2008

• December
• November
• October
• September
• August
• July
• June
• May
• April
• March
• February
• January

• Japan’s Historical Memory: Reconciliation with Asia
  Kazuhiko Togo Introduction Historical issues haunt Japan. The world is facing a crisis, which may become a once in a century depression in the wake of Wall Street’s financial meltdown and the subsequent recession throughout the world. Japan is no exception. At this time of crisis each country must show its resilience to alleviate immediate pain while implementing a long-term policy to strengthen the fundamentals of its economy and society. Japan is asked to come up with a powerful economic policy to overcome its crisis and contribute to global solutions. Barack Obama was elected president of the United States, and expectations are rising not only in the States but throughout the world that the U.S. will confront this challenge effectively. This is a golden opportunity for Japan because the fundamentals of Japan-US relations are solid and much of Obama’s agenda coincides precisely with what the Japanese government has asserted for decades: the necessity for a sustainable global economy, emphasis on the environment, need for a long-term energy policy, serious concern about nuclear disarmament, cooperation through the United Nations and so on. Why not come up with creative ideas to attract the attention of Obama’s new team and consolidate the alliance? [Japanese colonialism]
• Korea in No Hurry to Open Up to Japanese Pop Culture
  Seoul and Tokyo on Thursday discussed a greater opening of Korea to Japanese pop culture imports, but Seoul appeared in no great hurry to make access for entertainment from the former colonial power easier. The culture ministers from the two countries spoke on the sidelines of a three-way meeting with their Chinese counterpart in Jeju on Thursday. [Culture war]
• [Column] Is Lee a member of Aso’s club?
  Kim Hyo-sun, Senior reporter A story broke last week that was noted by the foreign media but not dealt with in great detail in South Korea. The Japanese government acknowledged “for the first time” that in the late stages of the Pacific War, 300 Allied prisoners-of-war were forced into labor at a coal mine affiliated with Aso Mining, which has been run for generations by the family of Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso. According to documents released last Thursday by Yukihisa Fujita, a Democratic Party member of the House of Councillors in the Japanese Diet, a total of 101 British prisoners, 197 Australians and two Dutch were forced to work at the Yoshikuma coal mine POW branch camp in Fukuoka Prefecture for three months beginning in May 1945.
  If they behave this way even on the issue of forced labor of Allied POWs, it would be fruitless to expect any correction of historical mistakes through the Japanese government’s revelation of materials on the forced labor of Koreans. As long as the current LDP administration does not back down, at least, the possibility of any true reckoning of the past by Japan must be viewed as zero. The people who suffered the most in the Aso family’s coal mines during the Japanese Empire were the Koreans. [War crimes] [Japanese colonialism]
• Seoul, Tokyo In Talks for Prime Minister Aso's Visit
  Cheong Wa Dae announced Tuesday that the administration is now in talks with Tokyo regarding a possible state visit by Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso in mid-January. ``The Japanese government has officially made a request to us for a visit to Korea and we are currently discussing the issue," stated Cheong Wa Dae spokesman Lee Dong-kwan. The Japanese prime minister is reportedly asking to visit Seoul between Jan. 10 and 12. The
• Soaring Yen Produces First Trade Deficit in 28 Years as Japanese Authorities Watch the US
  Kosuke TAKAHASHI Japan's currency has gained by almost a quarter against the US dollar this year and a third against the euro, making life even harder for the country's exporters, such as Sony and Toyota. Yet Tokyo is unlikely to halt the rise, out of concern over its relations with the United States, its key ally. Japan's concern to maintain relations with the United States, its closest ally, on an even keel means Tokyo will seek to allow its currency to continue its steady appreciation, despite the profit erosion this causes in the key exporting sector. The Ministry of Finance (MoF) may refrain from selling the yen, say currency strategists, even after the currency has advanced to the highest in 13 years against the US dollar and as many of the country's biggest exporters struggle to maintain profit margins. The yen has advanced 24% versus the US dollar this year, 32% against the euro and 60% against the pound sterling. It traded at 90.25 against the dollar and 123.40 per euro at 5:45pm in Tokyo on Tuesday. It may reach 80 per dollar in one or two months, forecast Umemoto Toru, chief currency analyst in Tokyo at Barclays Capital. Japanese yen rose to 96.63 against the dollar on March 17, 2008 Japan will be criticized internationally, especially by the US, the country's strongest ally, if it acts to stem the currency's gain as US automakers are still on the brink of bankruptcy, said Umemoto. The stronger yen drives up the price of cars imported to the US. [Tribute]
• Facing the Past: War and Historical Memory in Japan and Korea
  Gavan McCormack
  (Korean text also available here) All states have dark secrets, and none finds it easy to confront them. Yet the best assurance that past mistakes and misdeeds will not be repeated is that they be faced, responsibility recognized, and apology and compensation attempted. In Northeast Asia the record on this score is mixed. It was 1995, a half century after the end of the Japanese colonial empire, before Japanese Prime Minister Murayama Tomiichi expressed Japan's regret and apology for the pain and harm done by the four decades of colonialism. A few years later, a similar apology was extended to cover the Comfort Women and in 1998 that apology was explicitly directed to South Korea (by Prime Minister Obuchi).
  The shrillness of the message of Tamogami and other diehards is sharpened by the fact that their brand of so-called conservatism is actually not "nationalist" or "Japan-first"-ism at all. This "conservatism" is better seen as a variant of "USA-first"-ism." Especially since 2001, assigned by the Bush administration the task of turning the US-Japan relationship into a "mature" alliance, Japanese civil and military leaders have done their best to reinforce Japanese military subordination and integration under US command, sending Japanese forces to the Indian Ocean and Iraq, endorsing a much tighter integration of Japan's Defense Forces under US command, removing barriers to their active service on "collective security" missions, and taking preliminary steps towards revising the constitution (as counseled by US government officials). Tamogami had no criticism of the steps taken by "conservative" and "nationalist" governments to deepen Japan's subjection to US regional and global purpose. [Japanese colonialism] [US Japan alliance]
• DPRK Will Not Regard Japan as Party to Six-Party Talks
  Pyongyang, December 6 (KCNA) -- A spokesman for the DPRK Foreign Ministry gave the following answer to the question raised by KCNA Saturday as regards the issue of Japan's participation in the six-party talks: The talks of heads of delegations to the six-party talks are slated to open soon to round off the implementation of the October 3 agreement. It is the main task of the talks to ensure the speed of economic compensation by the five parties to the talks as called for by the principle of "action for action" as it is delayed as compared with the DPRK's speed of disablement and achieve common understanding of the issue of verification. What matters is that Japan persistently and impertinently insists on its participation in the talks though it is refusing to fulfill its commitment despite the fact that the implementation of the October 3 agreement is at its final phase. The six-party talks are participated in by those countries directly interested in the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and the parties to them are, therefore, obliged to fulfill their responsibilities to attain that goal. It is only Japan out of those parties that has not done anything to fulfill its commitment but is still refusing to do so. It is the assertion of Japan that it will not fulfill any commitment related to its economic compensation under the agreement reached at the six-party talks unless there is progress in the solution of the "abduction issue" between the DPRK and Japan. It is the ulterior intention of Japan to bar the denuclearization of the peninsula from coming true and put spurs to its moves to turn itself into a military power under the pretext of the nuclear issue. Such country has neither justification nor qualification to participate in the talks. On the contrary, it only lays a hurdle in the way of achieving the common goal. The October 3 agreement can be implemented without Japan now that other countries beside the parties to the six-party talks are expressing their will to participate in the economic compensation in place of Japan. We will neither treat Japan as a party to the talks nor deal with it even if it impudently appears in the conference room, lost to shame. [Japanese remilitarisation]
• N. Korea to Snub Japan in Nuclear Talks
  With the new round of six-party talks to begin Monday, North Korea said Saturday that it will not treat Japan as a legitimate party to the talks and won’t “deal with” it in the talks. “We will neither treat Japan as a party to the talks nor deal with it even if it impudently appears in the conference room, lost to shame," a spokesman for North Korea's Foreign Ministry was quoted as saying by the North's Korean Central News Agency, Yonhap News reported. The North Korea’s spokesman said Japan should not come to the upcoming fresh round of six-party nuclear talks, accusing Tokyo of failing to do its part for a multilateral denuclearization deal. “Japan is the only country among the participatns in the six-way talks that has not done anything to fulfill its commitment to economic aid," he said. [Six Party Talks]
• Japan's Missile Test-fire Blasted
  Pyongyang, December 2 (KCNA) -- The Japanese reactionaries have recently test-fired "SM-3" aboard Aegis ship Choukai belonging to the Maritime "Self-Defense Force." This was the second of its kind since the first one conducted in the waters off Hawaii in December last year. Minju Joson Tuesday observes in a signed commentary carried in this regard: The moves frantically stepped up by the Japanese reactionaries to build a missile shield under the pretext of someone's "launch of ballistic missile" are aimed at neutralizing the DPRK's self-reliant war deterrent and putting their "strategy of preemptive attack" on the DPRK into practice at any cost. Huge aggressor forces of the U.S. and Japan are deployed in south Korea and in its vicinity and all of their war hardware is targeted on major objects and strongholds of strategic importance in the DPRK. [Missile defense] [Military balance] [Threat]
• Ousted Japan Air Force Chief Calls for Nuclear Weapons Debate
  By Bradley K. Martin Dec. 1 (Bloomberg) -- Japan's former air force chief, forced into retirement for denying World War II aggression against its Asian neighbors, said the country should start a discussion on whether to develop nuclear weapons. "I think there should be debate about this, because nuclear deterrence would be enhanced as a result," Toshio Tamogami, former head of the Air Self Defense Force, told reporters today at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan in Tokyo. Japan, which is bound by a post-war pacifist constitution drafted by the U.S., is a signatory to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso was forced to distance himself from Tamogami after the general published an essay that said Chinese nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek drew Japan into war with China. The essay drew condemnation from China and Tamogami was dismissed on Oct. 31. [Japanese remilitarisation] [Nuclearisation]
• The Cold War Explodes in Kobe—The 1948 Korean Ethnic School “Riots” and US Occupation Authorities
  Mark E. Caprio Summary In March and April 1948 Koreans across Japan rose up in protest after the Japanese government began to enforce an order handed down to them by the American Occupation administration to close Korean ethnic schools. One such protest took place in Kobe on April 24 when Koreans stormed the Hyogo Prefecture offices in an attempt to get the governor to rescind the order to close the four Korean ethnic schools in the prefecture. American and Japanese administrations reacted harshly to the Korean actions. Police arrested thousands of Koreans and inflicted stiff penalties on the incident’s leaders. As was often the case, the Occupation administration misinterpreted Korean intention to keep the schools open as a leftist attempt to disrupt U.S. occupations in Korea and Japan. Here the incident is examined through the eyes of one Occupation employee, Elizabeth Ryan, a 31-year old court reporter who included detailed information on the incident and its participants in personal letters that she sent to her family in the United States.
  As today, the over 650,000 Japan-based Koreans then represented the country’s largest alien population. The arrogant attitude that many Koreans had adopted at the war’s end toward their former colonial masters had gained them a reputation as troublemakers in the eyes of both American and Japanese authorities. Their insistence on educating their children in Korean ethnic schools irked particularly the U.S. administration in at least two ways. Americans first saw their recalcitrance as an insult to U.S. authority as it blatantly defied SCAP orders that they integrate their children into the Japanese school system. Secondly, it demonstrated again the generally uncooperative behavior that Koreans had displayed throughout the duration of the Occupation to date, be it through working in black markets or collaborating with the Japanese Communist Party. To many, the obvious solution to the Korean problem was that they all be sent “home.” Yet, this was not easy for a number of reasons, including the fact that many younger Japan-based Koreans knew of no other home than Japan.
  Their content thus informs us of the general conceptions (and misconceptions) that Occupation and Japanese administrations held toward Koreans in Japan, but also in southern Korea. Furthermore, these perspectives contribute to our understanding of how the United States viewed long-held conflicts between Japanese and Koreans, and the growing political unrest in southern Korea that contributed to the outbreak of civil war in 1950.
  Japanese Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru suggested in a letter to Douglas MacArther that the U.S. administration forcefully return all Koreans who were unable to “contribute to [Japan’s] reconstruction.” MacArthur, sympathized with Yoshida’s general aim to rid Japan of this problem, but was unwilling to force them to do so. He lamented that should he do so they “would have their heads cut off” by the South Korean government as they were all “North Koreans,” in other words, communists. [26]
  From 1947 SCAP initiated what has come to be known as the “reverse course,” the U.S. rolling back occupation policies that promoted democracy and demilitarization in Japan to concentrate efforts on Japan’s economic and political development. These changes were influenced by the Truman Doctrine of March 1947. Truman vowed to “help free peoples to maintain their free institutions and their national integrity against aggressive movements that seek to impose upon them totalitarian regimes.” [31] In Japan, the Truman Doctrine was manifested in SCAP’s purging thousands of suspected leftists from positions of influence, and returning purged Japanese to these positions, including a number of Class A war criminals. It also ended plans to dismantle Japanese conglomerates (zaibatsu) and initiated discussions urging Japanese rearmament. The fear driving these changes was expressed by Director of the Policy Planning Staff George Kennan, who during a March 1948 visit to Japan questioned whether “Japan’s powers of resistance to Communism could be taken for granted.” [32] As China slipped into communism, the United States came to realize the paramount position that Japan would play in East Asian political affairs. SCAP’s order to the Japanese to close Korean ethnic schools, which it believed served as a breeding ground for communist indoctrination, reflected the spirit of this policy reversal. [Zainichi] [Korea War causes]
• Pyongyang Criticizes Tokyo Over 'Politically Motivated Raids'
  As Japanese investigators continue their raids into several offices of the pro-North Korea organization in Tokyo for “financial irregularities,” culminating this week with the arrest of a former senior official, North Korea responded by accusing Japan of launching a politically motivated probe. The arrested former official belonged to the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan, or Chongnyeon. He was nabbed on charges of creating tax reports without a license.

• Tokyo's theme restaurants
  Tokyo won more Michelin stars than Paris in the latest fine dining guide, but for a quirkier taste of the city Chris Michaels looks to its outlandish theme restaurantsChris Michaels guardian.co.uk, Thursday November 27 2008 13.08 GMT Article history Raw ingredients ... try Bloody Mary, Blood Clot or Blood Orange cocktails at Vampire Café. Photograph: Chris Michaels Tokyo can now proudly wear its culinary stars on its shoulder (191 of them, according to the latest Michelin Guide, nearly twice as many as second-place Paris) – but for a real taste of how everyday Japanese dine, look past the sushi to Japan's second great dining specialty: theme restaurants. From medical prisons to maid cafés, they reveal a country given to confusedly mixing cultural contexts, with strange, sometimes laughably inappropriate results.
• LDP panel: Get tougher on N. Korea
  The Yomiuri Shimbun A total ban on money transfers to North Korea and other additional sanctions on the country are being discussed by a special Liberal Democratic Party committee on the issue of Japanese abducted by North Korean agents, The Yomiuri Shimbun learned Friday. After further discussions on the sanctions by LDP lawmakers, the ruling LDP plans to draw up a final list of sanctions and urge the government to implement it. The sanctions discussed by the committee, which is headed by Keiji Furuya, include a ban on transactions between Japanese financial institutions and foreign institutions that have business connections with North Korea and freezing assets of North Korean and North Korea-linked organizations. [Sanctions] [Abductees]
• Lame-goose Japan
  Christoph Neidhart, 14 - 11 - 2008 Geese flying in formation, led by the strongest, this paradigm, taken from classical Chinese poetry, has been used by Japanese scholars to symbolize their nation's leadership in East Asia. With the world financial system in turmoil, no other country is better suited to take leadership in shaping a new financial system than Japan. Yet, the once self-promoted leading goose is grounded, nervously preening its own feathers. The renowned economist Kaname Akamatsu introduced the Flying-Geese-model in the 1930s to justify Japan's colonization of her neighbors. After WWII, he adjusted the model to represent the “alignment of nations along the different stages of development”.
  Here, Japan would be called upon to show creative leadership. But Japan is likely to disappoint
• Maritime Asia and the Future of a Northeast Asia Community
  Wada Haruki Translated by Kyoko Selden I Transcending National Boundaries We are now facing a critical situation. Not just Japan, but the world as a whole is in crisis. With America at the center, globalization is racing ahead, but there are also strong countercurrents with nationalism becoming stronger in various places. In the midst of war and terror, the threat of global warming is becoming clear to all. In this world, I believe that we should advance toward regionalism. In 2003 I hoisted this flag in a book entitled The Common House of Northeast Asia — Declaration of a New Regionalism (?????????-???????) published by Heibonsha. We cannot live by denying the existence of states (kokka ??). However, it is necessary to relativize the nation state and to transcend state boundaries. This means that even as we belong to a state, we belong to a region and to the world. [Globalisation]
• Japan Needs to Talk About What It Will Do for Itself
  By Yukio Okamoto November 13th, 2008 The article is originally published in AJISS-Commentary, an online publication of The Association of the Japanese Institutes of Strategic Studies consisting of four leading Japanese think tanks: Institute for International Policy Studies, The Japan Forum on International Relations, The Japan Institute of International Affairs, and Research Institute for Peace and Security.
  Yukio Okamoto, President of Okamoto Associates, Inc. and a former Special Advisor to two prime ministers, writes, "Rather than further pledges of integration, I believe that advisors to the new American president would be more impressed with Japan's demonstrating a greater self-reliance and autonomy in security affairs."
  The government of Japan should publicly reaffirm also that it has not forgotten the broad lesson of September 11: that under the guise of pious devotion to Islam, desperate and merciless networks of intolerant, international criminals are engaged in a private war against contemporary life. Such a verbal commitment is no substitute for the dispatch of actual forces, of course. However an announcement of a willingness to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the allies in the fight against Al Qaeda and other terrorists will ready the public mind for more advanced legislation. The US public will be looking for indications from US allies of an understanding that the fight against Al Qaeda continues, and that all US allies understand that they have a stake in the fight. Japan, due to its small footprint in terms of actual forces in the field, has an incentive and, I would argue, the duty to vocally and visibly present itself as an unshakable partner in the fight against the terror networks. Japan has so far escaped a direct attack on its citizens on its own soil. We have only been lucky. Taking a stand against terrorism is in the national interest. Not showing support for the United States in the fight could brand Japan with a reputation of being an unresponsive and unwilling ally - a reputation that would pose a threat to Japan's hopes for long-term security and peace. [Japanese remilitarisation]
• WWII Apologists Persist Despite Japanese Policy
  By Blaine Harden Washington Post Foreign Service Monday, November 3, 2008; Page A17 TOKYO, Nov. 2 -- Once again, a Japanese official with nationalist sympathies -- in this case, the head of the air force -- has glossed over the Asian suffering caused by Japan during World War II. Once again, China and South Korea -- principal victims of Japan's wartime depredations -- have expressed shock and anger. And once again, the government in Tokyo has restated its official policy, which is that Japan deeply regrets and apologizes for its wartime aggression. [Japanese colonialism]
• An Enclave of Brazilians Is Testing Insular Japan
  By NORIMITSU ONISHI Published: November 1, 2008 TOYOTA CITY, Japan — Facing labor shortages back in 1990 but ever wary of allowing in foreigners, Japan made an exception for Japanese-Brazilians. With their Japanese roots, names and faces, these children and grandchildren of Japanese emigrants to Brazil would fit more easily in a society fiercely closed to outsiders, or so the reasoning went. In the two decades since then, despite periodic economic downturns like the current one, the number of Japanese-Brazilian workers in Japan has kept growing. They are clustered in industrial regions dotted with factories supplying familiar companies like Honda, Sanyo and Toyota, whose headquarters gave this city in central Japan its name. [Remigration]

• How the Japanese Paparazzi Get N.Korea's Royal Family
  National Intelligence Service Director Kim Sung-ho told lawmakers that a Japanese news report Monday about the son of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il visiting a neurosurgeon in Paris was accurate. Earlier this year, Japan’s TBS also filmed Kim Jong-nam (37) in Macao, and in June 2006, Fuji TV reported on a trip to Germany by Kim Jong-chul (27), the North Korean leader’s second son. The overseas travels of the North Korean "royal family" are treated as top secrets in the communist country. How is the Japanese media able to find out? One intelligence officer said such information would be impossible to obtain without the help of intelligence agencies, no matter how good at reporting a news organization may be. The Japanese media are believed to be acting on tip-offs from Japanese, Chinese or American intelligence sources. Help from Chinese security officials is also likely. Travel abroad from Pyongyang requires stopovers in Beijing, so there is a possibility that Chinese authorities provided information regarding the eldest son
• Japan as Spoiler in the Six-Party Talks: Single-Issue Politics and Economic Diplomacy Towards North Korea
  Maaike Okano-Heijmans Abstract This paper analyzes Japan’s concerns, as well as its prioritization and leverage points, in multilateral negotiations on North Korea’s nuclear programme within the Six-Party Talks. It argues that Japan has deliberately taken an obstructionist stance in multilateral negotiations and that three issues are relevant to understanding Japan’s actions: Japan's close relations with the US, its preference for economic rather than political diplomacy, and the dominance of single-issue politics influenced by domestic political considerations. In the Six-Party Talks, Japan has played a largely circumstantial role in the practical sense while being a powerful spoiler in broader, strategic terms. Tokyo wants a denuclearized Korean Peninsula and a stable neighbour, but a Six-Party Talks solution – which would enhance China’s standing – is in itself not a priority. Moreover, Pyongyang provides a welcome justification to the Japanese government for the enhancement of its security capabilities. Japanese interests are well served by retaining the status quo, which explains why Tokyo consciously adopted the role of spoiler. After the Bush administration removed North Korea from its list of terrorism sponsoring states, this position appears no longer sustainable.
• KCNA Dismisses False Reports Released by Japanese Newspapers
  Pyongyang, October 23 (KCNA) -- The Japanese newspapers Yomiuri Shimbun and Sankei Shimbun recently reported that the DPRK instructed its diplomats in foreign countries to be on standby for the possible "announcement of crucial measure." This is a whopping lie. The DPRK has never thought of making such an announcement nor issued any instruction concerning it.
• Japan's Moves to Grab Tok Islet Assailed by North and South
  Pyongyang, October 18 (KCNA) -- The Central Committee of the Korean Buddhist Federation, the south Korea-Japan Buddhist Welfare Association and the Memorial Society for the Monument to the Victory in the Battle in the Northern Area of Korea issued a joint statement on Oct. 18 to accuse Japan of its moves to grab Tok Islet.
• Japan in the American Imperium: Rethinking Security
  Peter J. Katzenstein
  A succession of weak Japanese Prime Ministers, the drama of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the current global financial crisis once again have returned the subject of Japanese security policy to a position of relative political marginality. [*] Throughout the Cold War, the analysis of Japanese security was a topic largely overlooked by both American students of Japan and by students of national security. Japan, after all, was the country that had adopted a Peace Constitution with its famous Article 9 interpreted as legally banning the use of armed force in the defense of national objectives. Its professional military had little public standing and was under the thumb of civilians. And Japan’s grand strategy aimed at gaining power and prestige and sought to leverage its economic prowess to a position of regional and perhaps global leadership that would complement rather than rival that of the United States. At the same time Japan relied on the continued protection by the U.S. military. To be sure, since the late 1970s the U.S. government persistently pressed Japan to play a larger regional role in Asia and to spend more of its rapidly growing GDP on national defense. But Japan made no more than marginal concessions. On security issues it kept a low regional profile, and since the late 1980s Japanese defense spending consistently stayed below one percent of GDP. Writing on problems of Japanese national security, thus, was left to policy specialists issuing regular conference reports on the ups and downs of the U.S.–Japan bilateral defense relationship. Theoretically informed scholarship was conspicuous by its absence. [US Japan Relations] [Imperialism] [China-Japan relations] [China rise]
• The Okinawan Alternative to Japan’s Dependent Militarism
  Gavan McCormack
  1) Okinawa as Periphery and Centre Okinawa is simultaneously Japan’s periphery and its centre. It is peripheral for obvious geographical reasons, being much closer to the China coast and Taiwan than to Tokyo, but it is also peripheral in the historical sense that its links with the main Japanese islands, and eventually with the modern Japanese state, have been thin, fraught, and relatively recent. Only belatedly incorporated as a prefecture in the Japanese state in the late 19th century, it was then excised from it between 1945 and 1972, and only half restored to it in 1972, since the US bases remained intact. It has continued since then to be governed as if the US-Japan Security Treaty mattered more than the Japanese peace constitution, half-in and half-out of the country, so to speak. Though thus peripheral, Okinawa is also “central” in that it constitutes the fulcrum on which the key security relationship between the US and Japan rests. [US Japan Relations]
• Japan in a post-U.S. world
  By Robert Dujarric Saturday, Oct. 18, 2008 Special to The Japan Times Besides the economic damage, the global financial crisis has dangerous strategic implications for Japan. Since 1945, the world has been organized along U.S.-centric lines. By providing security guarantees to its allies, Washington has supplied an international public good to the entire planet. Even countries not aligned with the United States, such as China or Russia, benefit from this U.S.-led regime which generally keeps the peace in key regions of the globe.
  This in turns makes possible an international trade and investment system that is conducive to economic growth. Therefore, the U.S. performs on a global scale the same role as the Tokyo police do locally by providing us with a public good — namely safe streets — thanks to which we can enjoy productive lives free of crime.
  Unfortunately, America's capability to offer these public services has been impaired. First, the Iraq war and the failure of U.S. policy in the rest of southwest Asia have severely undermined U.S. power. Second, the financial crisis weakens the U.S. The inability of the U.S. government to craft a swift and coherent response to the subprime collapse, the withering of the authority of the president and the pathetic performance of both parties in Congress, gave the (accurate) impression that there was no one at the helm in Washington. Recent measures have only partially restored American credibility. [Strategic incoherence] [Decline] [Imperialism]
• Tables turned in Japanese and US financial markets
  Author: Luke Nottage In 2003, financial journalist Gillian Tett wrote a book with a self-explanatory title: Saving the Sun: How Wall Street Mavericks Shook Up Japan’s Financial World and Made Billions (Harper Collins). It epitomized a school of thought proclaiming a dramatic shift in Japan towards US-style corporate governance more generally. On 24 September, still writing for the Financial Times, Tett concluded that if she were writing her book again, she “would give it a more upbeat slant. Anyone know the Japanese for ‘eating humble pie’?”. The Japan Society of Scotland has already suggested “sunao ni ayamaru (to apologise obediently without protesting)” or “memboku wo ushinau (to lose face)”! Japan’s big financial institutions are certainly now back on the world stage, picking up some big pieces from America’s own financial crisis. And Japanese policy-makers and other commentators now want to lecture the US on how to deal with it. Who would have thought, even a year ago, that Nomura Securities would be buying up the now-insolvent Lehman Brothers’ operations in Asia (including those in Australia, involving a total 3000 employees – with half in Tokyo) and then Europe (2500 employees)? And for just US$225m and “a nominal sum”, respectively, out of cash reserves of almost $6b Nomura has raised since April? [Decline]
• The comic fanatic now running Japan
  Michael Fitzpatrick The Guardian, Monday October 6 2008 Article history For a country that counts a cartoon cat among its ambassadors, Japan's new prime minister Taro Aso seems like an obvious choice. The 68-year-old, LSE-educated Aso boasts a voluminous manga and anime collection, is said to read around 10-20 comics a week, and has become an instant hero among Japan's subculture of manga-obsessives (or otaku, as they are known). He even sparked a market surge in manga-related shares when it looked likely that he would capture the top job in the world's second largest economy. And there couldn't be a better spokesman for the otaku. Aso is a self-assured, rich, wisecracking aristocrat who believes his fellow otaku and their manga and anime related obsessions can lift Japan out of its current economic hole. It's what's being called "soft power" - the diplomatic and economic clout of a nation's pop culture. In this case it is Japan's formidable comic-based culture that has conquered the youth of the west in spectacular fashion, starting with Pokemon.   [Softpower] [Media]

• Concerns about Japan’s new prime minister
  [Editorial] Taro Aso was chosen as Japan’s new prime minister in an election yesterday by that country’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party. Tomorrow he will be officially inaugurated, and he plans to use the wave of public opinion he is riding to dissolve the Diet’s House of Representatives and hold elections in October or November. It is not entirely improbable that he could, depending on the outcome of the election, be in office for a very short time. Nevertheless we feel compelled to express our concern about a Japan led by Aso, because the fact that he is popular not only within the LDP but also among the general public is, in our view, a reflection of the atmosphere in Japan today. There has been discord between Japan and Korea even under Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, when the Japanese government ordered that textbooks present Dokdo as Japanese territory. Relations are still hurting as a result, so to have an individual with an ultra-right, nationalist world view like Aso take the stage makes it probable that it is going to be even harder to improve relations.
• Japan in Fresh Plans for Contingencies in N.Korea
  After a five-year hiatus, the Japanese government is reviewing its crisis management plans in preparation for contingencies on the Korean Peninsula, which include evacuating Japanese from South Korea and accommodating refugees from North Korea, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported Sunday. "To prepare for contingencies in North Korea in the wake of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's ill health, Japan plans to re-examine the process of evacuating the Japanese (from South Korea) and an emergency alert system," the daily said. "Due to the difficulty of sending Self-Defense Forces to Korea, the Japanese government has worked out a plan to use Japanese civilian aircraft and rely on the U.S. military for the evacuation of the rest."
• Japan shoots down dummy ballistic missile in test
  Reuters Thursday, September 18, 2008; 1:19 AM TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's military successfully shot down a dummy ballistic missile in a joint test with the United States, the Defense Ministry said on Thursday, days after reports that North Korea had tested new missile engines. The joint test was the latest step in Tokyo's missile Defense strategy launched after North Korea shocked Japan in 1998 by firing a ballistic missile over the country into the Pacific Ocean.   [Missile defense] [Threat]
• Dokdo/Takeshima Cloud the Future of Japan-Korea Relations
  Alexis Dudden and Lee Jong-Heon
  Introduction. Japan and Korea’s disputed islands are in the news again. As Lee Jong-Heon’s report explains, the 2008 Japanese Ministry of Defense white paper once more claims that the islands known in Korea as Dokdo and in Japan as Takeshima are “integral parts of Japanese territory.” On September 5, the South Korean government responded to this provocation in the form of a policy renewal with harsh words and a tongue-lashing for Japan’s second-ranking diplomat in Seoul.
• Japan, the United States and Yasukuni Nationalism: War, Historical Memory and the Future of the Asia Pacific
  Mark Selden
  Japan’s Yasukuni problem is inseparable from the fact that nationalism is the dominant ideology of our era. This is abundantly clear in media representations, memorials, museums and popular consciousness during and after wars and other international conflicts. [*] This is true not only of Japan but also of South Korea, China and the US, among many others. And it is surely nationalism—stimulated and emboldened throughout Asia following the end of the era of US-Soviet confrontation, the rise of China as a regional and world power, and aggressive US actions associated with the “war on terror”—that constitutes the most powerful obstacle to resolution of the issues that divide nations and inflame passions in the Asia Pacific and beyond. [Nationalism] [Imperialism]
• Japan to Withdraw Air Force From Iraq
  Japan says it will withdraw its air defense forces from Iraq by the end of the year. Defense Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi announced the plan Thursday in Tokyo. Japan's Air Self-Defense Force has been airlifting materials and troops between Kuwait and locations in Iraq since 2006. [Decline] [Japanese remilitarisation]
• Why ‘Yonsama’ Didn’t Wow the Japanese This Time
  “Taewangsasingi (The Four Guardian Gods of the King)” featuring Korean wave Bae Yong-joon as King Kwanggaeto the Great of the Koguryo Kingdom, was a hit in Korea last year with ratings up to 37.5 percent. The work of Kim Jong-hak and Song Ji-na, producer and script writer of a perennial hit “Sandglass,” “Taewangsasingi” was expected to draw as much popularity in Japan as it did in Korea, but on a terrestrial channel NHK at 11 p.m. on Saturday, its rating remains at around 7 percent. The last episode is to be aired on Sep. 27. Given such enormous popularity of Bae in Japan, where he is known as Yonsama, and more than 20 percent ratings for “Winter Sonata,” which made him a superstar there, the figure shows the predicament Korean soap operas are in at the moment. Japanese viewers say that [Hallyu]

• Myth and Fact in Northeast Asia’s History Textbook Controversies
  Mikyoung Kim The past is haunting Northeast Asia. The China-Japan-Korea triad has been on a repeated collision course over how each perceives the shared past. Bound by dense memory webs, cultural affinity and geographical proximity, each of the three nations has made conflicting historical claims against the other, giving rise to conflict throughout the region and beyond. [Japanese colonialism]
• N.Korea 'to Reinvestigate Japanese Abductions by Fall'
    North Korea has agreed to reopen and complete an investigation of its bizarre abduction of Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 80s by this fall, under a deal with Japan in the framework of the six-party nuclear talks that ended in Shenyang, China on Wednesday. To ensure the trustworthiness of the investigation, the two countries agreed on three points: prompt investigation by an "authoritative committee" in North Korea; North Korea's obligation frequently to inform Japan of the interim results; and Japanese officials' verification of the results based on interviews with people concerned and visits to locations.
• Dokdo dispute started at high level
  TOKYO - Tokyo’s renewed territorial claim on Dokdo in July was a part of the Japanese government’s long-deliberated blueprint to stir as much debate as possible and eventually take the case to an international court, said Taku Yamasaki, a senior legislator from Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party. It was the first time for a senior Japanese lawmaker like Yamasaki, the leader of one of four major divisions of the LDP, to publicly confirm that the April decision on school teaching guidelines is only the tip of the iceberg of a Tokyo plan to control the small islets on the East Sea.
• Takeshima/Tokto, Nationalism and Reconciliation: Who is smiling at the latest row?
  Wakamiya Yoshibumi When the Treaty on Basic Relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea (South Korea) was concluded in 1965, the two countries shelved their territorial claims to the Takeshima islets, which are called Tokto in South Korea. But they never got over their differences concerning the rocky outcrops in the Sea of Japan. In fact, the issue continues to bother both sides, as if a bone was stuck in their respective throats. When negotiations over the treaty got bogged down over their mutual refusal to abandon their territorial claims, the following comment attributed to a high-ranking Japanese Foreign Ministry official appeared on the minutes of negotiations kept by the South Korean side: "We would be better off if we just blow up the islands." Some people say it was South Korea 's president who made the remark. The bone is once again tickling the throats of Japan and South Korea .
• Lunch with the FT: Manabu Miyazaki
  By David Pilling Published: August 8 2008 18:02 | Last updated: August 9 2008 03:05 It is a scene I can only imagine occurring in Japan. We are sitting in the private room of a high-class Tokyo restaurant. A woman in a kimono, her face a perfectly composed smile, is placing with the utmost delicacy an array of exquisite ceramics before us, each chosen to match the culinary miracles being presented. The content of our conversation does nothing to ruffle her perfect demeanour or the sense that she finds only grace and beauty in our every utterance. This is what we are talking about: drugs, extortion, prostitution, guns, fighting and killing. Did I forget gambling? I glance up at the woman’s face as she soundlessly places a lacquer box on the table. It is as if the conversation she hears concerns only the finer points of ikebana flower arrangement. The scene tells you something about Japanese service. The honoured guest is no less honoured even if he happens to be talking about, let’s say, how to dispose of a body in a meat grinder. But it tells you more about Japanese society’s unruffled relationship with the yakuza, its crime syndicates, with whose tattooed foot soldiers it lives in relative harmony.
• Beijing Olympics: Where Are the Japanese Tourists?
  It's an easy trip to make and the yen is relatively strong, but Japan's tourist industry is finding the Summer Games to be a big disappointment Olympic excitement in Japan is high as the country's team tries to match its record gold-medal haul of 16 in Athens four years ago. With the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics just days away, you would expect flights to China to be chock-full of Japanese sports aficionados. It's not as if the Japanese aren't Olympics fans. In 2000, when the Games were last held in the Asia-Pacific region, plenty of Japanese tourists made the trip to Sydney. Unlike tourists from the U.S. or Europe, Japanese don't have to take a long-haul flight to get to this year's games. And their currency's relative strength means tourists won't get fleeced when converting yen to yuan. Political relations between China and Japan are the best they've been in years, with President Hu Jintao making the first visit by a Chinese head of state to Tokyo in May. But the Olympics are turning out to be a big letdown for Japan's tourist industry.
  What's keeping the Japanese away? Some blame the repercussions of a series of negative news stories about China. For instance, on Aug. 4 police beat and detained two Japanese journalists covering the suspected terrorist attack in Western China that killed 16 people. Although Chinese officials expressed their regrets, the news has further damaged the image of the country to many Japanese. Earlier this year, Japanese media headlines were dominated by a food-poisoning incident involving pesticide-tainted dumplings (BusinessWeek.com, 2/6/08) imported from China. [Image] [Media] [China confrontation] [China Japan]
• Seoul avoiding action on allegedly false report about Lee’s remarks on Dokdo
  Though S. Korean gov’t protested Yomiuri Shimbun report, it has not yet demanded an investigation
  While the South Korean government is moving to impose criminal punishment against national broadcaster MBC’s current affairs TV program "The Producer’s Notebook" for an April 29 report about mad cow disease, it has not requested that Japan’s Yomiuri Shimbun correct an allegedly false newspaper report about a remark made by South Korean President Lee Myung-bak on the issue of the Dokdo islets.   On July 14, The Yomiuri Shimbun reported that President Lee said to Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, "It’s difficult for now," and asked him to "hold off for a moment," in a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the recent Group of Eight summit in Hokkaido. It is presumed that Lee was referring to the Japanese government’s plan to describe the South Korean territory of Dokdo as territory belonging to Japan in a middle school teachers’ manual. At the time, the South Korean government said it would take stern action against the Japanese newspaper, calling the reported remark false.
• Korea lags far behind Japan in Dokdo diplomacy
  Korean Geographic Information Institute’s links with foreign agencies are insufficient A parliamentary report showed South Korea was lagging far behind Japan in diplomacy for the standardization of the geographical name surrounding Dokdo, a group of South Korean islets off the country’s east coast.

• Japan's Attempt to Grab Tok Islet Rebuffed
  Pyongyang, July 29 (KCNA) -- Some days ago the Japanese authorities decided to write Tok Islet as part of the Japanese territory in the "new teaching guidelines" for primary and middle schools of Japan and officially announced it to the world. In this regard a spokesman for the History Society of the DPRK made public a statement Tuesday which said: This clearly proves that the moves of Japan to grab Tok Islet, part of inviolable territory of Korea, have reached the phase of its implementation.
• Japan’s Nuclear Future: Policy Debate, Prospects, and U.S. Interests
  By Emma Chanlett-Avery and Mary Beth Nikitin
  July 29th , 2008 Emma Chanlett-Avery, Analyst in Asian Affairs at the Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division of the Congressional Research Service, and Mary Beth Nikitin, Analyst in Nonproliferation at the Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division, of the Congressional research Service, write, “The previous taboo within the Japanese political community of discussing a nuclear weapons capability appears to have been broken, as several officials and opinion leaders have urged an open debate on the topic. Despite these factors, a strong consensus — both in Japan and among Japan watchers — remains that Japan will not pursue the nuclear option in the short-to-medium term.” [Japanese remilitarisation] [Nuclearisation] [US Japan alliance]
• Japan holds missile shield drill in Tokyo's center
  By MARI YAMAGUCHI The Associated Press Tuesday, July 29, 2008; 2:59 AM TOKYO -- Japan tested a ballistic missile defense unit in the center of Tokyo on Tuesday, stepping up preparations to secure the capital from what it sees as an increased threat from neighboring North Korea. The exercise at the Defense Ministry headquarters was designed to test the troops' ability to use the equipment, a ministry spokeswoman said on condition of anonymity, citing department policy. The soldiers did not test-fire actual missiles, she said. She said no further details could be released because of national security concerns. The drill involved land-to-air PAC-3 interceptors, Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba told reporters. "We are not deploying PAC-3 just for fun," he said. "We have to make sure its capability is truly reliable and the personnel in charge of it are well trained." Japan has been aggressively augmenting its missile defense capabilities through joint programs with the U.S. amid concerns about a possible threat from North Korea. [Threat] [Japanese remilitarisation] [Missile defense]
• Okinawa Says “No” to US-Japan Base Plan
  Gavan McCormack and Matsumoto Tsuyoshi
  In this two-part article, Gavan McCormack and Matsumoto Tsuyoshi assess the significance of the Okinawan parliament’s opposition to construction of a new US base in Henoko in light of the recent electoral defeat of the Liberal Democratic Party in Okinawan elections.
• U.S. Agency Claims ‘Undesignated Sovereignty’ for Dokdo
  The Board on Geographic Names under the U.S. Geological Survey has revised its description of the Dokdo islets as an area of "undesignated sovereignty," from "South Korea," it emerged last week. The BGN's website has no mention of "Korea" in the category of "first-order administrative division" (ADM1) for Dokdo.
• Japan's Projected Missile Test-fire Blasted
  Pyongyang, July 23 (KCNA) -- Some days ago, the Japanese Ministry of Defence announced that Japan would test-fire PAC-3 belonging to the Air "Self-Defence Force," a major element of the missile defence system (MD), in the middle of September. Minju Joson Wednesday observes in a signed commentary in this regard: If Japan test-fires even PAC-3, it will mean Japan's MD will be fully ready to go into action. Japan's moves to build a missile shield are dangerous ones as they may wreck peace and security in Northeast Asia and other parts of the world. The Japanese reactionaries claim that their MD is to "cope with someone's threat of ballistic missiles" to Japan but this is nothing but sophism intended to cover up their ulterior motive. Japan is busy establishing the MD not because of any threat to security but because it is prompted by its aim to acquire capability to mount preemptive attacks.
• Japan's Moves to Grab Tok Islet under Fire
  Pyongyang, July 19 (KCNA) -- Some days ago the Japanese authorities decided to write Tok Islet as part of the Japanese territory in the new teaching guidelines for primary and middle schools of Japan and officially announced them. A spokesman for the Central Committee of the Democratic Front for the Reunification of the Fatherland Saturday issued a statement branding the Japanese authorities' measure to educate the students in the "dominion over Takeshima" as an unpardonable move for reinvasion of Korea and vehemently denouncing this in the name of the whole nation.
• Dokdo Row Triggers Boycott Calls on Japanese Goods
  By Jane Han Staff Reporter Back in the old days, turf conflicts between countries were largely a battle for government bureaucrats to fight. But Koreans are demonstrating through the latest territorial row with Japan that, in the 21st century, individual citizens can take matters into their own hands, particularly online. A quickly spreading boycott against anything Japanese is rapidly absorbing more supporters online, all of which is expected to eventually deal a blow on sales of wide-ranging Japanese goods here. Or, at least, this is the strategy of the boycotters. [Boycott]
• Korea to Settle Dokdo
    The government and ruling Grand National Party agreed Sunday to explore undersea mineral resources in waters near Dokdo and make the islets habitable for both permanent residents and visitors in efforts to quash Japanese claim to the islets. The Japanese government last week published guidelines that effectively call on teachers to stress Japan’s territorial claim in class. Those in a meeting attended by senior government and GNP leaders, including GNP Chairman Park Hee-tae and Prime Minister Han Seung-soo, agreed on a plan to make Dokdo habitable by developing tourism products, including building a marine hotel and a village, GNP spokesman Cha Myeong-jin said. [Tourism]
• New photographic evidence could support Korea’s claim to Dokdo
  Photos ‘suggest a scientific basis for our claim that can be acknowledged by the int’l community,’ research director says » This photo of Dokdo, taken from neighboring Ulleungdo on November 2, 2007, by the International Institute for Korean Studies in Japan, could provide new evidence to support Korea’s claim to the islets.   When Japan claimed that the Dokdo islets could not be Korean territory, one of the reasons it gave was that the islets could not be seen with the naked eye from Korea, suggesting that Korea could not have known about them as claimed, despite the existence of historical records dating to the 15th century. But new photographic evidence produced by the International Institute for Korean Studies in Japan could prove otherwise.
• Future-oriented ties buffeted by Dokdo
  July 21, 2008 A bird’s eye view of the Dokdo islets. [JoongAng Ilbo] Contentious claims on a group of small rocky islets in the East Sea are eroding Korea-Japan relations to a level unseen for many years. The focus of recurring tension between the two countries are the Dokdo islets, called Takeshima in Japan, which also calls the waters around it the Sea of Japan. The latest furor over Dokdo did not spring up overnight. Tokyo has long signaled that it may be willing to risk disputes with other Asian neighbors to strengthen its political or territorial leverage, according to experts here.
  The move took the Korean government off-guard, since President Lee Myung-bak had early in his administration risked public ire by trying to forge closer ties with Japan. President Lee has repeatedly emphasized "future-oriented relations" with Tokyo, indicating he could put aside Japan’s past actions during the 1910 to 1945 occupation of Korea in order to strengthen economic ties with Korea’s third-largest trade partner. [SK-Japan relations]
• KCNA Rebukes Japan's Moves for Reinvasion
  Pyongyang, July 18 (KCNA) -- The Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology on July 14 distributed to middle schools across the country "new teaching guidelines" calling for educating students in the important role the "Self-Defense Forces" (SDF) has to play for the "defence of Japan and maintenance of peace and security in the international community". This prompted the Japanese middle schools to put the main emphasis of education concerning the SDF on its "international activities", not on the process of its building as in the past. This proves that the criminal moves of the descendents of Samurais to stoke the militarist zeal for overseas expansion among the rising generation and thus lay an ideological and moral groundwork for launching reinvasion have reached a more dangerous phase. [Japanese remilitarisation]
• Seoul ‘Could Leave Tokyo in the Cold at Six-Party Talks’
    South Korea’s ambassador to Japan on Thursday warned Seoul could withdraw support for Japan in negotiations with North Korea, including over the abduction of Japanese nationals by the North in the 1970s and 80s, due to Tokyo’s renewed claim to the Dokdo islets. "Seoul has traditionally given Japan a certain degree of support at the six-party talks, especially on the nuclear, missile, and abduction issues," Kwon Chul-hyun said. But Seoul's position could change, "if public opinion and political voices at home turn against cooperation with Tokyo."
• Seoul Turns Down Tokyo’s Proposal for Bilateral Talks
  By Na Jeong-ju Staff Reporter The Lee Myung-bak administration has rejected a proposal by Japan that the foreign ministers of the two countries have bilateral talks on the sidelines of the ASEAN Regional Forum, slated for July 22-24 in Singapore.
• More Online Encyclopedias Adopt French Name for Dokdo
  Online encyclopedias around the world are increasingly adopting a French name to call South Korean islets of Dokdo rather than the indigenous name, apparently as a result of Japan's massive lobbying, according to a non-governmental organization Tuesday. "While Korea was stressing its sovereignty over Dokdo, Japan has intensively lobbied the world to promote 'Liancourt Rocks' and 'Takeshima,'" Yonhap News quoted Park Ki-tae, representative of the Voluntary Agency Network of Korea (VANK), as saying. Japan calls the islets Takeshima. [Propaganda]  
• U.S. Library of Congress to File Dokdo Under 'Sea of Japan'
  A full-page advertisement promoting Korea's East Sea and Dokdo islets published in the July 9 edition of the New York Times by singer Kim Jang-hoon and freelance Korean public relations expert Seo Kyoung-duk. /Yonhap The U.S. Library of Congress is making changes to the subject heading for Korea’s Dokdo Islands amid renewed attempts by Japan to establish the territory as disputed in the eyes of the international community. Now filed under "Tok Island (Korea)," the library is moving to change the entry to an old international moniker, "Liancourt Rocks," and is also trying to add "Islands of the Sea of Japan" -- the body of water Korea calls the East Sea -- for the higher classification of the islets [Friction] [US SK Japan]  
• Japanese Teaching Guidelines State Claim to Dokdo
  The Japanese government on Monday announced new guidelines for school teachers that effectively state Tokyo's territorial claim to Korea’s Dokdo islets. Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura and Education and Science Minister Kisaburo Tokai revealed the new teaching guidelines for middle-school textbooks at a press conference in the afternoon. Tokyo notified the South Korean government of the revised guidelines two hours before the announcement.
• Korea to Recall Ambassador to Japan
  Protesters burn the Japanese national flag in a rally at a park in Seoul, Monday, denouncing Japan’s description of the South Korean islets as its territory in an educational guidebook. / Korea Times Photo by Koh Young-kwon Seoul Maps Out Countermeasures to Tokyo’s Claim Over Dokdo By Na Jeong-ju Staff Reporter President Lee Myung-bak will recall South Korea's ambassador to Japan Wednesday in protest of Tokyo's decision to define South Korea's easternmost islets of Dokdo as its territory in guidebooks for history teachers. Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Yu Myung-hwan also called in Japanese Ambassador Toshinori Shigeie and delivered a message of protest.
• US Distances Itself From Dokdo Dispute
  The United States Monday distanced itself from an on-and-off territorial dispute between its two Asian allies, leaving South Korea and Japan to hndle the issue of Dokdo islets themselves. "I think you leave it to both South Korea and Japan to each describe that relationship," State Department Sean McCormack was quoted as saying in a daily briefing by Yonhap News. "We independently have good relationships with them."
• Japan to Announce Dokdo Decision Monday
  The Japanese government will clarify Monday whether new teaching guidelines for secondary school textbooks will state Tokyo's claim to Korea’s Dokdo islets. The Education Ministry will state its position in a briefing on the new teaching guidelines for officials from educational offices nationwide.
• In Japan, Buddhism May Be Dying Out
  By NORIMITSU ONISHI Published: July 14, 2008 OGA, Japan — The Japanese have long taken an easygoing, buffetlike approach to religion, ringing out the old year at Buddhist temples and welcoming the new year, several hours later, at Shinto shrines. Weddings hew to Shinto rituals or, just as easily, to Christian ones. Skip to next paragraph The New York Times When it comes to funerals, though, the Japanese have traditionally been inflexibly Buddhist — so much so that Buddhism in Japan is often called “funeral Buddhism,” a reference to the religion’s former near-monopoly on the elaborate, and lucrative, ceremonies surrounding deaths and memorial services. [Religion]
• Korea-Japan Tension Mounts Over Dokdo
  The Japanese government will make a final decision on whether new teaching guidelines for secondary schools will state Japan's claim to Korea’s Dokdo islets. The issue is capable of shaking bilateral relations, which the leaders of the two countries have pledged to improve, to the core. That would be a fresh blow to the Lee Myung-bak administration following massive street protests over the last two months, scuppering a key foreign policy initiative -- that of strengthening the traditional Seoul-Washington-Tokyo alliance.
• Japan to boost its sea power
  By Hiroshi Yamazaki UPI Correspondent Published: July 07, 2008 Tokyo, Japan — Japan is reawakening to its potential as an ocean-going nation after more than half a century of retreat from adventuring into the oceans surrounding the islands. "Next year will be a new start for Japan as a maritime nation," said parliamentarian Seiji Maehara, one of the promoters of ocean policies at a recent seminar commemorating the one-year anniversary of the enactment of Japan’s Basic Act on Ocean Policy, aimed at protecting and utilizing ocean resources. [Japanese remilitarisation]
• The Cultural Career of the Japanese Economy: Developmental and Cultural Nationalisms in Historical Perspective
  Laura Hein
  This essay explores the connection between the economy and cultural identity in Japanese nationalism. After World War II Japan was a pacesetter in the global trend toward developmental nationalism, including a transformation of its economy into both a wealthy and a highly egalitarian one. In the 1970s and 1980s, ethnic nationalism re-emerged, with the claim that economic success was the product of Japanese cultural uniqueness rather than of the developmental nationalist policies of the previous quarter-century. The economic downturn of the 1990s thus challenged Japan both economically and culturally, At first, this crisis prompted a critical re-evaluation of national culture, manifested as serious attempts to both resolve tensions with Asia dating from World War II and dismantle domestic social hierarchies. By the mid-1990s, however, this moment had passed and government and business leaders adopted full-fledged neo-liberal policies, reversing the long post-war trend toward income equality, while adopting a more strident and militarist cultural nationalism. [Nationalism] [Development]
• The Keiretsu and the Japanese Economy
  R. Taggart Murphy
  “So, how do you like Japan, Mr. Binney?’ The scene: a party at the Sumitomo Bank back in 1984 for the new manager of Chase Manhattan’s Tokyo branch where I was then working. “I like it fine,” he answered. “And the beer is great,” he went on, glancing at the drink in his hand. “I just love Sapporo Beer.”
  Whoops. Most of us from Chase looked at the floor while our hosts tittered politely. Our manager should have said he enjoyed Asahi Beer, not Sapporo. Because Asahi was the Sumitomo group brewer and naturally the Sumitomo Bank served as the company’s so-called “main bank”. At that time, Sumitomo Bank was regularly seconding its own people to the then-troubled beer maker including two of its presidents. [Culture]

• U.S.-Japan Relations: Partnership and Progress
  Alexander A. Arvizu, Deputy Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Statement Before the Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific, and the Global Environment of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Washington, DC June 12, 2008 View Video Mr. Chairman, Mr. Manzullo, and Members of the Subcommittee, it is a privilege to appear before you today. In less than one month, Japan will host the G8 Summit at Lake Toya on its northern island of Hokkaido. The Summit provides an excellent opportunity for Japan to showcase its growing regional and global leadership role, as well as an opportunity to strengthen the U.S.-Japanese partnership on a wide range of key issues. The U.S. and Japan will celebrate the 50th anniversary of our Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security in 2010
• “Conservatism" and "Nationalism". The Japan Puzzle
  Gavan McCormack
  Japanese politics are characterized by two related paradoxes: first, that the word “conservative” is usually applied to those who insist on the need to remake Japan’s postwar society, including its constitution, and who in other words are actually radicals, while those who insist on “conserving” Japan’s postwar democratic institutions are labeled radicals or leftists; and second, that those who most insist that Japan subordinate itself to the United States describe themselves as “nationalists,” while those who seek to prioritize Japanese over US interests are suspected of being somehow “un-Japanese.” It is an Alice in Wonderland confusion! [US Japan alliance] [Japanese remilitarisation]
• Sinking puts spotlight on Diaoyutais
  Koichi Ito, a Japanese representative to Taiwan (right), pays a visit to Ho Hung-yi (center) to express a willingness to compensate for the captain's loss at his home in Taipei County. (CNA) Publication Date:06/20/2008 Section:Front Page By June Tsai The sinking of a Taiwanese charter fishing boat after it was allegedly rammed by a Japanese coast guard vessel off a chain of disputed islands in the East China Sea last week has led to heightened tensions between Taipei and Tokyo.
• The Denationalized Have No Class: The Banishment of Japan’s Korean Minority-- A POLEMIC
  Sonia Ryang
  In a recent article by Bumsoo Kim entitled “Bringing class back in: the changing basis of inequality and the Korean minority in Japan,” I read: “[…] this study shows that the legal/institutional and socioeconomic structural changes in Japan for the past few decades, by decreasing ethnic inequality between Koreans and Japanese while increasing class inequality among Koreans, have made class more significant than ethnicity in understanding the inequality problematic of zainichi Koreans [i.e. Koreans in Japan].”[1] Perhaps it is logical that an oppressed and marginalized ethnic minority, once it begins to receive the benefits of the affluence of the host society, albeit belatedly, would shed its markings of ethnicity and begin to take on the markings of class. Perhaps it is also logical to think that in such a situation class, rather than ethnicity, would become more relevant to forging identity. Unequivocally, however, I remain unconvinced by the argument that a particular category becomes “more significant” than certain others, since the marking of the oppressed is always necessarily multiply compounded.
• Northeast Asian leaders to meet in Japan in September
  Foreign ministers from Korea, China and Japan will also hold regular summits
  » Korean president Lee Myung-bak, left, and Chinese president Hu Jin-tao shake hands before they announce the results of the summit in Bejing on May 27. The summit of Korea, China and Japan will take place in Japan in September for the first time. The first-ever summit talks with Korea, China and Japan will take place in Japan in September and the three neighboring countries will hold regular foreign ministers' meetings.   During a meeting in Tokyo on June 14, Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan and his Chinese and Japanese counterparts, Yang Jeichi and Masahiko Komura, agreed to the three nation summit.
• DPRK-Japan Inter-Governmental Working Talks Held
  Pyongyang, June 13 (KCNA) -- Inter-governmental working talks between the DPRK and Japan were held in Beijing on June 11 and 12 to redeem the inglorious past and normalize the relations between them according to the DPRK-Japan Pyongyang Declaration. According to a press release made public in Pyongyang on Friday, at the talks both sides had an exhaustive discussion on the issue of settling the outstanding matters of mutual concern and decided on the following matters: The Democratic People's Republic of Korea will reinvestigate the abduction issue. The DPRK also expresses willingness to cooperate in the efforts to settle the issue of those related to the Japanese plane Yodo. As part of the measures to lift the on-going sanctions against the DPRK the state of Japan will lift the restriction on visits of persons, the restriction on the use of chartered planes and allow the DPRK-flagged ships' port-calls for the purpose of transporting cargo related to humanitarian aid.
• Japan to lift some sanctions on N. Korea
  Move prompted by N. Korea’s apparent willingness to address Yodo hijacking and abduction issue
  On June 13, Tokyo announced that it would lift some of the sanctions it has imposed on Pyongyang, leading some to believe that there could be signs of improvement in relations between the two countries. Japan has implemented economic sanctions against North Korea three times since the North conducted nuclear tests in 2006 and ties between North Korea and Japan have been tense since 2002 surrounding the kidnapping of Japanese citizens.   After a June 13 briefing to Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda on the results of recent talks between North Korea and Japan, Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura announced that her nation would remove some of the sanctions against North Korea.
• N. Korea Yields Slightly on Abductions
  By NORIMITSU ONISHI Published: June 14, 2008 TOKYO — North Korea said Friday that it would reopen an investigation into abductions of Japanese citizens, reversing its longstanding position that the issue had been settled. In return, Japan announced that it had agreed to lift some sanctions imposed on the North for its nuclear program, including the ban on travel between the countries, but that more serious sanctions would stay in place. The Japanese announcement, which followed two days of bilateral talks in Beijing this week, was the first sign in years of even a slight thaw between the countries. Although both sides made very minor concessions, they offered a possible way to resolve the abductions dispute, which has long complicated the six-nation talks over the North’s nuclear weapons program and has strained the relations between the governments in Tokyo and
• N. Korea Agrees to Reexamine Abductions
  By Blaine Harden Washington Post Foreign Service Saturday, June 14, 2008; Page A08 TOKYO, June 14 -- North Korea has promised to reinvestigate its abduction of Japanese citizens in the 1970s and '80s, a surprise concession that prompted Japan to respond with a pledge to lift some of its economic sanctions against the closed Communist country. The agreement, reached during bilateral talks this week in Beijing and announced Friday, cracks open what had been a closed door on trade, aid and travel between the neighboring countries. It may also bring Japan back as an active participant with the United States in negotiations to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear program.
• N.Korea-Japan Normalization Talks 'Constructive'
  North Korea reportedly made several suggestions for normalizing ties with Japan in the first round of fresh bilateral working-level talks in Beijing on Wednesday and Thursday. Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura is to make an announcement on the matter on Friday
• Japan to Lift North Korea Sanctions, Reports Say
  By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Published: June 13, 2008 Filed at 4:06 a.m. ET TOKYO (AP) -- Japan decided to partially lift its sanctions against North Korea after the communist nation promised a new probe into its kidnappings of Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 80s, news reports said Friday. Kyodo News agency and national broadcaster NKH quoted Foreign Minister Masahiko as saying Pyongyang also agreed to cooperate in the investigation of the 1970 hijacking of a Japanese jet that was flown to North Korea.
• Fans of 'Yonsama' Flock to Japanese Temple
  Thanks to Korean wave star Bae Yong-joon, affectionately known as Yonsama in Japan, Koma Jinja in the Japanese city of Hidaka in Saitama Prefecture, where members of the royal family of an ancient Korean kingdom of Koguryo are enshrined, is booming with tourists. The Goma Jinji temple in Saita Prefecture, Japan, where members of the Koguryo royal family are enshrined. According to Sunday’s Asahi Shinbum, the Koma Jinja has seen an endless flow of women aged between 30 and 70 since September last year, when Korean TV soap opera "Taewangsasingi (The Four Guardian Gods of the King)", which stars Bae, began to air in Korea. After being aired on the NHK satellite channel in December last year, "Taewangsasingi", which deals with the life of King Kwanggaeto the Great, known as the "Great Expander" of ancient Korean history, has been enjoying popularity in Japan, where it is now being shown once a week on regular NHK.
  Koma Jinja is dedicated to Komanozako, who is believed to be a member of Koguryo royal family who fled to Japan after the kingdom collapsed. It was originally popular with politicians because praying in the temple was believed to bring success in life. [Hallyu] [Softpower] [Koguryo]
• Japan in Africa: a distant partnership
  Kweku Ampiah Japan's once-pioneering role in African development is reflected in its hosting of a series of international conferences with African leaders. The latest, however, reveals the gap between rhetoric and reality - and how the China factor is changing perceptions on both sides, says Kweku Ampiah. [China competition]
• Japan Seeks to Outbid China in Quest for African Support
  Ramesh Jaura and Kawakami Osamu Two reports follow on the vast, and vastly expensive, Tokyo International Conference on African Development designed to showcase Japan’s aid to Africa. The conference, held in Yokohama with the presence of 51 of 53 African nations, was attended by 40 Presidents of African nations. The first report by Ramesh Jaura concentrates on the proposed Japanese aid package, as Japan proposes to double both trade and investment in Africa within five years. The second report by the Yomiuri Shimbun's Kawakami Osamu highlights the real stakes for Japan: the effort to outbid China whose burgeoning trade, investment and presence in Africa is a cause of Japanese, and the continued pursuit of the chimera of a Japanese UN security council seat. Neither report mentions either oil and energy or military strategic issues. MS [China competition]
• 1960 paper proves secret agreement
  06/05/2008 BY KAZUTO TSUKAMOTO,THE ASAHI SHIMBUN Debunking Japanese government denials, an official document from 1960 discovered at a U.S. library shows that the two countries had a secret agreement concerning the use of U.S. military bases in Japan. The full official U.S. document, discovered by a Japanese scholar in late February at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library at the University of Michigan, shows Japan agreeing to allow the U.S. military to use its bases here for contingencies on the Korean Peninsula without consulting Tokyo. [US Japan relations] [Disinformation] [US dominance]
• Unsustainable Inequities: Saving the Japan-U.S. Alliance from Drift
  Tobias Harris, a freelance journalist and author of Observing Japan, a blog that focuses on Japanese politics and East Asian international relations, and Douglas Turner, Founder and CEO of DW Turner, Inc, write, “The United States… must transform its thinking on the alliance. The framework wherein the United States delegates more tasks to Japan without giving Japan a greater share in determining the purpose of the alliance will ensure mounting Japanese resentment that will ultimately explode in a crisis.” June 3rd, 2008 [US Japan alliance]
• Japan Seeks to Outbid China in Quest for African Support
  Ramesh Jaura and Kawakami Osamu Two reports follow on the vast, and vastly expensive, Tokyo International Conference on African Development designed to showcase Japan’s aid to Africa. The conference, held in Yokohama with the presence of 51 of 53 African nations, was attended by 40 Presidents of African nations. The first report by Ramesh Jaura concentrates on the proposed Japanese aid package, as Japan proposes to double both trade and investment in Africa within five years. The second report by the Yomiuri Shimbun's Kawakami Osamu highlights the real stakes for Japan: the effort to outbid China whose burgeoning trade, investment and presence in Africa is a cause of Japanese, and the continued pursuit of the chimera of a Japanese UN security council seat. Neither report mentions either oil and energy or military strategic issues. MS [China competition]
• Japan continues climb out of lost decade
  After years of stagnancy, the recovering economy has avoided the sub-prime crisis Ashley Seager in Tokyo The Guardian, Monday June 2 2008 Article history Prada's Tokyo branch symbolises a growing disparity in wealth. Photograph: Alamy It is healthy on occasion to visit a country that is not suffering a meltdown in its credit or housing market and where there is quiet confidence that the slowdown gripping Britain and the United States may leave it relatively unscathed. Having contributed little to world growth for more than 10 years as it suffered a "lost decade" of stagnation and deflation, Japan, the world's second-largest economy, has quietly plugged itself into Asia's expansion and is hopeful it has "decoupled" from the US. And for a country that is totally dependent on imported oil, there is also remarkably little panic about the recent highs in world oil prices. For one thing, Japan has seen a big increase in demand for things such as luxury cars and capital goods from the oil-producing countries, thus cushioning it, to some extent at least, from the effects of dearer energy.
  There is a 50:50 chance of a mild recession this year but we think it will be mild and short with a recovery occurring later this year," says Takahide Kiuchi, chief economist at Nomura bank in Tokyo. "There is no serious credit crunch in Japan and in any case Japan is decoupling gradually from the US." He points to the fact that in 2007 Japanese exports to China outstripped those to the US for the first time ever. [China competition] [Services] [FDI] [Innovation]

• Japanese Are Loath To Rebuild Workforce Through Immigration
  Politicians Avoid Issue They See as Toxic
  By Blaine Harden Washington Post Foreign Service Friday, May 30, 2008; Page A10 TOKYO, May 29 -- When threatened by soaring oil prices in the 1970s, Japan's response was swift, smart and successful. It transformed itself into the most efficient user of energy in the developed world, thanks to government leadership, engineering skill and a public that embraced conservation. Now Japan faces a much more fundamental threat to its future -- demographic decline that experts say will delete 70 percent of its workforce by 2050. Yet the all-hands-on-deck response that quelled the oil shock is conspicuously missing from Japan's policies for a disappearing population. [Migration] [Ageing society]
• Japan’s LDP looks to put off election
  By David Pilling and Lionel Barber in Tokyo Published: May 28 2008 22:14 | Last updated: May 28 2008 22:14 Japan’s Liberal Democratic party is likely to delay an election as long as possible for fear of being thrown out of power for only the second time since the second world war, one of the ruling party’s most prominent politicians has told the Financial Times. Yuriko Koike, former defence minister, who is considered an outside candidate to succeed Yasuo Fukuda as prime minister, said the opposition Democratic Party of Japan had a "high chance" of winning power if a general election were called soon
• 'More Japanese Abductees Alive' in N.Korea
  North Korea has given the U.S. information about several Japanese, believed to be abductees, living in North Korea and may send them home, a Japanese newspaper reported on Tuesday. According to the Mainichi Shimbun, the Japanese mentioned by North Korea are believed to be separate from a group of 12 that Tokyo recognizes as abduction victims.
• Megumi Yokota 'Seen Alive' in 1994
  Megumi Yokota, a Japanese national who was abducted by North Korea as a child in the 1970s, was seen in June 1994, two months after the Stalinist country claimed she committed suicide, the Mainichi Shimbun reported on Monday. Yokota was abducted by North Korea in Niigata at age of 13 in 1977 and had been held there since. North Korean authorities claim she was one of eight abduction victims who have died, but the families of the victims and Japanese authorities do not trust the claim. According to the newspaper, Fukie Chimura (52), another abduction victim, told Japanese authorities at the end of last year that Yokota moved in next door to her in June 1994. "She lived there for several months, but I don't know her whereabouts after that," Chimura was quoted as saying. "She was suffering severe depression and was mentally unstable." She added a senior North Korean intelligence official was monitoring her  
• Mastering Wine: a Korean-Japanese Couple in France
  Park Jae-wha (right) and Koji Nakada. It is definitely a bottle of Burgundy, but it is labeled with three Chinese characters meaning sky, earth, and human printed on a yellow background. It is produced by Maison Lou Dumont, which gained fame through a Japanese comic book titled "Kami no Shizuko (The Drops of God)", a company run by a Korean-Japanese couple, Park Jae-wha (42) and Koji Nakada (36). Park used to teach history at university in Busan until the spring of 1996. But that summer her mother collapsed, and there was nothing much she could do with the small salary she earned as a non-tenured lecturer. A professor at university recommended Park study art restoration because it is rare to find a specialist in the field and she would be able to have a professional career. She went to France, and there she met a Japanese man in a beginner’s French classroom who said he had come to learn about wine. "He asked me to go to wine tastings with him, and explained to me everything he then knew about wine. I felt wine was not just alcohol but a whole culture," Park says today. When she came back to Korea in the summer of 1997, she began to buy wine-related books and learn the terminologys. It eventually led her to study oenology at the University of Bourgogne in Dijon, and in CFPPA in Beaune. [Wine] [IM]
• The Global Article 9 Conference: Toward the Abolition of War
  John Junkerman
  While much of Japan was enjoying the extended holiday of Golden Week this year, supporters of Article 9, the war-renouncing clause of Japan’s constitution, were hard at work. The first Global Article 9 Conference to Abolish War drew 15,000 people to its plenary session and concert outside of Tokyo on May 4th, while 7,000 gathered on May 5th to participate in a day of symposiums and workshops. The crowds far surpassed the expectations of the organizers, who hastily staged an ad hoc rally in a nearby park for several thousand people who were unable to get into the main arena on the first day. [Japanese remilitarisation]
• US, N. Korea to Address Japanese Abduction
    Chief U.S. nuclear envoy Christopher Hill By Jung Sung-ki Staff Reporter Chief nuclear negotiators from the United States and North Korea are likely to discuss the fate of Japanese citizens allegedly abducted by Pyongyang during the Cold War era, when they meet in Beijing this week, a South Korean diplomatic source said Sunday. The move is part of U.S. efforts to soothe the concerns of Japan, [US Japan alliance]
• An Outbreak of ‘Warm Spring’: The Hu-Fukuda Summit Assessed
  By Sourabh Gupta May 13th, 2008 Sourabh Gupta, Senior Research Associate at Samuels International Associates, Inc., writes, “With Beijing having internalized the imperative for a changed tone of voice with which it speaks to the Japanese and with nationalist revisionism perhaps having crested in Tokyo… the portents, going forward, this time around however seem a lot better.”
• Japan parliament OKs space defense bill
  By Mari Yamaguchi Associated Press Writer / May 21, 2008 TOKYO—Japan's parliament voted to allow the country's space programs to be used for defense for the first time Wednesday as part of Tokyo's push to give its military a greater international role. more stories like thisThe upper house of parliament approved the legislation with an overwhelming 221-14 vote. The vote followed earlier approval by the lower house, thereby lifting a 1969 ban on military use of outer space. The law, one of several moves in recent years by Japan to give greater freedom to its armed forces, allows the military to develop more advanced spy satellites for intelligence gathering and missile defense. [Japanese remilitarisation] [Spin]
• Territorial disputes heat up in Dokdo islets
  May 21, 2008 The territorial row between Korea and Japan over small East Sea islets reached new heights yesterday. Officials said that an official document drafted in 1877 by the Japanese government stated that the Dokdo islets belong to Korea. Officials were also busy yesterday drafting an English-language version of Korean claims to the Dokdo islets so the world will understand its position.
• Seoul demands correction of Japan’s Dokdo claim
  Japanese ambassador summoned to S. Korean Foreign Ministry for a warning
  » Yoo Myung-hwan, South Korea’s foreign minister, right, summoned Toshinori Shigeie, the Japanese ambassador to South Korea, left, to give him a warning about Japan’s renewed signs on the Dokdo islets at the South Korean Foreign Ministry on May 19. Presidential spokesman Lee Dong-kwan said May 19 that President Lee Myung-bak has directed Korea’s foreign minister to "strongly demand a correction of Japan’s policy, if the reports that Japan has decided to describe Dokdo as Japanese territory in Japanese middle school textbooks is confirmed."
• Japan Feeling Left Out as U.S. Talks to Pyongyang
  By Blaine Harden Washington Post Foreign Service Saturday, May 17, 2008; Page A14 TOKYO -- As the Bush administration inches toward a deal to reward North Korea for retreating from its nuclear ambitions, the odd man out in the negotiations is Japan, the closest ally of the United States in Asia. The Japanese government appears resigned to the possibility that the United States may reach an agreement with North Korea -- and remove it from a list of outlaw countries that sponsor terrorism -- without addressing issues that Japan regards as fundamental to its national interest. A deal based on nuclear issues alone "would not solve the matter" for Japan and it would refuse to normalize relations with North Korea, Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda said in a recent interview with The Washington Post. [Six Party Talks] [Abductees] [US Japan]
• From a Woman Aggressor. Reflections on Japan and the Asia Pacific War
  Okabe Itsuko and Greg Vanderbilt
  Translated and introduced by Greg Vanderbilt The essayist Okabe Itsuko (1923-2008) readied herself for death throughout her life and, when it came in the early morning hours of April 29, with her died an independent woman’s voice of conscience for postwar Japan. The translation which follows is of an address she gave at the annual service in memory of “all the war dead” held by Higashi Honganji temple in Kyoto, shortly after the U.S. invasion of Iraq five years ago and a year before she announced she was laying down her pen after a half-century career of essay writing and a total of 134 books [Japanese colonialism]
• Japanese Textbooks to Repeat Dokdo Claim
  The Japanese government reasserts dubious claims of sovereignty over Korea’s Dokdo Islets in a handbook for social studies classes in middle school, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported Sunday. The handbook, which is updated every 10 years, supplements curriculum guidelines and has binding power for textbooks published from 2012. All social studies textbooks for middle school students will have to describe the Dokdo Islets, or Takeshima in Japanese, as Japanese territory.
• Japan and the reconciliation of history
  [Editorial]     President Lee Myung-bak said that he wouldn’t cling to the past so as to make progress in South Korea’s relations with Japan at Seoul-Tokyo summit talks in April. Regarding criticism that Lee disregarded the issue of the reconciliation of history between the two countries in his remarks, Foreign Affairs and Trade Minister Yoo Myung-hwan said that because Korea is looking beyond the past in its relations with Japan, Japan could also be expected to be prudent in dealing with the issue of history reconciliation.   Japan’s attitude, however, proves that Korea’s expectations for relations with Japan are too naive
• Japanese Reengagement, Chinese Disenchantment,
  by Victor Cha
  While the demonstrations in Seoul against the government's recent decision to allow for the importation of U.S. beef occupies the front page, the rest of the world is more interested in the slow but definitive re-orientation in South Korea's foreign policy under Lee Myung-bak. A confluence of events over the past month has amounted to what might be described as reengagement with one neighbor, and growing disenchantment with another. [Realignment]
• China and Japan: from symbolism to politics
  James C Farrer
  Hu Jintao's five-day visit to Japan underlines the fact that the basis for a strong Sino-Japanese relationship already exists, says James C Farrer. 12 - 05 - 2008 The visit of Hu Jintao to Japan on 6-10 May 2008 was notable for the evident mutual desire to avoid controversy over the existing or potential areas of tension between China and Japan. The formal agreement signed the day after Hu's arrival set the tone, while the Chinese president's words - in support of a "mutual strategic relationship", and even of the Japanese ideal of a new "post-post-war era" in Chinese-Japanese relations - signalled a willingness to move away from the backward-looking attitudes of his predecessor Jiang Zemin, who in 1998 lectured his hosts about Japan's war guilt. The friendly atmosphere and positive body-language aside, however, what does the "warm spring" visit reveal about the current state of this pivotal relationship? [China-Japan relations]
• Govt releases documents on Japan-S. Korea normalization
  The Yomiuri Shimbun The Foreign Ministry has disclosed about 50,000 pages of diplomatic documents detailing the Japan-South Korea diplomatic normalization talks from 1951 to 1965 to a civic group that requested them, The Yomiuri Shimbun learned Monday. The ministry released the documents to Nikkan Kaidan Bunsho Zenmen Kokai o Motomeru Kai, on April 28, May 2 and May 9. The group, based in Isehara, Kanagawa Prefecture, was established with the aim of having all documents relating to the talks released. However, many of the released documents had been partially redacted, apparently in response to government concerns that disclosure of the hidden parts might affect relations between Japan and North Korea. [SK Japan relations] [NK Japan]
• N. Korea suggested existence of other abductees in 2004
  Monday, May 12, 2008 Kyodo News North Korea suggested to a Japanese official in early 2004 that there were abductees other than the 15 officially recognized as abduction victims by Tokyo at that time, government sources said Sunday. Yoshiyuki Inoue, who was in charge of the abduction issue at the Cabinet Office, sought information on abductees other than the 15 when he visited North Korea several times between late 2003 and January 2004, and officials there indicated readiness to reveal the fates of some of them, according to the sources. If the North were to recognize the existence of other abductees, it would go against Pyongyang's stance that the issue has been resolved. Inoue, who later served as secretary to Shinzo Abe when he was prime minister, declined to comment on the issue
• Fukuda, Hu put focus on future
  Thursday, May 8, 2008 Japan, China bypass history issues, hint at gas-field deal in crucial summit By REIJI YOSHIDA Staff writer Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda and Chinese President Hu Jintao agreed Wednesday to make 2008 the year for boosting their nations' "mutually beneficial" relationship, as Tokyo hosted the first Chinese leader to visit in 10 years.
• War Responsibility and Historical Memory: Hirohito’s Apparition
  Herbert P. Bix
  Since the appearance of Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan in 2000, the unearthing in Japan of new information on the Asia-Pacific war has proceeded apace. Historical war narratives using new documentary evidence and drawing on the insights of various disciplines continue to appear. Oral history, women’s history, studies of war prisoners and international law, even theories of postwar “reconciliation,” have widened the perspectives of Japanese historians. Thanks to the work of many progressive historians the ethical dimensions of military history are being opened up and explored as never before. [1] But in no fundamental way have these scholarly efforts altered the picture of Hirohito as the activist, dynamic, politically empowered emperor who played a central role in Japan’s undeclared wars. [Japanese colonialism]
• Yasukuni: The Stage for Memory and Oblivion.
  A Dialogue between Li Ying and Sai Yoichi
  Translated by John Junkerman Li Ying’s documentary film “Yasukuni” opened in Tokyo on May 3, without incident but under heavy police protection. The original launch of the film, scheduled for April 12, was postponed when four theaters in Tokyo and another in Osaka cancelled their screenings of the film after conservative members of the Japanese Diet raised questions about the film’s political stance [Japanese remilitarisation]
• The Songs of Nippon, the Yamato Museum and the Inculcation of Japanese Nationalism
  Yuki TANAKA
  Over many years textbooks and conservative educational policies such as “moral education” have been central to the discussion of the propagation of Japanese nationalism. These are important facets of the persistent efforts to raise national sentiment. In recent years, however, new avenues for inculcating nationalism have emerged. This essay examines two such examples to gauge the role of popular culture in creating “love of nation” among children and youth. The Songs of Nippon and Yasukuni Shrine [Japanese remilitarisation]
• Fifty Years of Memorable Cars
  By ROB SASS Published: May 11, 2008 THE success of Japanese automakers in the United States, though typically remembered as a story of smooth, steady sales increases, was in fact a road full of bumpy stretches. For Nissan, which can point to a half-century of experience in this country, the time has been more akin to the description of combat flying offered by the World War II ace Col. Gregory Boyington: hours and hours of boredom sprinkled with a few seconds of sheer terror. [IM]
• Future Shock: Ford Optimistic, Toyota Forecasts Gloom
  Japanese Carmaker Predicts Profit Dip
  By Frank Ahrens Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, May 9, 2008; Page D01 The previously surging Toyota Motor said yesterday that it expects a 27 percent decrease -- yes, de crease-- in profit in the coming fiscal year, news that came on the same day that long-beleaguered Ford Motor was holding what almost amounted to a love-in at its annual shareholders meeting. The Japanese automaker has been challenging General Motors in recent months to become the world's biggest vehicle manufacturer, thanks to its high-end Lexus division, its growing light-truck segment and the Camry, which has become the sedan of the American middle class. The auto giant, which has enjoyed nearly a decade of sales increases, had appeared unstoppable in its march to global dominance.
• Trade with Japan locked in perpetual deficit cycle
  May 07, 2008 Korea¡¯s trade deficit with Japan totaled $10.3 billion in 2008 as of April 20, up more than $1 billion from the same period a year earlier, according to preliminary data from the Ministry of Knowledge Economy yesterday. Korea is highly reliant on high-tech imports from Japan, such as semiconductor manufacturing equipment, and most of Korea¡¯s key exports include Japanese parts, such as automobiles and cell phones. The more Korea exports these items, the bigger its trade deficit with Japan becomes, according to the ministry. The ministry partially attributed the deficit to a surge in imports of Japanese steel products. Imports of steel from Japan jumped 29.2 percent this year between Jan. 1 and April 20, compared to a year earlier. Automobile imports also contributed to the trade imbalance. ¡°While Korean cars are unable to find customers in Japan, the country imported $53 million worth of Japanese autos in the cited period, a gain of 22.7 percent from 2007,¡± a ministry spokesman said.
• Poll: 66% want Article 9 to stay as is
  THE ASAHI SHIMBUN 05/05/2008 Article 9 of the Constitution, which renounces war and bans Japan from maintaining military forces, should not be revised, said 66 percent of voters in a recent Asahi Shimbun survey. That figure is a sharp increase from 49 percent in a similar survey last year. In the nationwide poll to mark Constitution Day, only 23 percent of respondents said they believed the article should be revised, down from 33 percent a year ago. While 56 percent of voters said the Constitution should be amended, 54 percent of those in favor of amendment said Article 9 should remain intact, compared with 37 percent who said the article should be revised. The telephone survey was conducted April 19 and 20, prior to Saturday's 61st anniversary of the Constitution's introduction. Of the 3,600 people surveyed, 2,084, or 58 percent, gave valid responses. The survey showed that voters are less concerned about the issue of revising the pacifist article than during last year's survey. A year ago, the government of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pushed much public debate over the amendment, a long-time goal of his Liberal Democratic Party. [Japanese remilitarisation]
• The inns and outs of my walk into Japan's past
  Walking the ancient Nakasendo highway offers travellers a glimpse into a Japan that has changed little over the centuries. Kate Graham follows a time-worn and scenic trail, enjoying hospitality at minshuku, traditional family-run inns Kate Graham The Observer, Sunday May 4 2008 Article historyAbout this articleClose This article appeared in the Observer on Sunday May 04 2008 on p2 of the Features section. It was last updated at 00:03 on May 04 2008. Tsumago In Japan, Where Kate Graham Walked Ancient Pathways And Stayed In A Tradional Minshuku. Photograph: Paul Chrisie As I crouch to clamber through Maruya's tiny front door the words of its website come back to me. 'Here is not the haute cuisine which a famous cook makes. Here is not the luxurious equipment such as the high-quality hotel. But we do not think that we will change it. Because of we have you feel time of the travellers who do not change in old days.' Yes it's clumsy, but as my eyes adjust to the dim light it strikes me as completely accurate. In the simple wooden hallway shoes lie in neat rows on the compressed dirt floor: only feet with socks on can step onto the worn tatami mat platform. To my right gently glowing embers heat a hanging kettle, the thick aromatic smoke drifting up into the rafters. Through a blue noren (a cloth room divider), a steep staircase leads to a second floor reminiscent of a granny's attic. It's overflowing with nick-nacks, dusty lamps squashed next to woven raffia donkeys. A half-finished tapestry sits on a large abandoned loom. It's dark and rustic and utterly charming. Maruya is a minshuku, a class of small family-run lodgings usually overlooked by overseas travellers to Japan.
• In Japan, Controversy Over a Delicacy That’s No Longer Deadly
  By NORIMITSU ONISHI Published: May 4, 2008 SHIMONOSEKI, Japan — Poison has been as integral to fugu, the funny-looking, potentially deadly puffer fish prized by Japanese gourmands, as the savor of its pricey meat. So consider fugu, but poison-free.
  Thanks to advances in fugu research and farming, Japanese fish farmers are now mass-producing fugu as harmless as goldfish. Most important, they have taken the poison out of fugu’s liver, considered both its most delicious and potentially most lethal part, one whose consumption has left countless Japanese dead over the centuries and whose sale remains illegal in the country. But what could be seen as potential good news for gourmands has instead been grounds for controversy: powerful interests in the fugu industry, playing on lingering safety fears, are fighting to keep the ban on fugu livers even from poison-free fish [IM]
• New list of pro-Japanese collaborators sheds new light on history
  Directory containing biographies of 4,776 known collaborators will be available in August
  Two civilian South Korean organizations released on April 29 a list of more than 4,700 people alleged to have been pro-Japanese collaborators during Japan’s 1910-45 occupation of the Korean Peninsula. The list included former President Park Chung-hee, Dong-a Ilbo founder Kim Seong-soo, Chosun Ilbo owner Bang Eung-mo, Ewha Womans University’s first President Kim Hwal-ran and renowned poet Seo Jeong-joo. Immediately after the release, President Lee Myung-bak expressed his opposition to revisiting the collaboration issue, saying, "On the pro-Japan issue, we need to have an eye on keeping a balance between merits and demerits." [Japanese colonialism]
• Lee’s reaction to list of pro-Japanese collaborators draws criticism
  Reconciliation should be viewed broadly, in terms of national reconciliation, Lee says
    President Lee Myung-bak and the ruling Grand National Party’s critical stance toward a list of people alleged to be pro-Japanese collaborators has incited strong resistance from the related organizations. The groups worry that the new government’s attitude will deepen social conflicts. [Japanese colonialism]

• Seoul seeks military cooperation agreement with Japan
  South Korea is considering signing an agreement on military cooperation with Japan for the first time since Korea's liberation from Japanese colonial rule over six decades ago, the Defense Ministry said Monday.
• Japan: Warning Over Declining Work Force
  By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE Published: April 23, 2008 Japan’s work force of 66.5 million people is set to shrink by more than one-third, to 42 million, by 2050 if the country fails to reverse a declining birthrate, the government said in a report. The white paper outlined potential measures to address the labor problem, including earmarking $15 billion to $23 billion to encourage women to resume working after having children by improving child-care centers and making maternity leave more flexible.
• Japan may be rigid but it is not inefficient
  By David Pilling Published: April 23 2008 20:25 | Last updated: April 23 2008 20:25 It is the men with red-glowing Darth Vader nightsticks who provoke particular scorn. These are the people, employed by Japanese construction companies, who stand by roadworks or building sites, waving pedestrians and traffic out of harm’s way. So vital is their function that sometimes they are replaced by plastic cut-outs. Then there are the elevator ladies, with their doll-like mannerisms, who press the lift buttons, the shop assistants who work in pairs, and the hotel attendants with so much time on their hands they physically walk guests to the lavatory or cigar bar. These are the examples regularly invoked to illustrate Japan’s supposed service-sector failings. While Japanese manufacturing is held up as world class, its service sector, which accounts for 70 per cent of output, is regularly lampooned as being years behind the efficiencies achieved in the US and even sleepy Europe. The latest Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development report on Japan, released this month, treads familiar ground. It states that "boosting productivity in the service sector is a key priority for promoting long-term growth" as the workforce ages and shrinks. While manufacturing labour productivity per hour increased from 1999 to 2004 by 4 per cent annually, keeping pace with the US, it notes, service-sector productivity lagged behind badly, rising just 0.9 per cent. There is a problem with such analysis. You need only to read, in a previous finding, that Japan’s transport system is 30 per cent less efficient than that of the US to smell a rat. Common sense tells you that passenger transport is vastly superior in Japan, where tens of millions of people are moved daily at reasonable cost. The Shinkansen bullet train, for example, with 300 daily services between Tokyo and Osaka, makes the 552km journey in 2½ hours with an average delay measured in seconds.
• Korea, Japan Agree to Strengthen Ties
  President Lee Myung-bak and Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda agreed in Tokyo on Monday to hold working-level talks in June to restart stalled negotiations on a bilateral free trade agreement. The two leaders also agreed to galvanize the bilateral Working Holiday Visa Program, including doubling the number of Korean and Japanese young adults participating in the program to 7,200 in 2009, with a goal of increasing the number to 10,000 by 2012.
• Korea Refutes New Dokdo Claims from Japan
  The Japanese Foreign Ministry in February on its website posted a 14-page document to support its claim to Korea's Dokdo islets. Entitled "10 Issues of Takeshima" -- the Japanese name for Dokdo -- and available in Korean and English as well as Japanese, the controversial document is highly likely to mislead readers as to the legitimacy of Japan's claims to the East Sea islets. Now, the Dokdo Research Center under the Korea Maritime Institute has produced a document entitled "Did Dokdo Really Belong to Japan?" which refutes the Japanese claims one by one.
• ‘Yasukuni’ and freedom of expression
  Takahashi Tetsuya, Professor of philosophy, Tokyo University [Column] Yasukuni Shrine is center stage again in Japan. Chinese director Li Ying’s documentary, "Yasukuni," is being canceled by big-name movie theaters. Li came to Japan in 1989 from China’s Shandong Province. He says he worked on the documentary for a decade, starting in 1997, well before Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s visits to worship at the shrine incited renewed controversy about it. The work itself was produced with funding from the Japan Art and Culture Promotion Fund and the Busan film festival’s Asian Documentary Network. [Yasukuni]
• Japan's False Propaganda against DPRK Refuted
  Pyongyang, April 18 (KCNA) -- Recently Japanese media including NHK were busy spreading wild rumor that the DPRK "exported a lot of rocket systems" to a country in Southeast Asia. Commenting on the fact, Minju Joson today says: Much upset by the serious political crisis in Japan and the approval rate for the Fukuda Cabinet sinking as low as 20%, the Japanese reactionary ruling quarters felt the need to fake up a shocking incident to slander the DPRK and build up public opinion critical of it in a bid to secure a pretext for escalating sanctions and pressure upon it and divert elsewhere Japanese people's criticism of them and thus tide over the political crisis and prolong their dirty remaining days. The fiction about "export of rocket systems" floated by them is nothing but a despicable plot hatched by them to serve this sinister purpose. What merits attention is that not only the international community but the United States are dismissing the above-said story [Disinformation]
• Freedom Next Time. Japanese Neonationalists Seek to Silence Yasukuni Film
  David McNeill John Junkerman interviews Li Ying Neo-nationalists have shut down a Chinese-directed movie about Japan’s controversial war memorial Yasukuni, the latest in a string of incidents threatening freedom of expression in Japan. Its name translates as “peaceful country,” millions have silently prayed there for an end to wars, and for much of the year the loudest sound is the buzzing of insects and the shuffle of old footsteps to the hushed main hall. Yet Yasukuni Shrine, which occupies a single square kilometer of central Tokyo, is one of the most controversial pieces of real estate in Asia, resented by millions who consider it a monument to war, empire, and Japan’s unrepentant and undigested militarism. [China Japan] [Japanese remilitarisation]
• Foundations of Cooperation: Imagining the Future of Sino-Japanese Relations
  Matthew Penney
  Introduction In the last week of 2007, Japanese Prime Minister Fukuda Yasuo made an official visit to China. The tone of the trip was set by positive rhetoric on both sides and at one point, Fukuda expressed his conviction that now “Bilateral ties have become increasingly complementary, and one cannot do without the other.”[1] Fukuda is working under the assumption that closer Sino-Japanese relations are a key to the future of Japan and East Asia. This article shares that view. As Slavoj Zizek and other contemporary philosophers have noted, imagination has an important impact on political realities.[2] To build a progressive international relationship, the future of that relationship must first be imagined, diverse visions contested, and concrete strategies for a way forward defined. Given the extraordinary degree of economic connectiveness between Japan and China and the seeming ability of both markets to complement the strengths of the other within an expansive regional economy, there are compelling incentives to overcome the political schism that plagued Koizumi Junichiro’s five years as Prime Minister. [China Japan]

• No sex, thank you ... we're Japanese
  Justin McCurry in Tokyo The Observer, Sunday March 30 2008 Article Close This article appeared in the Observer on Sunday March 30 2008 on p43 of the World news section. It was last updated at 00:00 on March 30 2008. Housewife Miyuki Yanagisawa cannot recall the last time she had sex with her husband. She is certain, though, that their physical estrangement can be measured in years, not months. While she shares a room with the couple's two young daughters, her husband, a company employee, sleeps alone in another room, grateful for the chance to catch up on his sleep after another tortuously long day at work. 'As long as he is healthy and doing well at work, I can put up with the lack of affection,' Yanagisawa, 44 - who asked that her real name not be used - said of her decade-old marriage. 'Many other women in my age group feel the same. When couples reach a certain age they start calling each other "Mum" and "Dad" - they certainly stop using affectionate nicknames. I think that spells the beginning of the end for sex.' Yanagisawa is not alone.
• Foreign Minister to Discuss Stronger Ties With Japan
  The foreign ministers of South Korea and Japan will meet in Tokyo early next week for discussions on various issues including a scheduled summit of their top leaders, government officials said Sunday.
• Anniversary of independence fighter Ahn Jung-geun’s death
  children¡¯s choir sings yesterday at a ceremony marking the 98th anniversary of independence fighter Ahn Jung-geun¡¯s death. He was executed for killing a Japanese diplomat in 1909. [Terrorism] [Double standards] [Japanese colonialism]
• Vision for an East Asian Community
  [Column] Kim Yeong-ho, Joint representative of the International East Asian Community Association              » Kim Yeong-ho.       There is a lot of activity going on in anticipation of the 100th anniversary of the death of An Jung-geun (1879-1910), including scholarly conferences like the one hosted by the International East Asian Community Association and held recently in Tokyo, where I had the opportunity to speak about “An Jung-geun and the East Asian Community.” It was something of an “incident” to talk about An Jung-geun in front of about 500 mainstream members of Japanese society gathered at the Asahi Shimbun’s conference hall. They say that when the title of my paper was broadcast on an electronic billboard at another newspaper, it caused people to momentarily stop breathing. The Japanese people still have a strong image of An Jung-geun as a terrorist, the man who shot and killed Ito Hirobumi, the man behind Japan’s modernization. I began by saying that I wanted to introduce listeners to An Jung-geun not as a hero of the Korean independence movement but as a East Asian pacifist, or, rather, the “Jean Monet,” the father of European integration, of the construction of an East Asian community. My interest is in the evolution of ASEAN, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations into ASEAN+3, which includes the ASEAN member states and China, Japan, and Korea, and eventually into a framework for an East Asian Community.  [Terrorism] [Double standards] [Japanese colonialism]
• Japan Peers Into the Abyss
  By Brad Glosserman
  It is an item of faith for many Japanese – and many Japan watchers – that their country will never build or acquire nuclear weapons. Japan’s nonnuclear status, a product of both the searing experience of August 1945 and a calculation of the strategic value of nuclear weapons, has been a pillar of the nation’s postwar political identity. Recent developments could force Japan to reconsider the nuclear option, however. The U.S must step up, engage Japanese decision-makers in a serious discussion of their security concerns and work to allay them. Failure to do so could push Tokyo over the nuclear brink. [Japanese remilitarisation] [Nuclearisation]
• Japan’s Pan-Asianism and the Legitimacy of Imperial World Order, 1931–1945
  Cemil Aydin One of the most striking aspects of the international history of the 1930s is the revival and official endorsement of a pan-Asian vision of regional world order in Japan. The pan-Asian discourse of East-West civilizational difference and comparison was influential in various intellectual circles in Asia. But during the 1920s, as a political project of Asian solidarity, it was irrelevant for Japan’s foreign policy, and it did not have any international momentum or movement. The period after the Manchurian Incident in 1931, however, witnessed a process by which pan-Asianist ideas and projects became part of Japan’s official foreign policy rhetoric. [Imperialism] [Japanese colonialism]
• The Japanese Nuclear Power Option: What Price?
  Endo Tetsuya and Arjun Makhijani With the price of oil skyrocketing to more than $100 a barrel, many nations including Japan and the United States, are looking to the nuclear power option among others. Is nuclear power a viable option in a world of expensive and polluting fossil fuels? Japan Focus, in the first of a series of articles on energy options centered on renewable options and the environmental costs of energy options, presents the case for nuclear power recently made by Endo Tetsuya and a critique of the nuclear option by Arjun Makhijani. [Nuclear energy]
• A 1942 Declaration for Greater East Asian Co-operation
  Translation by Yayoi KOIZUMI and Zeljko Cipris Introduction by James Orr
  The “Declaration for Greater East Asian Co-operation” was a wartime booklet and elementary text published for use in Japan’s Asian and Pacific colonies and occupied territories. Through the presentation of attractive images of children and people of many lands and cultures, the images convey the noble mission that informed Japanese wartime propaganda—that Japan would unite fellow Asians under its leadership to throw off the yoke of exploitive Western imperialism. The text also reveals the imperialist assumptions that Japan shared with those same imperialist powers, but here cloaked in a rhetoric evocative of Confucian benevolence. [Imperialism] [Japanese colonialism]
• Japan to seek authority to arrest U.S. soldiers on joint patrols
  Wednesday, March 19, 2008 at 07:10 EST TOKYO — Japan plans to ask the United States to make clear that the Japanese side will have the authority to arrest U.S. soldiers during joint patrols by Japanese police and U.S. forces to be conducted as part of efforts to prevent a recurrence of crimes in Okinawa, the Foreign Ministry said Tuesday. The proposed joint patrols by Japanese police and U.S. service personnel were included in a package of measures announced in February as part of efforts to prevent a recurrence following a number of crimes allegedly involving U.S. soldiers [Extraterritoriality]
• Two former aides to Kim Jong Il suspected of ordering abductions
  03/11/2008 THE ASAHI SHIMBUN Two former senior North Korean officials said to have been aides to leader Kim Jong Il are suspected of masterminding the abductions of four Japanese in the 1970s, police sources said. The two, Li Wan Gi, former director of the overseas intelligence investigation division, currently dubbed Room 35, and Kan Hae Yong, former deputy director of the same division, are suspected of ordering agents to snatch Kaoru Hasuike, Yukiko Okudo, Yasushi Chimura and Fukie Hamamoto in 1978. Hasuike and Okudo were married in North Korea, as were Chimura and Hamamoto. The two couples returned to Japan in October 2002. [Abductees]
• Japan’s gradual transformation in corporate governance
  Luke Nottage, Leon Wolff & Kent Anderson
  Japan has recovered from a ‘lost decade’ of economic stagnation over the 1990s, but this has been a ‘found decade’ for civil and criminal justice law reform, especially in corporate and securities law.
• Toyota to Launch Flagship Brand in Korea
  Toyota will officially launch its flagship brand in Korea, some 20 years after Korea opened its car market and 36 years since Toyota left Korea after breaking joint venture ties with Shinjin Motor Company in 1972. Since 2000, when it established Toyota Korea sales outlet, Toyota Motor has been selling only the Lexus luxury brand. But it has delayed launching the non-luxury flagship brand Toyota. The launch of the world leader here is likely to hit not only the import car market but domestic manufacturers too.
• Lee Urges Future-Oriented Ties with Japan
  President Lee Myung-bak, in an address marking the anniversary of the March 1 Independence Movement on Saturday, said Korea and Japan "should build up future-oriented relations in a pragmatic way. We can never turn our face away from the truth of history. But neither can we afford to remain bound by the past indefinitely and delay our march toward the future." Lee called for a more "open-minded patriotism, whereby we can exchange and live together with the people around the world, instead of narrow-minded nationalism."
• Why Seoul can’t catch up with Tokyo?
  There is a lot of interest in Korea among the Japanese these days, and it’s not hallyu, that "wave" of Korean pop culture. Yasuo Fukuda, along with a group of former Japanese prime ministers, was in Seoul this week to attend President Lee Myung-bak’s inauguration. Next month, Korean and Japanese parliamentarians from a variety of political parties are going to form an organization to promote the construction of a tunnel between Japan and the Korean Peninsula. Japan is going to invite Korea to participate in the G-8 meeting being held in Hokkaido in July.

• Japan Must Prepare for War Between U.S. and North Korea. North Korea's Nuclear Threat
  The Yomiuri Shimbun
  Japan Focus introduction: Once the closest U.S. ally on North Korean issues, Japan is now feeling alone and isolated. The Bush administration has reversed its stance toward Pyongyang and appears to be on the verge of removing the country from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list. China and South Korea are racing to invest money into North Korea. Russia backs both inter-Korean engagement and North Korea's integration into the global economy. Still Japan holds back.
• The Potential of Fandom and the Limits of Soft Power: Media Representations on the Popularity of a Korean Melodrama in Japan
  Kaori HAYASHI and LEE Eun-Jeung*
  This paper examines Japanese and Korean representations of the audience, fandom and popularity of the Korean drama ‘Winter Sonata’ as it emerged in media discourse in Japan from the beginning of 2004 through the first half of 2005 to better understand the potential and limits of soft power [Softpower] [Hallyu]
• Friendship of Late President Rhee, US Commander Unveiled
  Syngman Rhee, left, shakes hands with Gen. Lyman Lemnitzer at a staff meeting with his administration and the U.S. military. This photo and other materials collected by a confidant of Rhee were brought to light and first presented by The Korea Times. By Bae Ji-sook Staff Reporter Personal documents have been made public showing that Korea's first President Syngman Rhee (1875-1965) was dedicated to modernizing the country's military and restraining Japanese power in East Asia.
• Seoul, Tokyo Share Same Stance on N.Korea: Japanese FM
  Japanese Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura on Sunday stressed that there is no difference between President Lee Myung-bak's North Korea policy and that of Japan
• New president's first guest is the leader of Japan
  February 26, 2008 South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, right, and Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda yesterday at the Blue House in Seoul. [YONHAP] Minutes after arriving at the Blue House as the new president of South Korea, Lee Myung-bak met Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda. The two talked about improving ties between their countries, including restarting a stalled free trade agreement process. ¡°I just arrived here in the Blue House about a half hour ago. And my meeting with you, my first guest here, means a lot to me,¡± Lee said to Fukuda, according to pool reports. Fukuda responded with thanks, saying the get-together ¡°is an indication of President Lee¡¯s feelings toward Japan.¡± Lee also met later in the day with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in line with his repeated pledge to build Korea¡¯s relations with its key allies and neighbors.
• The Comfort Women, the Asian Women’s Fund and the Digital Museum
  Wada Haruki, translated and introduced by Gavan McCormack
  The original Japanese version is available here. Introduction: Six decades have passed since the end of the Pacific and East Asian War and the collapse of the Japanese colonial empire, but responsibility for colonialism, war, and their accompanying atrocities, continues to agitate Japan and East Asia. It is widely believed that Japan refuses to apologize or face the truth of history, much less compensate victims. Such a belief is, however mistaken, although it is true that it took five decades before any such steps were taken and the adequacy of the steps taken has been debated and continues to be debated. [Japanese colonialism]
• Soft Power: The U.S. Cultural Offensive and Japanese Intellectuals
  Takeshi MATSUDA
  By the end of World War II, the U.S. government had recognized how important a cultural dimension of foreign policy was to accomplishing its broad national objectives. International relations in the twentieth century was no longer just a matter of relations between governments; it was a matter of people-to-people contact as well. President Harry Truman clearly sensed the advent of a new age. On August 31, 1945, he proclaimed that “the nature of present-day foreign relations makes it essential for the United States to maintain information activities abroad as an integral part of the conduct of our foreign affairs.”[1] In September 1945, Assistant Secretary of State William Benton articulately expressed similar beliefs about the importance of an international information program: “The development of modern means of communication has brought the peoples of the world into direct contact with each other. Friendship between the leaders and the diplomats of the world is important, but it is not enough. The people themselves must strive to understand each other. We must strive to interpret ourselves abroad through a program of education and of cultural exchange.”[2] [Softpower]
• An 'Early Summer': Sino-Japanese Cooperation in the East China Sea
  By Sourabh Gupta
  Sourabh Gupta, Senior Research Associate at Samuels International Associates, Inc., writes, "Nevertheless, with the number of Chinese visitors to Japan exceeding the number of Americans for the first time in 2007 and with China, excluding Hong Kong, ousting the United States as Japan's top trading partner for the first time in 2007, 2008 might yet play witness to a veritable "early summer" in Sino-Japanese bilateral relations."
• Japan lawmakers want "peace tunnel" to South Korea
  Fri Feb 15, 2008 2:33am EST TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan and South Korea, long at odds over their wartime history, should be linked by a railway tunnel under the sea symbolising peaceful ties, a group of Japanese lawmakers was reported as saying on Friday. The cross-party group of parliamentarians is proposing a 128 km (80 miles) tunnel that would be part of a rail link between Karatsu on Japan's southwestern island of Kyushu and Pusan in South Korea via two Japanese islands, Kyodo news agency said. The tunnel -- which would be more than twice as long as the Channel Tunnel connecting Britain and France -- could one day allow passengers to travel by rail from Tokyo to London, Kyodo quoted lawmakers as saying. [Railways]
• Foreign Ministry Failure to Provide Documents on 1965 Japan-Korea Normalization Pact is Illegal: Tokyo Court
  Lawrence Repeta
  More than six decades after the end of World War II, responsibility for wartime suffering remains a highly sensitive political issue in Asia, nowhere more so than in the Japan-Korea relationship. When the two countries normalized relations in 1965, one treaty provision was intended to settle claims by the Korean government and its people for compensation for injuries suffered during the era of Japanese rule (1910-45). More than forty years later, Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs still keeps documents created during treaty negotiations hidden from public view.
  Under terms of the 1965 treaties, the government of Japan agreed to provide the equivalent of 300 million US dollars in property and services and long-term low interest loans of 200 million dollars in exchange for agreement that claims “concerning property, rights and interests” of the Korean government and its people “have been settled completely and finally” (kanzen katsu saishutekini kaiketsu). The Japanese government invariably cites this language in response to suits filed in Japanese courts by Korean plaintiffs who claim they were victims of forced labor, sexual slavery or suffered other injuries during the colonial period.
• New Syonan and Asianism in Japanese-era Singapore
  Vivian Blaxell
  I see the lines of imperial flags on the southern isle and think, oh how dazzling the Emperor’s reign! I see the exotic stars of the Southern Cross in my window at dawn, but the rooster’s call sounds just the same I see the strange sight of a soldier with a gibbon for a pet; yet in time regard it quite without suspicion. Tanaka Katsumi, Syonanto [Singapore], 1944 [1]
  But, in Singapore, as in so many other parts of Japan’s empire, Japanese brutality coexisted with a different operation of power, one that aimed to be constructive rather than destructive in the effort to constitute the Japanese Empire, now reconceived by Tokyo as the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. This binary conduct of the Japanese imperial project bore similarities to European and American imperialisms in which violence and oppression often went hand in hand with pious constitutive practices. The mission civilisatrice of imperial France is a case in point. French imperial ideologues and colonizers paired subjugation with the burden of transforming colonized populations into “civilized” subjects through enlightenment projects. For Japan, the civilizing mission emerged from its claim to be better able to deliver modernity to its subject peoples in Asia.
  Japanese discourses of Asian unification remained in circulation, but by the 1930s Japan’s Greater East Asia rhetoric called for a different sort of empire: a regional and independent union or consortium of ethnic nations; a league of differences looking upward to Tokyo but liberated from the western yoke to develop their own abilities, while always progressing in accord with the needs of the imperial center.
  New Syonan and Fuji Village, and the testament they bear to the other Japanese way of doing empire. This is not to suggest that the constitutive and optimistic planning behind the new communities in Malaya were any less about imperial control than slave labour and mass killings. But the story of Singapore, Shinozaki Mamoru, and New Syonan does point us toward recognition of certain emancipatory possibilities inherent in Japan’s imperial project. Asianist and Pan-Asianist discourses in Japan were not only rhetorical subterfuges for a real Japanese imperial agenda. They were a new way of “doing” imperialism; a way that existed alongside subjugation and exploitation, indeed consorted with them at times, and found expression in the establishment and development of new communities like New Syonan. [Japanese colonialism] [Imperialism]

• The Six Party Talks Still Crucial to Japan's Abduction Issue
  Hideya Kurata 25 January 2008 The issue of Japanese citizens abducted by North Korean agents in the 1970s and 1980s is one of the main diplomatic concerns among the Japanese public. Given Pyongyang's untrustworthy attitude even after the head of state Kim Jong-Il admitted the abduction of thirteen Japanese citizens when Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi visited in September 2002, the Japanese concern and anger is wholly understandable. Yet, in the midst of this public concern and anger, are we not underestimating another serious problem involving North Korea, i.e., the threat of nuclear weapons? Progress in the Six Party Talks -- which seem to be suffering a setback due to Pyongyang's silence despite the passage of the December 31 deadline by which it was supposed to declare all its nuclear programs -- is necessary for Japan to keep open the channel of dialogue with North Korea, without which the resolution of the abduction issue will be very difficult. [Abductees]
• A New Policy Toward N. Korea Can Serve Japan
  By Robert Dujarric
  January 24th, 2008 Robert Dujarric, director of the Institute of Contemporary Japanese Studies at Temple University Japan Campus in Tokyo, writes, "But at this point it is most unlikely that North Korea, which receives aid from China and South Korea and achieved a major breakthrough with America, will make concessions to Japan on the issue. Moreover, there is unfortunately little evidence that the unaccounted for abducted victims would be set free, assuming they are still alive. Consequently, Tokyo can use the U.S.-North Korea agreement as an opportunity to follow a more flexible strategy that will better serve its national interest."
• Japan to be Lee’s First Country to Visit
  JANUARY 23, 2008 07:38 The Nihon Keizai Shimbun stated on Tuesday that regarding the Korea-Japan relations, President-elect Lee Myung-bak selected Japan as the first country to make a state visit and both nations are negotiating on the details of the schedule. The Japanese newspaper analyzed that President-elect Lee plans to visit Japan and the U.S. immediately after his inauguration to quickly normalize Korea’s ties with both countries which have been weakened by the Roh Moo-hyun administration.
• 101 Bodies of Conscription Victims Come Home
  The remains of 101 Koreans pressed into labor and the army by imperial Japan during World War II will return to Korea on Wednesday [Japanese colonialism]
• Japan as a Plutonium Superpower
  By Gavan McCormack
  Policy Forum Online 08-005A: January 17th, 2008 Gavan McCormack, emeritus professor of Australian National University, a coordinator of Japan Focus, and author of the recently published Client State: Japan in the American Embrace, writes, "The final question is this: is Japan's drive to become a nuclear super-state compatible with its "Client State" role? The US has always insisted that Japan not be a nuclear weapons state, but, given a forthcoming privileged position within the GNEP, it stands to become a de facto nuclear superpower anyway. The Bush administration may be confident that it has locked Japan in to Client State subordination for the foreseeable future, but a considerable potential ambiguity opens up."
• Japan as a Plutonium Superpower
  Gavan McCormack
  Introduction For 60 years the world has faced no greater threat than nuclear weapons. Japan, as a nuclear victim country, with “three non-nuclear principles” (non-production, non-possession, and non-introduction of nuclear weapons into Japan) and its “Peace Constitution,” had unique credentials to play a positive role in helping the world find a solution, yet its record has been consistently pro-nuclear, that is to say, pro-nuclear energy, pro-the nuclear cycle, and, pro-nuclear weapons. This paper elaborates on Japan’s aspiration to become a nuclear state, arguing that attention should be paid to Rokkasho, Tsuruga, and Hamaoka, the places at the heart of Japan’s present and future nuclear plans, no less than to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, whose names represent the horror of its nuclear past.[1]
  Its cooperation in the projection of nuclear intimidation against North Korea contributed to proliferation and brought closer the time when Japan itself might decide to possess its own weapons. Should it make such a decision, Japan already possesses a prototype intercontinental ballistic missile, in the form of its H2A rocket capable of lifting a five-tonne payload into space, huge stores of plutonium and high levels of nuclear scientific and technical expertise.[11] No country could match Japan as a potential member of the nuclear weapon club. [Weaponisation]
• No More Demands for Apologies From Japan: Lee
  Updated Jan.18,2008 07:54 KST President-elect Lee Myung-bak on Thursday said there will be no more demands for apologies from Japan during his presidency. “For a new, mature Seoul-Tokyo relationship, I don't want to ask them to apologize for, or examine themselves” over colonial rule of Korea, Lee told foreign reporters at an event organized by the Seoul Foreign Correspondents' Club at the Korea Press Center in Seoul [Japanese colonialism]
• Broken Hearts, Sore Thumbs: Japan’s Best Sellers Go Cellular
  Ko Sasaki for The New York Times Japan’s younger generation came of age with the cellphone, and created its own popular culture by tapping thumbs on keypads. By NORIMITSU ONISHI Published: January 20, 2008 TOKYO — Until recently, cellphone novels — composed on phone keypads by young women wielding dexterous thumbs and read by fans on their tiny screens — had been dismissed in Japan as a subgenre unworthy of the country that gave the world its first novel, “The Tale of Genji,” a millennium ago. Then last month, the year-end best-seller tally showed that cellphone novels, republished in book form, have not only infiltrated the mainstream but have come to dominate it.
  Of last year’s 10 best-selling novels, five were originally cellphone novels, mostly love stories written in the short sentences characteristic of text messaging but containing little of the plotting or character development found in traditional novels. What is more, the top three spots were occupied by first-time cellphone novelists, touching off debates in the news media and blogosphere. “Will cellphone novels kill ‘the author’?” a famous literary journal, Bungaku-kai, asked on the cover of its January issue. Fans praised the novels as a new literary genre created and consumed by a generation whose reading habits had consisted mostly of manga [ICT]
• “Will you go to war? Or will you stop being Japanese?” Nationalism and History in Kobayashi Yoshinori’s Sensoron
  Rumi Sakamoto
  As a study of the influence and nature of popular nationalism in Japan, this article examines the relationship between nationalism and history in Kobayashi Yoshinori’s best-selling manga comic, Sensoron (On War, 1998). Sensoron heralded the recent trend of nationalistic manga targeted at younger generations [1] and has been instrumental in popularizing the ideas of new-generation rightists and historical revisionists over the last decade. Kobayashi explains his strategy as “using the language of daily life in order to discuss politics and ideas” [2], adding that he created Sensoron as “something that intellectuals cannot write - something that young people find pleasure to read and get completely absorbed in, and yet is not light but deep”. [3] He also emphasizes that what he writes is based on the “common sense of common folks (shomin no joshiki)”. Such an anti-elitist strategy, along with constant caricaturizing of academics, journalists, political activists and politicians as “uncool old men (dasai oyaji)” as well as his well-constructed and marketed charismatic personality, has proved very successful. Indeed, via the popular medium of manga, Kobayashi has ostensibly “created a discourse that is more influential than that of any other “theorist” in the 1990s”. [4] [Japanese remilitarisation]
• Things Japanese Enjoying Quiet Boom in Korea
  Lee Ji-sun (28) is an office worker with a firm in Seoul’s Gwanghwamun area. Before arriving at her office, she likes to drop in at Mister Donut to enjoy a breakfast consisting of coffee and a doughnut. Her favorite dress brand is Uniqlo. After hours, she frequently goes to Pomunoki, an omelet restaurant in Sinchon, with friends. Sometimes after dinner, she goes to a pub called Haikaraya. What these brands have in common is that all of them are Japanese. Lee takes no great interest in the Japanese culture, but before she knows it, a lot of Japanese culture has seeped into her life. Experts say in the past, when Koreans were poor, they wished to buy Japanese-made electronic appliances as an expression of worship for Japan, an advanced country. But now they are following trends in Japanese clothing, or dietary patterns as part of the well-being trend -- a different kind of boom of all things Japanese [Brand] [Country image]
• Reconciling Japan and China*
  Mel Gurtov
  Abstract: The conflict-resolution literature offers new insights to reconciling parties in conflict. This article applies that literature, along with political-science approaches, to the seemingly intractable China-Japan rivalry. Proceeding from the standpoint that China and Japan need one another, and should manage their conflict for mutual benefit, the article suggests several steps they may take—bilaterally, in multilateral settings, and in civil society—to reduce tensions and promote better understanding.
• The Forging of Alien Status of Koreans in American Occupied Japan
  Mark E. Caprio
  Introduction Declarations made before and immediately following the cessation of the Pacific War pledged the United States mission of the occupation of Japan, after disarming the erstwhile enemy of its military capacity and purging those responsible for the war, to be the introduction of democracy. The same Potsdam Declaration that demanded Japan’s “unconditional surrender” appended the notion that through occupation the democratic ideals of “[f]reedom of speech, of religion and of thought, as well as respect for the fundamental human rights shall be established.” This article considers the application of these principles to Japan’s minorities. These peoples not only were denied political consideration as “Japanese” but also faced severe discrimination and at times non-recognition during the postwar period. In particular, given its size, its organization, and historical complications, this article examines the plight of Japan’s Korean population.
  Koreans do not possess the Japanese fever for hard work, and to the energetic Japanese Koreans appear to be slow moving and lazy.
  The United States never considered the overseas Korean Provisional Government as a wartime ally or as a postwar legitimate representative of the Korean people
  The division of the Korean peninsula particularly complicated the status of Korean residents in Japan who were sympathetic to the left. Richard B. Finn, who served in the Diplomatic Section of SCAP and compiled a major “staff study” on Koreans in Japan, wrote that by 1948 at least half of this population favored Japan’s leftist elements.[16] Indeed, Occupation documents demonstrate that US administrators explained as “leftist” or “communist” any Korean activity that they felt interfered with the Occupation’s administrative policies.[17] These generalizations were probably not far off the mark; the Japanese Communist Party was one of the few politically organized groups that lent the Korean people’s plight a sympathetic ear. Korean leftists organized soon after the war’s end; a meeting held on 15 October 1945 that gathered together 5,000 delegates organized the Chaeil Chosonjin ryonmeng (League of Koreans in Japan, or Chongryun for short).[18] The December 1945 demand issued by Kim Ty-yon [Kim Taeyon]—that Koreans be allowed to form a “People’s Republic” in Japan—further estranged Korean relations with Occupation authorities. In September 1949 SCAP ordered the Japanese government to disband the organization. Communist activity on the Korean peninsula inflamed fears in Japan of the threat posed by Korean participation in Japan-based leftist activity. Japanese occupiers of the peninsula began reporting communist activity in Korea even before United States occupation forces arrived. Soon after arriving, commanding officer John Hodge noted in his “Conditions on Korea” that the “situation in the South Korea (sic) makes extremely fertile ground for the establishment of Communism.” From the autumn of 1946 the southern half of the peninsula was overrun by what the US military interpreted as uprisings directed by leaders in P’yongyang and Moscow.[19]
  Japanese and ROK governments. In effect, neither wanted these people under their jurisdiction for similar reasons: the hybrid cultural characteristics of Japan-based Koreans muddied both Korean and Japanese images of the homogeneous society that each sought to promote.
  The ROK media also emphasized the cultural factor—Japan-based Koreans lacked sufficient “Korean-ness”—to argue why the people should remain where they are.
• Imperial Japan’s Islamic Policies and Anti-Westernism
  Cemil Aydin Interview by Michael Penn
  Cemil Aydin is a specialist on the intellectual and political history of decolonization and anti-Westernism, especially with respect to Japan and the Ottoman Empire. Michael Penn: I'd like to begin by asking you how it is that you became interested in studying prewar and wartime Japanese scholarship on the Islamic world as well as the broader topic of anti-Westernism in Asia. [imperialism] [Islam]