The rather heterogeneous state of populism research on Japan and the potentially populist quality of the new political party Reiwa Shinsengumi are the two key points addressed in this paper. Based on a summary of dominant concepts of populism and the pertinent research on Japan I argue for an ideational approach to make Japan more accessible to comparative efforts. Using Reiwa Shinsengumi as an example, I conclude that there is little populism to be found and suggest that future research needs to look for explanations why Japan is apparently different in this respect from other mature liberal democracies.

After the worst drought in a century on the Mekong, Southeast Asia's largest lake, Tonle Sap, saw a late high-water season that further devastated its ecology. Decades of dambuilding on the Lancang have removed sediment crucial to the health of Tonle Sap and the lack of reliability in the flood pulse is damaging to the region's economy and agriculture. Similarly, flood control dams and large hydropower projects such as the Nam Ou Cascade have put further strain on the most productive freshwater fishery in Asia. In addition to the development of large mainstream dams from the Himalayas to Laos, recent data suggests that China has intentionally held back water resources from downriver countries.

The 3.11 disaster revealed many shortcomings in Japan’s mass media organisations and government, the most prominent arguably being the poor handling of the disaster by central government and TEPCO, including miscommunication and delays in releasing accurate data on the dispersal of radioactive materials. The lack of transparency in mass media coverage of the nuclear meltdown and levels of radiation resulted in growing distrust among the public, who turned to online sources and social media to confirm or challenge information provided by the mass media.

Based on in-depth interviews with 38 Japanese individuals, this study explores individual perceptions of media credibility in a disaster context and in the present, elaborating how changes in trust in media intersects with the changes and dynamics in media use and how the 3.11 disaster continues to influence media use and perceptions of credibility today. The main findings of the study suggest that in the wake of the unprecedented national disaster, Japanese media users moved from using traditional mass media as their sole source of news to a personalised, inter-media environment which integrates both online and traditional modes of communication without replacing traditional media players. This further facilitated the practice of seeking and evaluating information and media credibility through new media forms of connectivity such as social media platforms and news websites.

This article addresses the return of popular protests in Hong Kong in 2020, after the government's adoption of emergency measures to address the COVID-19 pandemic in Hong Kong and following calls by the Chinese Communist Party for the government to take a much more repressive stance against protests. The pandemic has also accelerated the downturn in U.S.-China relations. The article reviews the parallel, and at times intersecting, evolution of popular protests and pandemic control measures in Hong Kong. It also outlines the ways in which the 2019 protests were departures from previous protest cycles.