This article looks at contemporary Japanese nationalism in the context of growing far-right movements within democratic societies around the world, notably in Europe and North America, and the general rejection of the “happy globalization” narrative that has shaped the international order since the end of the Cold War. Japan, which witnessed the birth of the “borderless world” metaphor in the 1990s, is now contributing in its own way to the early twenty-first century worldwide longing for strong borders and an aggressive military posture. The rise of ultra-conservatism in democratic societies cannot be reduced to a “Western problem”; by taking into account the political transformation of a country such as Japan it is possible to consider a truly global phenomenon with far-reaching consequences.

“The mountains are like the bones of the earth. Water is its blood,” wrote a Vietnamese geographer in 1820. Lowland Việt Nam is aquatic, but it is also multiregional and polyethnic. The country's three historic lowland regions are bounded by extensive uplands, all linked by interrelated landscapes, economies, and cultures. Throughout the plains, water plays a key role in the economy and communications. In the north and south, the Red River and the Mekong River form wide deltas and flow into the South China Sea. Linking the two deltas is the central region, many hundreds of miles of curving coastline, broken every twenty miles or so by river mouths and port towns.

“Harvest” is a story about the aftermath of a criticality accident that occurred at the Tokaimura nuclear fuel processing plant in Ibaraki Prefecture on September 30, 1999. Hayashi first learned about the accident from watching the TV news in a hotel room in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the night before she was to visit the Trinity site where the first atomic bomb was tested. After returning from New Mexico, Hayashi visited Tokaimura where she met an old farmer who had refused to evacuate. “Harvest,” which grew out of that meeting, seems eerily prescient today, six years after the Fukushima disaster, for in it, we find the same cloud of misinformation concerning the dangers of radiation, which threatens the survival of a rural community and its way of life.

Over the past decade, China has been greening its electric power system faster and more thoroughly than any other industrial power. In the course of the years 2007 to 2016, China's dependence on thermal power capacity declined from 77% to 64%, and can be expected to tip below 50% within another decade if the trend continues. In terms of electricity generated, the contribution of thermal power has dipped from 82% to 72% over the last decade. But it is also true that China's growth model continues to pump out greenhouse gases. The issue: is the green transformation happening fast enough?

This article explains why the Abe administration's emergency powers proposal will likely be the cutting edge of its attempt to amend the Japanese Constitution, and assesses the consequences of such an amendment for Japan's democracy.