral of telling and re-telling, shifting the burden of narrating history onto countless new witnesses. Moreover, the act of narrating this violent past necessarily entails the acknowledgment of one's own complicity in its violent reverberations in the present.

China operates the world's largest electric power system, which over the course of the 21st century has been consistently greening at the margin, even as the whole energy system and the manufacturing system it powers remain largely black. In this article we update our argument to reveal how in terms of capacity, of electricity generated and of investment, China's electrical system is continuously greening and within less than five years, would be expected to be more green than black in terms of generating capacity. We demonstrate how the sourcing of generating power from hydro, wind and sun is becoming ever more significant, outranking the contribution from nuclear.

Drawing from the author's The Opium Business: A History of Crime and Capitalism in Maritime China (Stanford University Press, 2022), this essay explores China's history as an opium-exporting nation in the early twentieth century. For several decades, southeast coastal China served markets from San Francisco to Manila to Rangoon with illicit opium, morphine, heroin, and cocaine. The essay explains the multiple causes of these developments and argues that this history has been so poorly understood because of its uneasy place within broadly accepted metanarratives about opium, empire, and national victimization.

In recent years, successive Australian governments, in coordination with the United States, have responded to the dramatic rise of China with military and economic policies that directly challenge the possibility of accommodation with China.

The clean energy transition is complicated by material constraints that threaten national security. Idealized proposals for a rapid decarbonization via a greatly accelerated diffusion of solar, wind, battery and other technologies entails massive amounts of critical raw materials (CRM). These CRM include copper, aluminum, cobalt, lithium, graphite, rare earths, and other minerals and metals. In the international debate, CRM are also referred to as “critical minerals,” “critical strategic minerals,” “battery minerals,” “energy transition metals,” and various other terms. The International Energy Agency (IEA) aggressively supports decarbonization, but also warns that zero-carbon scenarios imply that the energy sector's overall demand for CRM could sextuple by 2040. Japan aims for net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2050, and India's net-zero target is two decades later. But like all countries, their CRM supply chains are at present unable to satisfy ambitious goals for deploying solar, wind, battery storage, power transmission, and green hydrogen. Multilateral cooperation is imperative to address the growing challenges of CRM, especially their price volatility, security of supply, and Environment, Social, and Governance (ESG) issues. Building a sustainable and diversified global supply chain is crucial to building security in clean energy. One step in this direction was seen in September 2021, when Japan, India and other members of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or QUAD, signed an agreement for cooperation in procuring rare earths. This paper discusses potential additional cooperation between India and Japan, for bolstering both countries' CRM supply security.

Ken MacLean's Crimes in Archival Form (University of California Press, 2022) explores the many ways in which human rights ‘facts’ are produced rather than found. Using Myanmar as a case study, the book examines the fact-finding practices of a human rights group, two cross-border humanitarian agencies, an international law clinic, and a global campaign led by a nongovernmental organization. Foregrounding fact-finding in critical yet constructive ways prompts overdue conversations about the possibilities and limits of human rights documentation as a mode of truth-seeking. In raising these issues, the book calls on practitioners and scholars alike to be more transparent about how human rights ‘fact’ production works, why it is important, and when its use should prompt concern.

Dutch recognition of Indonesia's sovereignty in December 1949 ended the constraints of colonialism, invasion, and reoccupation. Unions were free to reorganize and workers were free to take collective action to improve their lot in life. A labor movement that had struggled against a repressive colonial regime now flourished. There was freedom of association, freedom of the press, electoral politics with universal suffrage, and above all, the right to engage in industrial action. Eight years later, hopes for a strong labor movement with deep roots in workplaces were dashed, first, by the imposition of military law and then, by the collapse of parliamentary democracy. It was not until Suharto's ‘New Order’ regime collapsed in 1998 that workers regained the freedom of association and to engage in collective action.