The Japanese government announced on 15 December 2009 that it was postponing indefinitely any decision on the contentious issue of a “Replacement Facility” for the Futenma Marine base in Okinawa. The decision to make no decision was low-key and at first glance may seem inconsequential. Its symbolic importance, however, is huge, signalling a possible changing of the tide of history in East Asia, above all in the US-Japan relationship.

I had warned that a major earthquake would strike the Chuetsu region around Kashiwazaki, Niigata Prefecture, and about the fundamental vulnerability of nuclear power plants.

The 6.8 magnitude temblor of July 16 caused considerable damage to the Kashiwazaki Kariwa Nuclear Power plant operated by Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), proving me right.

Japan Focus introduction. China's share in international trade more than tripled from less than 2% in 1985 to about 7% in 2005. By 2004, China was the world's third largest exporter and it is expected to become the leader by the beginning of the next decade. Gaulier, Lemoine and Ünal-Kesenci provide new perspective on China's surge and its repercussions for the restructuring of Asian and world economy and trade.

This report consists of two related articles. Jeff Kingston reports on Japan's Kashiwazaki nuclear disaster and Japanese plans to sell nuclear power technology to Indonesia. This is followed by Tom Hyland's report on Indonesian plans to build nuclear power plants.

In Japan, Kashiwazaki has come to mean “close call”. On July 16 a 6.8 magnitude trembler jolted beneath the world's largest nuclear power complex in a place that was not supposed to have a fault. This earthquake serves as a vivid reminder of the risks generated by nuclear power, especially in zones of seismic risk like Indonesia.

Approaching the 60th anniversary of the opening of the Tokyo Tribunal in 2006, public opinion was divided over Prime Minister Koizumi's visits to Yasukuni Shrine. One reason for opposition to the visit was that Tokyo Tribunal Class A war criminals are enshrined there.

On August 15 1985, then Prime Minister Nakasone Yasuhiro, despite strong domestic and international criticism, carried out an official visit to Yasukuni. The government later acknowledged during parliamentary questioning that it had accepted the verdict of the Tokyo Tribunal through the San Francisco Peace Treaty. As a result, Prime Minister Nakasone refrained from further visits to the shrine from the following year. Though aware of these historical developments, Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro has persisted in visiting Yasukuni Shrine since his assumption of office in 2001. In 2005, he again visited the shrine in the face of strong criticism in Japan and abroad. Conservative newspapers like the Sankei Shinbun take the view that “visiting the shrine is not a Treaty violation.” This argument, however, is not in the least compelling. [1]

On 30 July, 2007, social and political critic, novelist and political activist Oda Makoto died in Japan at the age of 75. Throughout his life, he published numerous essays and more than 100 books including some thirty novels. Two of his novels, Hiroshima and Gyokusai (The Breaking Jewel), have been translated into English and dramatized for a BBC radio program and broadcast worldwide. In Japan, however, he is remembered above all as the political activist who founded and led Beheiren (Japan Peace-for-Vietnam Citizen's Alliance), a major grassroots movement against the Vietnam War, which gained extraordinary popular support in the 1960s and 1970s.

In February 2007, agreement was reached at the Six Party talks in Beijing on the parameters for resolution of the North Korean nuclear issue. The frame was one of comprehensive settlement of one of the long unresolved legacies of the 20th century and the prospect it opened was for a new, diplomatic, military, political, and economic order.

This paper asks why the settlement has taken so long to reach, considers the major obstacles to its implementation, and assesses its prospects. It argues that to understand the “North Korea Problem” close attention has to be paid to the “America Problem” and the “Japan Problem.” It suggests that, while North Korean strategic objectives have been consistent through the decade and a half of crisis, the US and Japan have vacillated, torn between conservative, neo-conservative, and reactionary forces on the one hand and “realists” on the other. The US strategic shift of February heralds the dawn of a 21st century Northeast Asian order; whether that dawn is to prove a true or false one should be clear by year's end.

On May 21, 2009, lay citizens will join professional judges in deciding the fate of suspects of major crimes in Japan's new saibanin or lay assessor system.[1] This system, laudable for pursuing public understanding and reform in a judiciary long criticized for being distant and overly bureaucratized, contains provisions that could do as much harm as good. Among causes for concern, the new law contains a harsh secrecy provision that stands out as a potential source of problems. This provision, which threatens to imprison or fine citizens who speak too freely about their service as lay assessors, will make reporting misconduct difficult and chill the public discourse that the system ostensibly aims to foster. Such secrecy may also inflict significant psychological harm upon those affected by the disturbing details of a criminal trial. These potential ramifications should be taken into consideration as Japan makes its way through this new world of lay participation.

Mizushima Kazue has blended the world of avant garde experimental music and dance with an adaptation of a simple children's toy.

When installation sound artist Mizushima Kazue shows off her ‘orchestra’ in a makeshift studio in Tokyo, it is a shock to discover that the only instrument is what looks like a giant clothesline strung with thread and coffee cups. But then this slight elf of a woman slips on a pair of white gloves and begins to pluck at the strings of the clothesline, and a pitch-perfect version of the Beatles’ ‘Yesterday’ fills the room.

There is a rumor in Japan that Aso Taro, former Prime Minister and present Deputy Prime Minister, never reads real books but only cartoon books: manga. It is said that when he was PM he kept a stash of these in the back of his official car so he could read them going to and from meetings and other duties. If these rumors are true, they would go a long way toward explaining his recent gaffe. On 29 July this year, speaking before an ultra-rightist audience on the subject of Constitutional amendment, he said, according to the Asahi Shinbun's summary, It should be done quietly. One day everybody woke up and found that the Weimar Constitution had been changed, replaced by the Nazi Constitution. It changed without anyone noticing. Maybe we could learn from that. No hullabaloo.

Most coverage of the plight of Fukushima Daiichi workers has rightly focused on the dangers of radiation exposure. On June 20, it was announced that another worker, the ninth since the crisis began in March, may have exceeded 250 mSv of radiation exposure, the absolute limit in emergency situations. One individual is reported to have been exposed to over 500 mSv. 115 have been exposed to more than 100 mSv. The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare and TEPCO are cooperating to organize health checks for Fukushima Daiichi workers, but it is unlikely that this will mitigate serious health problems, including dramatically increased risk of cancer. It is also unclear how potentially much more dangerous internal radiation exposure is being measured.

Why did the Japan Coast Guard, on September 7th, arrest a Chinese fishing boat captain and detain his ship, setting off the most serious China-Japan conflict in decades? Investigative journalist Tanaka Sakai offers no definitive answer in the following historically-and geopolitically-informed analysis of the roots of the conflict. His detailed analysis of the China-Japan Fisheries Agreement and the implementation of this and other agreements, does show, definitively, that the Japanese action marked a striking departure from policies that have been in effect since at least 1978 when China and Japan resumed diplomatic relations and Deng Xiaoping crafted an agreement to defer action on competing claims to the Senkaku/Diaoyutai islands. Writing ten days after the incident, Tanaka observed that “The Senkaku Islands, along with the Nansha Islands and the Yellow Sea, has been upgraded to a world-level maritime dispute in which China and countries around it, with US support, confront one another.” He locates the incident, and its potentially far-reaching, even disastrous consequences, in the changing politics of Japan's Democratic Party administration, and US policies pertaining to Japan, China and Korea. With the release of the Chinese captain, and with the US-ASEAN call for negotiation to assure the safety of shipping in the South China Sea, it is appropriate to revisit the incident and locate it within the broader parameters of the geopolitics of the Asia-Pacific. Mark Selden

The original Godzilla film was produced in 1954 and released in November that year, only nine years after the end of the Pacific War. The same production team produced a sequence of 22 Godzilla films between 1954 and 1995, and six more films were created in the years 1995 to 2004 by a different production team. The original Godzilla film, Godzilla, and its first sequel, Godzilla Raids Again produced in 1955, were the result of close cooperation between Producer Tanaka Tomoyuki, Director Honda Ishiro, Special Effects Director Tsuburaya Eiji, and scriptwriter Koyama Shigeru.

[Christian Caryl provides a timely, lucid and quite sobering summary of Japan's growing diplomatic isolation. Governed by an elite largely content to rely on the obviously asymmetrical partnership with the United States, Japan has made little serious effort to put behind it conflicts with its major neighbors China and Korea. The roots of these conflicts lie in Japanese aggression and colonization in the Pacific War. But they are repeatedly nourished by a noxious nationalism played out in successive Yasukuni Shrine visits by the Prime Minister and the continuing textbook controversy over the treatment of the war and war crimes. We believe that it is essential to locate these issues in relation to other material, political and diplomatic conflicts which keep the issues red hot. These other conflicts include territorial issues such as the Tokdo/Takeshima Islands (with Korea) and the Diaoyutai/Senkaku Islands (with China). The latter is made particularly explosive by the presence of oil and gas reserves in the region. Perhaps more important is the issue of Japan's military and geopolitical choices concerning the United States. The Koizumi regime's bet would appear to be that giving the US what it demands in Iraq (SDF forces) and especially on base issues (in Okinawa and the main islands), and lashing its security future to American military power, assures it diplomatic impunity in the region. Beyond its faults at the normative level, this America-first strategy appears particularly inapt at a time when other nations such as China and South Korea are gaining strength and reaching out far more proactively to neighboring states. The Koizumi regime's bet is one that may cost Japanese enterprises dearly in future contract bids in China, Korea and beyond. It assuredly poses a major obstacle to the achievement of a cooperative zone in Northeast Asia. Japan Focus]

This article was originally written for a Japanese audience. My purpose was to inform them of the developments leading up to the passage of the “comfort women” resolution in the House of Representatives. I did not, therefore, devote much space to describe the tireless efforts made by Japanese scholars, lawyers, and activists who have long kept the “comfort women” issue alive. Their dedication to the historical truth and the victims resulted in such accomplishments as the creation of Women's Active Museum on War and Peace in Tokyo and the 56 consecutive issues of the “The Report on Japan's War Responsibility” published by the Center for Research and Documentation of Japan's War Responsibility.

One morning this September, Mantani Yoshiyuki, Yamamoto Mineteru and Hirano Isamu were told by prison wardens they would shortly be dead. As is common under Japan's death penalty system, the three men, all in their sixties, were given about an hour to get their affairs in order before being blindfolded and hanged. Their deaths brought the total number of people executed in Japan this year to 13 and ended any hope by anti-death penalty advocates that new justice minister Yasuoka Okiharu might slow the pace of executions. Two more executions on October 28 brought the number this year to 15, the largest number in 33 years according to the Japan Death Penalty Information Center.

Contrary to established opinion, the gravest threats to America's national security are still in Russia. They derive from an unprecedented development that most US policy-makers have recklessly disregarded, as evidenced by the undeclared cold war Washington has waged, under both parties, against post-Communist Russia during the past fifteen years.

The March 11, 2011 Tōhoku Earthquake and the tsunami it generated was a classic case of natural hazards such as severe ground motion and seismic sea waves coming into contact with human society to produce a multi-dimensional natural disaster. Throughout Japanese history, writers often initially referred to such events as “unprecedented.” As time passed, other commentators would point out that in fact such events were “normal” in that they occurred repeatedly in the past. Similarly, this paper seeks to provide historical context for the recent disaster in two broad senses. First, I examine the earthquake and tsunami as part of a long, ongoing sequence of geological events. Then I focus on the human reaction to earthquake-tsunami combinations similar to those of 2011, with particular attention to events that took place in the modern era.