This article interrogates the ways in which two political books written by elites in the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (CDP) take different tacks to represent their party as trustworthy, responsible, and competent against the background of the liberal opposition's political difficulties since 2012. Focusing on two books published in the lead-up to the 2021 general election by former Prime Minister Kan Naoto and then-leader of the CDP Edano Yukio, it argues that the liberal opposition parties in Japan are, on top of the more commonly understood institutional pressures, constrained by demands that the narrative is a conventionally satisfying one when crafting claims about their viability as an alternative to government.

This article chronicles how two commercial TV stations in Toyama Prefecture exposed deep links between politicians and the Unification Church. It discusses how a local community of investigative journalists with close ties to adherents and politicians revealed ways the church and lawmakers cooperated on electioneering and policymaking, and it analyzes how their exposés were taken up in national-level coverage. Through a self-reflexive consideration of complex relationships between broadcasters, church representatives, and elected officials in Toyama, I affirm that attending to local media is vital for understanding ways religion and politics are narrated.

Japan's ruling class's wartime project of militarisation and imperialist domination is well-documented in the English language but the active resistance of the working class and general population is less well-known. Sugiura Masao's Against the Storm covers the activities of printworkers in the period of Japan's increasing militarisation, particularly from the Marco Polo Bridge incident of 7 July 1937 to the surrender in 1945. Further context is provided with reference to earlier periods, times when legislation had begun to place restrictions on the political and civil rights of the population.

This essay discusses Hun Sen's rise and longevity by examining the former Khmer Rouge battalion leader's emergence from the fall of Democratic Kampuchea in 1979 and subsequent steady consolidation of political power in the years since he took over as Prime Minister of the People's Republic of Kampuchea (1985–89) and the State of Cambodia (1989–93). The essay explores how he accomplished an autocratic coup de grâce by ousting political rivals and then attempted to forge autocratic legitimation via self-mythologization and appeals to royal imagery. Through these means and heavy-handed repression, Hun Sen today has come to hold virtually unchecked, unmediated political power over a country that is still searching for the truth in its fraught post-independence history.

Recently, adherents of the lay religious organization Soka Gakkai have taken to the streets and the Internet to rebuke Komeito, the junior member of the ruling government coalition and the party founded by Soka Gakkai, for abandoning peace advocacy. This article places the recent protests in historical and doctrinal context as it introduces perspectives from within Soka Gakkai to complicate easy assumptions about adherents' ideology, and it suggests ways to determine how Soka Gakkai political activism may take shape in the near future.

This article examines the forces behind former Jakarta governor Basuki Tjahaja Purna's recent imprisonment and the subsequent political upheaval in Indonesia. It delves into the murky ties between President Donald Trump's most important Indonesian business partner, multi-billionaire Hary Tanoesodibjo and the latter's relationship with pro-Islamist politicians and the military to evaluate the consequences of political turmoil on the future of Indonesia.

This article assesses local tensions that plague the U.S.-centered hub-and-spokes security framework in the Western Pacific region, which finds its most concrete expression in increasingly vulnerable legacy installations. I start by considering how people living outside the fence in places like Guam and Okinawa have tended to see the U.S. military, while summarizing global trends in U.S. base expansion and contraction outside of the continental United States (OCONUS). I tie this past to the most common dilemmas of global basing manifesting today, explain how these dilemmas have been understood, and highlight core concerns undergirding most base protest cultures. In the absence of sweeping policy changes to legal structures that disenfranchise militarized civilians in the most heavily fortified islands in the U.S. global base network, changing the way recent history is represented at U.S. controlled public sites could catalyze meaningful change within perennially troubled relationships between the U.S. military and overburdened host communities.

Since the July 2022 assassination of former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, Japan has seen a flood of media and legal responses to connections between religion and politics. However, there has been little analysis to date of how we know what we know about developments in religion, law, and politics in Japan that were precipitated by this shocking event. These articles by Saitō Masami and Ioannis Gaitanidis contribute novel inquiries into local-level journalism and lawyers’ activism through interactions by these two researchers with the people who produce media narratives and legal interpretations. This brief introduction situates their insights within readings of opponents and defenders of the Unification Church who have shaped public discourse on intersections between religion and politics since July 2022.

On 25 March, the Olympic Torch Relay is to set out from Fukushima with its “sacred flame” on a grand national circuit, visiting all 47 of the country's prefectures and arriving at the Tokyo Games venue for the opening ceremony on 23 July. But will this scenario really play out? Even as the countdown to the Olympic opening ceremony proceeds, in the shadow of the 3.11 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster and the Covid pandemic there are reports that cancelation might be imminent.