Japan

2011
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DECEMBER 2011

• Japan, China Focus on North Korea
  By TOKO SEKIGUCHI BEIJING—Concerns over North Korea following the death of its leader, Kim Jong Il, took center stage during a two-day visit by Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda to China, while the two sides steered clear of sensitive topics such as territorial disputes. In the first visit by a national leader to Beijing since the unexpected news of Mr. Kim's death last week, Mr. Noda agreed with Chinese leaders on the need to coax (sic) Pyongyang back into regional security talks. [Inversion]
• Japan relaxes longtime weapons export ban
  By Chico Harlan, Wednesday, December 28, 1:04 AM SEOUL — Japan on Tuesday relaxed its long-standing ban on the export of weapons and military equipment, a move that is expected to boost ailing Japanese defense companies and create opportunities for international projects. The change, coming after more than a year of government discussion, reflects concern that Japan has fallen behind in weapons development, with its major companies unable to mass-produce and sell their technology abroad. It also helps the country at a time when the government has trimmed its budget for weapons procurement, despite regional threats from China and North Korea. [Japanese remilitarisation] [Threat] [Arms sales] China confrontation]
• Japan drops ban on military exports
  Rule change will help stretch Tokyo's defence budget further in response to China's increased military spending Reuters guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 27 December 2011 04.45 GMT Article history A Japanese navy submarine surfaces. Japan will relax its ban on military exports to make its defence manufacturers more competitive. Photograph: Franck Robichon/EPA Japan has relaxed its self-imposed decades-old ban on military equipment exports in a move that will open up new markets to its defence contractors and help it squeeze more out of its defence budget. The rule adopted in 1967 banned sales to communist countries, and those involved in international conflicts or subject to United Nations sanctions. It later became a blanket ban on exports and on the development and production of weapons with countries other than the United States, making it impossible for manufacturers to participate in multinational projects. [Japanese remilitarisation] [Arms sales]
• MBC causes stir with imperialistic Japanese flag
  By Lee Hyo-sik MBC, the nation’s second largest broadcaster, is drawing public criticism for airing Japan’s rising sun flag, a symbol of the country’s imperialism during the late 1800s and early 1900s, in a documentary featuring the Antarctic. The first episode of the four-part documentary series titled “Tears of the Antarctic” aired Friday. While introducing a range of activities at a Japanese base in the Antarctica, the image of one base member waving the flag aboard a naval ship was included in the program. Afterwards, many viewers expressed discontent that MBC didn’t cut the scene showing the flag that reminds everyone of Japan’s militaristic imperialism. [Japanese colonialism] [Japanese remilitarisation]
• Nagasaki review
  By Bob Rigg | Published on November 26, 2011 | Issue 3733 A new account of the bombing of Nagasaki paints a strong picture of the horrific effects on the city’s civilians. Most histories focus on consultation and decision-making processes involving political and military elites, Craig Collie’s Nagasaki: The Massacre of the Innocent and Unknowing zeroes in on the everyday lives of ordinary Japanese citizens who were to be sacrificial lambs on the altar of an undeclared Cold War that was already poisoning relations between the Soviet Union and its other so-called World War II allies. This focus is a strength, painting a rich and differentiated picture of the impact on an unsuspecting and largely civilian population of one of the world’s first nuclear weapons of mass destruction. [Nuclear weapons] [Cold War]
• Foreign ministry under fire for gaffes in identifying East Sea
  Korea's foreign ministry came under fire on Friday after it was found that some of its diplomatic cables and online publications failed to use "East Sea" to identify the waters separating the Korean Peninsula and Japan. The gaffes come as Korea is calling for the international community to simultaneously use both "East Sea" and "Sea of Japan" to identify the body of water amid a long-running tussle between Seoul and Tokyo over the name. However, some diplomatic cables and documents posted on Web sites of the foreign ministry and its Japanese mission only used the "Sea of Japan" name, according to an investigation by Yonhap News Agency.
• Japan-South Korea Relations in 2012: The Need to Strengthen the Foundations
  Ruriko Kubota 15 December 2011 No.139 South Korean politics has been called a history of discontinuity. This is due to the fact that the country has carried out drastic changes with new presidents spurning the political forces of their predecessors. Even though the democratization of the 1980s consolidated the practice of peaceful regime change by way of direct elections of presidents to a five-year term, a dramatic style of policy shift has continued in South Korea. In recent years, the country has been witnessing a move away from the progressive policy of pursuing North-South reconciliation advocated by the leftist administrations of Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun, and toward a pro-growth strategy under the moderate-conservative administration of Lee Myung-bak.
• Around the world, rallies in support of 1,000th Wednesday Demonstration
  Supporters in 42 cities in eight countries hold solidarity events and send support messages demanding sincere apology and compensation from Japan By Kwon Tae-ho, Washington Correspondent and Jung Nam-ku Tokyo Correspondent On the 1,000th Wednesday Demonstration, the world took the wrinkled hands of former “comfort women,” who had been coerced to serve as sex slaves for the Japanese military during World War II. Several thousand people in 42 cities in eight countries came together in solidarity on a Wednesday when they shared sadness and anger at the war crime of kidnapping young girls at the age of 15 and using them as sex slaves, forcing them to service an average of 30 Japanese soldiers a day. [Japanese colonialism]
• 'Comfort women' emerges as hot diplomatic issue
  A statue depicting a woman is set up in front of the Japanese Embassy during a weekly protest against Korean women victimized by Japan’s wartime practice of sexual slavery in downtown Seoul, Thursday. / Korea Times Seoul, Tokyo bicker over statue before embassy By Kang Hyun-kyung The Seoul-Tokyo diplomatic spat over a statue symbolizing Japan’s wartime sex slavery set up in front of the Japanese Embassy showed signs of worsening Thursday. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade rebuffed Japan’s call to remove the statue installed by a civic group dedicated to fighting for compensation for Japan’s forced conscription of so-called “comfort women.” [Japanese colonialism]
• Japan to pick Lockheed’s F-35 as new stealth fighter
  Courtesy of Lockheed Martin Corp. - Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter will boost Japan air defenses in the face of growing threat from China and Russia. By Chico Harlan, Published: December 14 SEOUL — Japan is set to select the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II JSF as its new stealth fighter, Japanese news media reported Tuesday, upgrading its air defense at a time when China and Russia pose growing threats to its territory. [Japanese remilitarisation] [Territorial disputes]
• Former 'comfort women' to mark 1000th weekly rally
  Elderly Korean women who had been forced into sexual slavery during World War II will hold their 1,000th weekly rally on Wednesday calling for an apology and compensation from the Japanese government, organizers said. The former sex slaves, euphemistically called "comfort women" have held a "Wednesday Demonstration" in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul every week since January 1992. The women have called upon Japan to apologize and provide compensation for forcing women into sexual slavery for Japanese troops during World War II. [Japanese colonialism]
• Japan launches spy satellite, second this year
  By Associated Press, Monday, December 12, 4:57 PM TOKYO — Japan successfully put a spy satellite into orbit on Monday and expects to complete its network of intelligence-gathering satellites with another launch next year. Japan’s space agency, JAXA, said the launch from the remote southern island of Tanegashima went off without a hitch and the radar-equipped satellite is functioning properly. It was the second launch of the year, following a successful liftoff in September. Japan has successfully launched the intelligence-gathering satellite, its second this year. .Officials refused to provide details of the satellite’s capabilities. Japanese media reports say it will augment the optical satellites Japan has already launched by providing data of what is happening on the ground at night or through cloud cover. Japan launched its first pair of spy satellites in 2003, prompted by concerns over North Korea’s missile program. It currently has four optical information-gathering satellites in orbit, though the latest of those is not fully operational yet. It previously launched two radar intelligence satellites, but both malfunctioned. The satellite launched Monday is expected to begin gathering intelligence in a few months, an official with the Cabinet Satellite Information Center told The Associated Press. He requested anonymity because details of the program are classified. Another radar satellite launch is planned next year, the official said. That would give Japan the combination of two optical and two radar satellites that it wants to complete its network. Tokyo is seeking to use the satellites to provide information on any given spot on the planet at least once a day. [Japanese remilitarisation] [Satellite] [Intelligence] [Threat]
• [Editorial] Japan’s right-wing phenomenon
  An interesting phenomenon is unfolding in the Osaka area, Japan’s second economic center: the so-called “Hashimoto phenomenon.” In elections held a few days ago, Toru Hashimoto, the 42-year-old president of the Osaka Restoration Association, and his associate, unknown 47-year-old politician Ichiro Matsui, breezed into the posts of Osaka mayor and Osaka Prefecture governor, respectively. Anti-Hashimoto campaigns from the ruling Democratic Party of Japan, Liberal Democratic Party, and even the Japanese Communist Party had no effect. One of the most notable aspects of this election is the way the established parties wilted away completely. [Japanese remilitarisation] [China confrontation]

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NOVEMBER 2011

• Japan to Take Assertive Stance Toward China
  NOVEMBER 17, 2011, 12:26 P.M. ET. By YOREE KOH TOKYO—Japan's prime minister plans to present a subtle challenge to China at a regional summit by pressing fellow Asian leaders to focus more on maritime security, a discussion opposed by an increasingly assertive Beijing. While unlikely to confront China directly, the stance by Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda will underscore his country's moves to expand security ties with neighbors in a region once highly suspicious of Japan's military role. At the East Asia Summit in Indonesia this weekend, Mr. Noda will greet leaders from the Philippines, India, and Vietnam—all countries that have signed new military pacts with Japan in recent months. [China confrontation] [Japanese remilitarisation] [Territorial disputes]
• Encyclopedia of Pro-Japanese figures has high impact, low distribution
  Many figures named have since fallen out of social favor, though there are only 4,500 sets in circulation By Park Tae-woo Whenever this time of year comes around, attorney Lee Min-seok, 42, always remembers the events of two years ago, when the “Encyclopedia of Pro-Japanese Figures” was first published, presenting a record of the collaborationist activities of 4,389 people during the Japanese occupation. At the time, Lee represented the Institute for Research in Collaborationist Activities (IRCA), which was on the receiving end of a request for an injunction banning publication. The suit had been filed by Park Ji-man, son of former President Park Chung-hee, who was listed in the encyclopedia as a collaborator. During the trial, Park Ji-man’s attorney argued that the Manchurian army was “different from the Japanese military because it was the military of the Manchurian state,” and that Park Chung-hee was “not a collaborator because the Manchurian army fought against the communist army.” [Japanese collaborators] [Park Chung-hee]
• Korea, Japan to Monitor Volcanic Activity on Mt. Baekdu
  Korea and Japan will join hands to develop technology to monitor volcanic activity on Mt. Baekdu. The National Science and Technology Commission said Wednesday a bilateral technology cooperation council met and agreed to the plan. Starting next year, Korea's National Institute for Disaster Prevention and the Japan Disaster Prevention Research Institute will jointly develop technology to predict volcanic eruptions on Mt. Baekdu and minimize damage. Earlier, the NSTC created a W3 billion (US$1=W1,122) research and development budget. The Korea-Japan technology cooperation council is an organization that links both governments and has the capacity to form national R&D policies and set budgets. It first met in 2007 and has been meeting annually since alternating between the two sides. NSTC official Kim Cha-dong said, "We're going to expand policy exchanges and joint research to deal with natural disasters, not only with Japan but with other countries."
• What We Can Learn from Japan
  Han Sung-joo Harvard University professor Ezra Vogel won critical acclaim for his 1979 book "Japan as Number One: Lessons for America," which analyzed how Japan became the world's most competitive industrial country, thereby suggesting solutions to many problems the U.S. faced. The book was quickly translated into Japanese and became a bestseller there and also in the U.S. and around the world. Since it was published, Japan became the world's No. 2 economy, and there was a lot of trepidation among Americans that it would overtake it. Then the Soviet Union collapsed and the Cold War ended, prompting MIT professor Lester Thurow to predict in his book "Head to Head" that the world would see a three-way competition between Europe, North America and Japan. But over the last 20 years, Japan's global prowess has weakened as its economy faltered. It ended up ceding its No. 2 status in terms of GDP to China in 2010 and is expected to weaken further. The sense of loss it feels is understandable. Moreover, the March earthquake and tsunami that hit eastern Japan and the ensuing nuclear disaster delivered a strong shock and sense of despair to the Japanese people. What was the reason behind Japan's weakening economic prowess?

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OCTOBER 2011

• Dong-A Ilbo founder was Japanese collaborationist, court confirms
  Ruling says Kim was not forced, but actively engaged in collaborationist activities By Hwang Chun-hwa A court recognized that the founder of the Dong-A Ilbo engaged in collaborationist activities in cooperation with Japanese colonial rule. Kim Sung-soo (1891-1955), also known by the pen name of “Inchon,” was found to have urged participation by Koreans in military and labor conscription as leader in a major extragovernmental body for the Japanese colonial administration. [Japanese collaborator]
• Battling for Asian skies: Japan’s aging air force prepares for major overhaul
  By Associated Press, Published: October 16 HYAKURI AIR BASE, Japan — Warplanes bearing the bright red Rising Sun logo roared overhead Sunday as Japan held a once-every-three-years display to showcase one of the best air forces in Asia. The only problem — most of its fighters were grounded. Underscoring Japan’s uphill battle in an increasingly heated race to control the skies over Asia, the air review came just a week after the country’s entire F-15 fleet was ordered into its hangers for safety checks following a midair accident, the second such order in three months. But in an effort to counterbalance big strides by China and Russia toward deploying new stealthy aircraft, Japan’s Air Self-Defense Forces are about to get a multibillion dollar overhaul. [Japanese remilitarisation] [Arms sales] [Threat]
• Mansfield Foundation Task Force on Crafting a Contemporary U.S.-Japan Vision for Shared Progress and Prosperity
  In commemoration of the 2012 centennial celebration of Japan’s gift of cherry trees to the United States, in the fall of 2011 the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation, in partnership with the Japan Commerce Association of Washington (JCAW) and the Japanese Chamber of Commerce and Industry of New York (JCCI), launched the “Mansfield Foundation Task Force on Crafting a Contemporary U.S.-Japan Vision for Shared Progress and Prosperity.” The task force, part of a broader initiative by JCAW and JCCI to commemorate the Cherry Blossom Centennial, is comprised of American and Japanese experts from the private sector, academia, and government. [US Japan alliance] [Thinktank]
• Japanese doctors arrive in North Korea to examine atomic bombing victims
  Japanese doctors arrive in North Korea to examine atomic bombing victims By Associated Press, Updated: Tuesday, October 11, 11:11 AM PYONGYANG, North Korea — A team of Japanese doctors arrived Tuesday in North Korea to examine victims of the 1945 atomic bombings of Japan, a trip that may help improve dismal ties between the countries. Footage from Associated Press Television News in Pyongyang showed the doctors being greeted at the airport by North Korean officials. The doctors from the Hiroshima Prefectural Medical Association are expected to be in North Korea until Saturday.
  The North Korean survivors demanded that Tokyo apologize and pay compensation. Some in Tokyo worry that compensation would be diverted to the government in Pyongyang. North Korean survivors claim that more than 40,000 Koreans were killed in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Another 30,000 Koreans survived, and 2,000 returned to what became North Korea after the Korean peninsula was divided in 1948.

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SEPTEMBER 2011

• Japan’s Evolving Space Program
  An Interview with Saadia Pekkanen By Kate Wilkinson September 9, 2011 As the United States ends its shuttle program and scales down manned space exploration, Asian states continue to invest in their space programs, both civilian and military. Although much attention is focused on China, Japan is also primed to become a major Asian space player. In an interview with NBR, National Asia Research Associate Saadia Pekkanen examines Japan’s evolving program and places it in the context of other regional space programs. Pekkanen is the Job & Gertrud Tamaki Professor in the Henry M. Jackson School of Interntational Studies at the University of Washington. Which Asian states have the most significant space programs? Japan, China, India, and South Korea are important space players in Asia. As elsewhere, Asian space programs can be characterized as dual-use with crossovers between civil and military technologies. This means that while their most publicized space aspirations focus on civilian dimensions, these states can also be players in military space activities. [Aerospace] [Japanese remilitarisation] [China confrontation]
• Yoshihiko Noda’s vision for Japan
  September 13th, 2011 Author: Ryo Sahashi, Kanagawa University and GMF There is a strong tendency in Washington and other foreign capitals to believe that the Japanese politicians you know and that are practised in telling you what you want to hear are good, and that unfamiliar names are a bad sign for smooth international relations. The foreign media in particular seems to dislike Japan’s new Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda’s ‘humble attitude’ (describing himself as a ‘loach fish’ during his campaign for the leadership) and portray him as someone without vision and leadership.
  The Noda administration is unlikely increase the defence budget or change the interpretation of the Constitution. While it might dispatch Self Defence Forces (SDF) for peacekeeping operations in South Sudan, the focus will be on the regional stability dimension of the Japan-US relationship at an operational level. Nor are there signs of initiatives with China. The idea of an East Asian Community floated by former Prime Minister Hatoyama, which was vague and innocent of regional real-politik has been canceled. The US base relocation issue in Okinawa is unlikely prove the political liability it has in the recent past, so long as Washington’s frustration is kept private. On the other hand, there could be a shift on military technology transfer. The new defense minister, Yasuo Ichikawa, has already revealed support for review of Japan’s ‘Three Principles on Arms Export’, and today most bureaucrats and specialists support the review process, but he’s in no hurry to push this forward. Despite minor party opposition, public opinion could accept review of these principles which would pave the way for joint development of weapons systems. The final decision might be taken within a year. [Japan remilitarisation][US Japan alliance][Bases]
• Rising China marks day of shame
  Global Times | September 19, 2011 02:15 By Huang Jingjing Chinese soldiers march in front of the "September 18 Museu" on Sunday in Shenyang, Liaoning Province during the memorial marking the 80th anniversary of the Japanese invasion. Photo: CFP Cities across northeast China simultaneously sounded their air raid sirens on Sunday to mark the 80th anniversary of the Japanese invasion. Pedestrians stopped and vehicles joined their horns to the chorus as the sirens began their plaintive wails for three minutes at 9:18 am in more than 100 cities in Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang provinces. During the siren, Shenyang, Liaoning, suspended all television and radio broadcasts as a subtitle and audio recording went out with the message, "Never forget the national humiliation. Rejuvenate the nation." [Japanese colonialism] [China rising]
• New Japanese Prime Minister Must Quell China's Fears About His Nationalism
  By Ikhwan Kim, September 15, 2011 Japanese PM Yoshihiko Noda“ Japan-U.S. and Japan-China relations need to be improved," Japan's newly elected prime minister, recently told his foreign minister. "I’d like you to place priority on them.” Japan has put its sixth premier in five years in place to tackle the extensive problems facing Japan in the wake of consecutive tragedies including the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis. The appearance of the new Japanese leader already attracted the attention of neighboring countries. China has viewed the appointment of Japan’s new premier with more anxiety than enthusiasm, given Yoshihiko Noda's conservative views and comments supporting a controversial Tokyo shrine honoring World War II dead including Class A war criminals. [Nationalism] [Yasukuni] [China confrontation]
• N.Korean Boat People to Be Sent to S.Korea
  The Japanese government has moved nine North Koreans who were found adrift in a small wooden fishing boat to immigration facilities in Nagasaki in preparation for sending them to South Korea.
• Japan to Build New Helicopter Carrier
  Japan plans to build a 19,500-ton aircraft carrier capable of housing helicopters after China launched its first own aircraft carrier, Chinese media reported on Wednesday. Japan already has two helicopter carriers -- the Hyuga deployed in March 2009 and the Ise deployed in March 2011 -- but the planned new vessel will be bigger. The 22DDH is scheduled for deployment in 2015. It will be 248 m long and cost around US$1.04 billion. It is 30 percent bigger than the Ise and can carry 14 helicopters. The Ise measures 197 m, has a displacement of 13,500 tons and can carry 11 helicopters. [Japanese remilitarisation] [China confrontation]
• Japanese Have Mixed Feelings About Korea
  Japanese people have mixed emotions about South Korea, according to a survey by pollster GfK for AP. GfK polled 1,000 adults in Japan between July 29 to Aug. 10 and found that 31 percent liked South Korea, putting the country third among seven countries that were compared after the U.S. and Germany. The others were Israel, China, Russia and North Korea. But 27 percent of the respondents disliked South Korea. The popularity of Korean TV dramas and K-Pop increased, AP speculated, but it looks like the country as a whole "isn't so popular itself." Japanese felt hostile toward North Korea and China, according to the survey. A total of 94 percent of respondents said they do not like North Korea, while 76 percent voiced aversion to China. [Public opinion]

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AUGUST 2011

• Noda to become Japan's PM
  The son of a paratrooper in the Self-Defense Forces, Noda angered Japan's neighbors, including South Korea and China, weeks ago by saying that Japanese Class-A war criminals convicted by an Allied tribunal after World War II were, in fact, not war criminals. The Seoul-based Dong-a Ilbo newspaper commented that given Noda's previous mentions of Japanese war criminals at the Yasukuni Shrine, it is possible that South Korea-Japan relations will be strained. [Japan China]
• Japanese Business, Soviet Development, and Territorial Conflict, 1975-1985
  Sergey Radchenko Abstract The article takes a close look at the claim that the Japanese Foreign Ministry’s policy of “inseparability of politics and economics” (seikei fukabun) hampered Soviet-Japanese economic relations in the 1980s. Taking three case-studies (South Yakut coal, Sakhalin oil and gas, and the Siberian pipeline), the author shows that the loss of interest on the part of Japanese business circles in investing in the Soviet economy had little to do with the political priorities of the Japanese Foreign Ministry, and much to do with the changing energy needs and structure of the Japanese economy and its shift towards greater resource-efficiency. The article concludes, therefore, that the solution of the “territorial problem” would have hardly contributed to increasing Japanese investment in the Soviet Union; hence seikei fukabun was based on a false premise. The findings may be relevant to the ongoing territorial dispute between Japan and Russia and, in a broader sense, between Japan and its other neighbors, notably China. The 1970s were good times for Soviet-Japanese relations. The warm currents of détente, and even more, the thunderbolt of Sino-American rapprochement, spelled the necessity for policy makers in both Moscow and Tokyo to rethink their mutual hostility. The problem was how to resolve the long standing territorial problem. Japanese Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei believed that Brezhnev was prepared to compromise in the interest of attracting Japanese investment. The basis for his optimism was Brezhnev’s supposed agreement with Tanaka’s remark, during their summit in Moscow, in October 1973, that the term “unresolved questions” in Soviet-Japanese relations included the territorial problem. Moscow denied, however, that Brezhnev had accepted any such interpretation, and the two sides remained at loggerheads.1 In the absence of a political breakthrough, however, economic ties expanded at an impressive rate throughout the 1970s despite resistance in both capitals to the idea of separating politics from economics. [Russia Japan]
• Iran’s Japanese option: Arms within arms’ reach
  By YOEL GUZANSKY AND JONATHAN SCHACHTER 08/22/2011 21:28 Japan remains at the nuclear threshold, enjoying legitimacy conferred by transparency, while knowing that, nuclear weapons are within reach. Talkbacks (6) Despite the focus on the dramatic political change taking place in the Middle East, Tehran’s barely hidden drive toward nuclear weapons remains justifiably high on the international agenda. Iran’s nuclear efforts and lack of cooperation with IAEA inspectors have led to international and unilateral sanctions, innumerable diplomatic discussions, and a near-constant flow of op-eds. Much of the debate, however, has examined Iran’s nuclear potential in binary terms; either Iran will have nuclear weapons or it won’t. The manufacture and deployment of a nuclear weapon (”unacceptable,” according to President Obama) would be an obvious violation of Iran’s obligations under the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), and would subject the country to harsher punitive measures than it currently faces. Abandoning its nuclear weapons efforts, though decreasingly likely, would include cessation of Iran’s entirely superfluous uranium enrichment activities and compliance with the transparency requirements of the NPT. Rarely raised is a third possibility: that Iran will pursue the “Japanese option” of becoming and remaining a nuclear threshold state. Japan is widely acknowledged to have both the technological ability and the stockpile of plutonium (the by-product of its peaceful nuclear energy generation) required to produce over 1,000 nuclear weapons (by comparison, China is estimated to have around 175). [Japanese remilitarisation] [Nuclearisation] [Iran]
• Japanese March Against Korean Soap Operas
  Protesters wave Japanese flags in a demonstration against Korean TV shows near Fuji TV headquarters in Tokyo on Sunday. /Yonhap Thousands of Japanese demonstrated against Korean soap operas and other TV shows in front of the Fuji TV headquarters in Tokyo's trendy Odaiba district on Sunday afternoon. Fuji TV has devoted large segments of airtime to broadcasting Korean TV dramas and other entertainment programs as the Korean Wave spread through Japan. [Culture war]
• Destroy Japanese ships heading for Dokdo
  By Park Si-soo Roh Moo-hyun instructed the military to destroy unauthorized Japanese ships heading for Dokdo while in office, a close aide to the late President said Friday. This indicates that President Lee Myung-bak’s predecessor braced for the worst possible diplomatic relations with Japan to thwart the neighboring country’s territorial ambitions of Korea’s easternmost islets. The revelation came amid escalating criticism of the government’s stance of dealing with the issue in a low key manner. [Territorial disputes] [SK Japan] [Roh Moo-hyun] [Nationalism]
• . Japanese Lawmakers Make Annual Pilgrimage to Yasukuni Shrine
  About 50 Japanese bipartisan lawmakers reportedly visited the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo on Monday to commemorate the 66th anniversary of the end of the Second World War and honor those who lost their lives during the battle, including a number of war criminals. Media reports say that 52 legislators from both the ruling and the opposition parties paid tribute to the nearly 2.5 million Japanese war dead commemorated at the shrine. This came despite Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan and Cabinet members announcing earlier that they would not be making the trip to the shrine for the second straight year, mindful of angry criticisms such visits had spurred from neighboring countries like Korea and China. [Yasukuni] [Japanese colonialism]
• DP chairman criticizes U.S. support of Japanese sovereignty claims
  Resuming six-party talks and renewed Japanese claims on Dokdo has strained the S.Korea-U.S.-Japan regional alliance » Democratic Party (DP) Chairman Sohn Hak-kyu, right, gives an explanation about his speech. (Photo by Lee Jung-woo) By Lee Tae-hee, Staff Writer Democratic Party Chairman Sohn Hak-kyu criticized what he called a U.S. bias toward Japan on sovereignty issues Monday, including its support for designating the East Sea solely as the “Sea of Japan” on maps. Sohn warned that this could lead to fissures in the framework of South Korea-U.S.-Japan cooperation. In a statement released for the 66th Independence Day on Monday, Sohn described the U.S.’s recent formulation of policy for labeling the East Sea only as the “Sea of Japan” as “the second instance of the U.S. siding with the Japanese view, following its 2008 reversal of a previous decision to categorize Dokdo as a region of ‘undesignated sovereignty.’” [Friction] [Territorial disputes]
• Japanese Societal Attitudes Towards the Tokyo Trial: A Contemporary Perspective
  Madoka FUTAMURA1 I Introduction The positive and negative significance of the Tokyo Trial has been passionately debated among Japanese historians and intellectuals. However, the attitudes of the Japanese people in general towards the Trial have been rather apathetic. The Trial was almost absent in Japanese public discourse from the conclusion of the Trial until the 1980s, and according to opinion polls conducted recently, 60 per cent2 or even 70 per cent3 of Japanese people are unfamiliar with the specifics of the Trial. Some historians and intellectuals argue that the Tokyo Trial, unlike the Nuremberg Trial, had no direct impact on post-war Japanese society. Nonetheless, a close look at Japanese attitudes shows that the Tokyo Trial has had a subtle but substantial impact on the Japanese sense of history, war responsibility and war guilt, all of which are highly contemporary issues. This long-term societal impact of the Tokyo Trial became clearer in the 1990s and started to be recognised and pointed out publicly from 2005 onwards. This article examines Japanese popular attitudes towards the Tokyo Trial from 1946 to 2008, and analyses the Trial’s societal impact, especially on the Japanese sense of history and war responsibility. Japanese attitudes and perceptions are examined through popular reactions to the Tokyo Trial itself, as well as related events and movements within society — including films, symposiums, historical controversies, the rise of neo-nationalism, the Yasukuni Shrine row — and public and media responses to them.4 [Japanese colonialism] [War crimes]
• Seoul in Quandary Over Japanese Lawmakers' Dokdo Mission
  The government is in a quandary over plans by nationalist Japanese MPs to visit Ulleung island, the nearest easily accessible island to Korea's Dokdo. The lawmakers, from the conservative Liberal Democratic Party, apparently intend to make the trip next month to highlight Japan's dubious claim to the islets. [Territorial disputes]
• Japan Only Hurts Itself with Diplomatic Posturing
  The Japanese Foreign Ministry has sent out an e-mail to all its diplomats overseas instructing them to avoid using Korean Air for a month. It apparently took the step to protest against Korean Air's inaugural flight of its new A380 jumbo jet over the Dokdo islets on June 16, claiming the aircraft invaded Japanese airspace. Tokyo had already lodged a protest via its embassy in Korea, and Japan's Foreign Minister Takeaki Matsumoto held a press conference to complain.
• N.Korean officials granted Japan visa for OCA meeting
  Observers say the visas may represent a step forward for stalled N.Korea-Japan relations By Jeong Nam-ku, Tokyo Correspondent Three North Korean officials entered Japan Tuesday following the Japanese government’s issuance Monday of visas for five officials hoping to attend a general meeting of the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) in Tokyo on Thursday. This marks the first time the Japanese government had admitted North Koreans since October 2006 measures barring their entry.

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JUNE 2011

• Remembering forced mobilization
  Members of a committee to restore the Tanbamangan Museum cut a large ribbon at a ceremony to commemorate the reopening of the museum near Kyoto in Japan, June 26. The committee said that it plans to donate around 350 thousand yen ($4,336) monthly to help cover the museum’s operating costs, and has succeeded in recruiting more than 1,000 supporters. The museum was closed in 2009 due to an annual deficit of as much as five million yen operating soley through admission fees without outside support since it opened in 1989. As of June 26, 1,435 supporters made donations, with half of them in their teens and 20s. In particular, more than 500 individuals joined the campaign in just one day as Lim Soo-bin, a high school junior, posted a message encouraging participation in the donation campaign on a portal site. “One thousand people with one mind protected a history that Japan has tried to erase. It is as worthy as writing a line of history,” she said in the post. The museum is a former mangan mine in Tanba, 50 kilometers away from Kyoto, which has preserved the labor site where many Koreans were moved and forced to work under the Japan’s colonial rule. [Japanese colonialism]
• Pro-N.Korean Schools in Japan Cave in to Funding Pressure
  Pro-North Korean high schools in Japan changed textbook entries about North Korea's kidnapping of Japanese nationals and the bombing of Korean Air passenger plane in 1987 to receive local government funding, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported Thursday. Kanagawa Prefecture on Wednesday said pro-Pyongyang high schools in the prefecture removed from their modern history textbook the sentence "Japan exaggerated the kidnap issue," and the entry claiming South Korea "fabricated" the bombing was amended to the bombing "occurred." The textbook is used in 10 pro-North Korean high schools in Japan. Kanagawa Prefecture added the modified version of the textbook was checked during a survey of high schools as part of a national tuition fee waiver program at the end of May. Kanagawa Governor Yuji Kuroiwa said on Thursday, "We agreed to provide 63 million yen of funding to the schools as they promised to use the supplementary book that says North Korea 'officially admitted' the kidnapping, and reflect this when the textbook is revised in 2013. Whether we will continue to provide funding after next year depends on the teaching in these schools." Kanagawa Prefecture withheld financial assistance to five pro-Pyongyang primary, middle and high schools in the prefecture last year, and demanded modification of history textbooks and transparent management of schools. Shin Kil-woong, who leads a group of head teachers at high schools run by the pro-Pyongyang General Association of Koreans in Japan or Chongryon, said, "We decided to remove the parts on the kidnapping issue to seek understanding from Japanese people." [Human rights]
• Exodus to North Korea Revisited: Japan, North Korea, and the ICRC in the “Repatriation” of Ethnic Koreans from Japan
  Tessa Morris-Suzuki The Human Faces of Repatriation Fifty years ago, the mass repatriation of ethnic Koreans from Japan to North Korea was reaching its peak. In towns and cities all over Japan farewell gatherings were being held, as “returnees” to North Korea packed their bags and boarded trains that would take them to the port of Niigata where, after various formalities including a “confirmation of free will” by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), they would board Russian ships for the voyage to Cheongjin in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). Over 49,000 people embarked on this journey in 1960 alone, and 93,340 over the full span of the “repatriation project”[????, ????) from December 1959 to July 1984. The emotions felt by those leaving Japan were varied and often complex. Many expressed joy and hope at the prospect of a new life in North Korea – even though the vast majority came originally from the southern half of the Korean Peninsula, and were going to a place they had never seen before. Some took a more somber view – traveling without high expectations, but at least in the belief that a future in North Korea would be more secure than their life in Japan, where they had been deprived of citizenship and had no assured residence rights, very limited access to welfare and (in most cases) few educational or employment opportunities. [Diaspora]

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MAY 2011

• Japan Unlikely to Redirect Defense Policy
  * By David Fouse May 5, 2011 The tripartite earthquake, tsunami, nuclear disaster in Japan has security analysts scrambling to determine the repercussions of these tragic events for the region and world. Some have suggested that the disaster could cause Japan to redirect defense policy away from the priorities adopted in the 2010 National Defense Program Guidelines (NDPG), moving Japan further from the preferences of US defense planners toward a more inward-looking focus on humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations. While recovery and reconstruction will preoccupy the Japanese government for the immediate future, it is unlikely that a major reversal in Japanese defense policy will result from these tragic events. [US Japan alliance] [Japanese remilitarisation] [Territorial disputes] [China confrontation]
• Prime minister's rival widens ruling party rift over crisis
  Source: Global Times [08:01 May 07 2011] Comments Ichiro Ozawa, a heavyweight rival to Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan from his ruling party, publicly blasted the leader's handling of the country's nuclear crisis Friday, as deepening rifts in the group threaten to stall policies after the March earthquake and tsunami. The ruling party's image could also take a hit after the deputy head of its disaster task force was discovered to have been playing golf in the Philippines during national holidays this week despite the humanitarian and nuclear crises. Kan is already under criticism for his response to the March 11 quake and tsunami.
• Scholars Trace Origin of Japanese Language to Korea
  The modern Japanese language was influenced significantly by a migration of farmers from the Korean Peninsula some 2,200 years ago, scientists believe. Sean Lee and Toshikazu Hasegama of the University of Tokyo make the claim in a paper in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, AFP reported Thursday. To trace the origin of the Japanese language, Lee and Hasegama created a list of 210 key vocabulary words, including verbs, numbers and nouns which have long been nearly "resistant to change," and duplicated it across 59 different dialects. They concluded the Japanese language dates back to around 200 B.C., when there was a massive migration from the Korean Peninsula to the Japanese islands. Recent archaeological and genetic studies also show that migrants from the peninsula, who brought new farming techniques and metal tools around 200 B.C., had an impact on the aborigines' style of living, including farming, and their language. There are two main theories within Japanese academia about the origin of the Japanese language -- one that it was homegrown and the other that it has a foreign origin. The homegrown theory says that the language descended directly from aborigines who lived in Japan between 12,000 to 30,000 years ago. Its advocates admit migration of people from the Asian continent, including the Korean Peninsula, around 200 B.C but argue the migrants only brought rice and farming techniques, but had scant impact on linguistic development.
• N.Korea jails 2 Japanese on drug charges
  Source: Global Times [03:22 May 05 2011] Comments North Korea said on Wednesday that it was holding two Japanese citizens on charges related to drug trafficking and the use of counterfeit currency in its free-trade zone, and had expelled a third. The three were detained in March and had admitted their criminal actions, said the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) without explaining why one was deported. [Drugs]
• NKorea detains 2 Japanese, deports another for crimes involving drugs, counterfeiting
  By Associated Press, Updated: Wednesday, May 4, 5:30 PM SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea said Wednesday it has detained two Japanese businessmen and deported another for crimes involving drug trafficking and counterfeit money. The three Japanese admitted the crimes they committed after entering the North’s northeastern city of Rason in March, the North’s official Korean Central News Agency said. Rason is where the North operates its first economic zone for foreign investment. .The North Korean dispatch didn’t say why the North expelled the third person. “What they did is a very grave violation of the law of (North Korea) and international law, and they will, therefore, face proper legal actions,” the dispatch said. It didn’t elaborate. The North identified the detained Japanese as Hidehiko Abe, representative managing director of Realise Co. Ltd. of Japan, and Takumi Hirooka, managing director of Sugita Industrial Co. Ltd. of Japan. The expelled Japanese is Masaki Furuya, former representative managing director of JP Dairin Co. Ltd., it said. Calls to Tokyo’s foreign ministry were not immediately answered Wednesday, a national holiday in Japan. The news came three weeks after Pyongyang said it was holding an American man for committing an unspecified crime against the country — the latest in a string of U.S. nationals detained in the communist country in recent years. [Drugs] [Counterfeiting]
• The Dream of Lafcadio Hearn
  Roger Pulvers Roger Pulvers’ novel The Dream of Lafcadio Hearn brings to life the encounter of the Greek-Irish expatriate journalist-writer with Japan and the Japanese. Arriving in Japan in 1890 after twenty years in the United States, Patrick Lafcadio Hearn (Koizumi Yakumo) (????)’s fourteen-year immersion in Japanese life provided the basis for a series of books that established him as the most influential interpreter of Japan in the West. But what Japan? The novel brings out the clash between Hearn’s idealized vision of a society rooted in ancient lore of the grotesque, the macabre and the quaint, and the thrust of industrialization and war that was transforming a rising imperial power. Drawing on his experience of immersion in Japanese literary, theatrical and filmic life for much of the last forty years, Pulvers limns the extraordinary life and times of Lafcadio Hearn. The following introduces readers to Hearn’s biography and an excerpt of the novel. [Image]
• Is Japan's Elite Hiding a Weapons Program Inside Nuclear Plants?
  Yoichi Shimatsu, Posted: Apr 06, 2011 Confused and often conflicting reports out of Fukushima 1 nuclear plant cannot be solely the result of tsunami-caused breakdowns, bungling or miscommunication. Inexplicable delays and half-baked explanations from Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) seem to be driven by some unspoken factor. The smoke and mirrors at Fukushima 1 seem to obscure a steady purpose, an iron will and a grim task unknown to outsiders. The most logical explanation: The nuclear industry and government agencies are scrambling to prevent the discovery of atomic-bomb research facilities hidden inside Japan's civilian nuclear power plants. A secret nuclear weapons program is a ghost in the machine, detectable only when the system of information control momentarily lapses or breaks down. A close look must be taken at the gap between the official account and unexpected events. [Japanese remilitarisation] [Nuclearisation]

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APRIL 2011

• Japan Omits Mention of N.Korean Aid
  The Japanese Foreign Ministry left North Korea out of a list of foreign donors of aid in the wake of the massive earthquake in March, the Tokyo Shimbun reported Sunday. On its website, the ministry puts up information on amounts of relief goods and donations from foreign countries. Some 142 countries and regions and 39 organizations have pledged help to the earthquake-stricken Japan. Some 101 already sent 6.8 billion yen and goods. But the website did not mention the North's donation on March 25 of US$100,000 to the Japanese Red Cross "because North Korea sent the donation to the Red Cross but did not inform the Foreign Ministry," a ministry spokesman said. [Spin] [Aid]
• 3/11 and Japan: A Hinge of History?
  By R. Taggart Murphy Apr. 21, 2011: “3/11” is emerging as new shorthand for The Great Eastern Japan Earthquake of March 11, 2011 and its aftereffects: the tsunami that destroyed much of Japan's northeast coast, and the crippling of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant . The sobriquet has the virtue of brevity; it also, of course, calls directly to mind the atrocities visited on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001 – one of the reasons it seems to be coming into use. For while the two events had radically different causes and the scale of the devastation wrought in Tohoku –measured both in human suffering and in economic damage – was orders of magnitude greater than that inflicted on Manhattan, the parallels are sufficiently striking that the echo of “9/11” evoked by “3/l1” may well be justified.
• Pan-Asianism as an Ideal of Asian Identity and Solidarity, 1850–Present
  Sven Saaler and Christopher W. A. Szpilman This is a revised, updated and abbreviated version of the introduction to the two volume collection by the authors of Pan-Asianism. A Documentary History Vol. 1 covers the years 1850-1920; Vol. 2 covers the years 1850-present, link. The economic and political power of Asia, the world’s largest continent, is increasing rapidly. According to the latest projections, the gross domestic products of China and India, the world’s most populous nations, will each surpass that of the United States in the not-too-distant future. China’s economy, like Japan’s, is already larger than that of any single European country. With this new economic might comes growing diplomatic influence. The twenty-first century, many pundits agree, will be an Asian century. This undisputed Asian success story, together with its accompanying tensions and discontents, has attracted much media and scholarly attention. Yet for all this talk of Asia, there is no consensus on what Asia actually stands for as a whole. Is the vast Asian landmass a single entity? There has never been—and perhaps never will be—universal agreement on this question.
• Small Islets, Enduring Conflict: Dokdo, Korea-Japan Colonial Legacy and the United States
  Mark Selden At a time when territorial conflicts in East Asia repeatedly raise tensions between China and Japan (Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands), North and South Korea (the Northern Limit Line) and Japan-Russia (the Northern Islands/Kurils), it is worth recalling that disputes continue to simmer not only between long-time rivals, but also among allies. Dokdo/Takeshima/Liancourt Rocks (hereafter Dokdo) remains a sharp thorn in the side of contemporary Japan-ROK relations. The contentiousness of the issues is emblematic of unresolved political and territorial legacies of two centuries of colonialism in East Asia as well as of the post-war territorial disposition of the San Francisco Treaty and the global conflict that it mirrored and defined. The story has frequently been told in terms of Japan-ROK conflict. We explore its historical and contemporary ramifications here in a triangular century-long framework involving Japan, Korea and the United States. [Territorial disputes] [Japanese colonialism] [US global strategy]
• The Battle of Okinawa 2010: Japan-US Relations at a Crossroad
  Gavan McCormack Five decades after the adoption of the (revised) US-Japan Security Treaty, and two decades after the end of the Cold War, Cold War assumptions still underpin the relationship between the world’s leading industrial democracies. A belated Japanese attempt to change and reform the relationship in 2009-2010 ended in failure and the collapse of the Hatoyama government. Whether the Kan government can do better, remains to be seen. The “Client state” relationship that I wrote about in 2007 proves difficult to transcend. The “Okinawa problem” has emerged as a crucial bone of contention, not only between the US and Japanese governments but between the people of Okinawa and both governments. This paper addresses the implications of the now 14-year long attempt to resolve the Okinawan demand for closure and return of Futenma Marine base in Ginowan City.
• KCNA Blasts Japan's Decision to Extend Sanctions against DPRK
  Pyongyang, April 8 (KCNA) -- The Japanese government at a Cabinet meeting on April 5 decided to extend sanctions against the DPRK for one more year. Japan has unilaterally applied sanctions against the DPRK. It is the 7th time that it took the extension measure since it began applying sanctions against the DPRK in July 2006. Explicitly speaking, this is ridiculous, shameless and wicked action which can be done only by those steeped in the bitterness toward the DPRK to the marrow of their bones. The Japanese government faulted the peaceful nuclear activities of the DPRK when taking the decision. It is preposterous for Japan to take issue with the peaceful nuclear activities of the DPRK now that its failed security measures at a nuclear power plant have touched off growing international concern. [Sanctions]
• Kim Jong Il Sends Relief Fund to Koreans in Japan
  Pyongyang, March 24 (KCNA) -- General Secretary Kim Jong Il sent relief fund of 500,000 U.S. dollars to Korean residents in Japan who suffered from the killer quake and tsunami happened there. [NK aid]
• Relief Fund to Quake-hit Japan from DPRK
  Pyongyang, March 24 (KCNA) -- The Central Committee of the DPRK Red Cross Society sent relief fund of 100,000 U.S. dollars to the Japan Red Cross Society as regards the recent killer quake that hit this country, causing heavy human and material losses. It expressed deep sympathy to the victims of the earthquake and the bereaved families. [NK aid]
• State honors stripped from collaborationists
  The group of 19 formerly identified as Independence Patriots By Kim Jong-cheol, Senior Staff Writer “Oh, the bitterness! Oh, the anger! Our twenty million countrymen, enslaved countrymen! Did you survive, or have you died? Will the citizen’s spirit of the four thousand years since Dangun and Gija die suddenly overnight? The bitterness, the bitterness. Countrymen, countrymen!” This is an excerpt from the editorial “Bewail This Day at Full Voice,” printed in the Hwangseong Sinmun edition of November 20, 1905, by the newspaper’s editor-in-chief, Chang Chi-yon (1864-1921), known by the pen name of “Wiam.” He wrote it in indignation after hearing news of the Eulsa Treaty, which Emperor Gojong and his ministers were forced into signing through intimidation by Hirobumi Ito, and which would effectively turn Joseon into a Japanese colony, stripping away the diplomatic rights of the Korean Empire. [Japanese collaborators]
• Cool Japan, Soft Power
  [Global Asia] By Asger Røjle Christensen Just how far can the soft power of comics and costume play be stretched in giving Japan a comeback on the world stage? It is a question of compensating for the hard power that Japan lost in World War II and its long economic downturn of the 1990s, writes Asger Røjle Christensen, a journalist and senior fellow at the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies. Despite the tragic earthquake that recently stuck Japan, Global Asia has decided to publish this article as a tribute to the enduring appeal of Japanese popular culture. Manga, Japanese comics; anime, Japanese animation; cosplay, Japanese role-play in which the young come together to perform for one another, wearing manga figures’ costumes: To many these may once have seemed eccentric or even frivolous symbols of a fin-de-siècle culture in Japan. [Softpower]
• Japan, Europe and The Dangerous Fantasy of American Leadership
  Karel van Wolferen The peculiar and unique U.S.-Japan relationship has entered a new phase, in which its future is shrouded in mist. While few Americans can be bothered ever to think about it, in the back of many Japanese minds it is something as generally accepted as a fact of nature, but at the same time a permanent complication that is recently showing sharp and irritating edges. Quite a few have begun to think that they should shake themselves out of the habit of taking it so much for granted. [Imperialism] [US Japan alliance] [Client]
• Japan Keeps Korea in the Dark Over Radioactive Discharge
  The Japanese government neither consulted nor informed its closest neighbor Korea on Monday when it announced a plan to discharge 11,500 tons of contaminated water from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the sea. Tokyo decided to discharge contaminated water with more than 100 times the legal limit of radiation, but even senior Korean government officials had to find out about it through media reports. [Accompanying photo shows what is apparently an American soldier giving a presentation..]
• Japanese FM Snubs Korean Ambassador
  Korean Ambassador to Japan Kwon Chul-hyun has tried and failed for two days to meet Japanese Foreign Minister Takeaki Matsumoto to protest against the island country's approval of textbooks that describe Korea's Dokdo islets as Japanese. Kwon first asked for a meeting with Matsumoto on Wednesday, the day the Japanese Education Ministry announced its approval of a dozen junior high school textbooks that contain the claim, but Matsumoto refused, an official with the Korean Embassy in Tokyo said on Thursday.
• Emergency Special Report: Japan's Earthquake, Hidden Nuclear Catastrophe
  By Yoichi Shimatsu Global Research, March 13, 2011 Fourth Media (China) Emergency Special Report I The Wave, reminiscent of Hokusai's masterful woodblock print, blew past Japan's shoreline defenses of harbor breakwaters and gigantic four-legged blocks called tetrapods, lifting ships to ram through seawalls and crash onto downtown parking lots. Seaside areas were soon emptied of cars and houses dragged up rivers and back out to sea. Wave heights of up to10 meters (33 feet) are staggering, but before deeming these as unimaginable, consider the historical Sanriku tsunami that towered to 15 meters (nearly 50 feet) and killed 27,000 people in 1896. Nature's terrifying power, however we may dread it, is only as great as the human-caused vulnerability of our civilization. Soon after Christmas 2004, I volunteered for the rescue operation on the day after the Indian Ocean tsunami and simultaneously did an on-site field study on the causes of fatalities in southern Thailand. The report, issued by Thammasat and Hong Kong Universities, concluded that high water wasn't the sole cause of the massive death toll. No, it's buildings that kill - to be specific, badly designed structures without escape routes onto roofs or, in our greed for real estate, situated inside drained lagoons and riverbeds, or on loose landfill. In the Tohoku disaster, an ultramodern Sendai Airport sat helplessly flooded on all sides while nearby a monstrous black torrent swept entire houses upstream.
• Tokyo Governor: Japan Should Build Nukes to Counter China
  Back Mar. 09, 2011:By David McNeill -- Tokyo's outspoken governor Ishihara Shintaro says his country, which suffered history's only nuclear attack, should build nuclear weapons to counter the threat from fast-rising China. In an interview with The Irish Times, Ishihara said Japan could develop nukes within a year and send a strong message to the world. "All our enemies: China, North Korea and Russia - all close neighbors - have nuclear weapons. Is there another country in the world in a similar situation?" "People talk about the cost and other things but the fact is that diplomatic bargaining power means nuclear weapons. All the (permanent) members of the United Nations) Security Council have them." The comments from the leader of Japan's second-most powerful political office come amid rising Japanese concerns about China's growing military muscle. Beijing announced last week that its 2011 defense budget will be hiked by 12.7% to 601.1bn yuan (?56.2bn) up from 532.1bn yuan last year. Most experts say that those figures are an underestimate. [Japanese remilitarisation] [China confrontation][Nuclearisation]

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MARCH 2011

• The Earthquake in Japanese Energy Policy
  Andrew DeWit More than a week after March 11, when northeastern Japan was hit by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake and 7-metre tsunami, the death toll remains unknown. It seems certain to exceed 20,000, as whole sections of some communities were washed out to sea. Search and rescue groups are grimly at work finding bodies alongshore and beneath the rubble and debris. The human losses are already enormous, and now the slow erosions of humanity threaten: there are sad reports of hundreds of elderly left to die in hospitals and care homes in the stricken areas. And the economic losses are climbing into the stratosphere as stocks fall, foreigners flee, and millions of workers and consumers simply stay at home. All the numbers are huge: half a million people barely getting by in poorly supplied shelters; the iconic bullet-train damaged at 1100 locations that will take "considerable time" to repair; a projection of reconstruction costing upwards of USD 200 billion. [Nuclear energy]
• Fresh Textbook Controversy Brews Amid Japanese Ruins
  The Japanese government is poised to announce the results of a review of junior high school history textbooks that are expected to anger its regional neighbors, just as a surge of goodwill reached Japan after the devastating earthquake and tsunami there. The textbooks repeat various Japanese claims to the territories of its neighbors, including Korea's Dokdo islets, the Kuril Islands, which are held by Russia, and the Senkaku or Diaoyu island, over which Tokyo is in a dispute with Beijing. The awkward timing of the announcement has raised many eyebrows, but Japan says it is all part of due process.
• Megachurch pastor calls quake ‘God’s warning’ to Japan
  Cho has often earned criticism for remarks some consider political grandstanding By Lee Seung-jun Religious leaders and politicians are drawing criticisms for what observers are calling inappropriate statements regarding the earthquake. The Sunday edition of the Internet newspaper News Mission reported Yoido Full Gospel Church senior pastor David Yonggi Cho as saying, “The earthquake makes me wonder if this was not God’s warning.” In an interview the newspaper, Cho responded to a request for comments on Japan’s difficulties following its largest earthquake in recorded history by saying, “Japan sees a lot of earthquakes, and I think it is regrettable that there has been such an enormous loss of property and life due to the earthquake.” He went on to say, “Because the Japanese people shun God in terms of their faith and follow idol worship, atheism, and materialism, it makes me wonder if this was not God’s warning to them.” “I hope that this catastrophe can be turned into a blessing and they take this opportunity to return to the Lord,” he added. [Religion] [Bizarre]
• ‘Koreans, Go Home!’ Internet Nationalism in Contemporary Japan as a Digitally Mediated Subculture
  Rumi Sakamoto Introduction On 18 September 2009, a person using the online name of ‘xegnojw’ posted a four-minute video on YouTube entitled ‘Japanese Racists Hoot Down Korean Tourists in Tsushima’.1 It depicted members of a Japanese nationalist group harassing Korean tourists on Tsushima, a Japanese island 138 km from Fukuoka and 50km from Busan.2 This island has been attracting attention from Japanese nationalists because of the increasing presence of Korean tourists and Korean investment since the 2002 opening of high-speed ferry service between Busan and Tsushima. Nationalist campaigns over the island intensified when Korea’s Masan City adopted the ‘Tsushima Day’ bill in 2005, claiming that Tsushima should be a Korean territory, thereby countering Shimane prefecture’s ‘Takeshima Day’, establishing Japanese claim to Korea’s Dokdo island.3 The YouTube video in question captured several flag-holding Japanese men and women yelling: ‘Go home, Koreans!’ and ‘We won’t allow a Korean invasion!’ at tourists fresh off the ferry from Busan. Though not physically violent, the atmosphere was tense and disturbing
  As seen in the recent conflict over the Senkaku Islands5 as well as Japan’s hard-line response to the North Korean attack on South Korea, nationalistic sentiments seem to be increasingly dictating Japan’s foreign policy and public opinion [Japan Korea] [Territorial dispute] [Racism] [Nationalism]
• Japanese FM Quits Over Illegal Campaign Donation
  Japanese Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara speaks during a press conference to announce his resignation from the post at Foreign Ministry in Tokyo on March 6, 2011. /AP Japan's foreign minister abruptly quit Sunday, after admitting he received an illegal $600 campaign donation in 2008 from a foreign national. Seiji Maehara was foreign minister for just six months, and was seen as a leading candidate to succeed embattled Prime Minister Naoto Kan.
• Economic Crisis Shakes US Forces Overseas: The Price of Base Expansion in Okinawa and Guam
  Yonamine Michiyo Translated by Rumi Sakamoto and Matthew Allen ‘Debt is the Largest Threat’ On August 31, President Obama delivered a speech from the White House. Because he was expected to declare the end of the Iraqi war, the entire nation focused its attention on the content to the speech. ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom is over. … We have spent over a trillion dollars on this war, often financed by borrowing from overseas. This, in turn, has short-changed investments in our own people, and contributed to record deficits.... Our most urgent task is to restore our economy, and put the millions of Americans who have lost their jobs back to work’. It marked the beginning of a new era, and under other circumstances this speech would have impressed people. The president, however looked troubled, and the atmosphere was gloomy – hardly the context for a forward-looking policy announcement; this was largely due to the severity of the economic crisis the US currently faces. [Bases][US Japan alliance]
• Hatoyama's Confession: The Myth of Deterrence and the Failure to Move a Marine Base Outside Okinawa
  Norimatsu Satoko Hatoyama Trumps Mubarak While most Japanese newspapers led with the resignation of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on the morning of February 13, it was different in Okinawa. Both Okinawan dailies, Ryukyu Shimpo and Okinawa Taimusu, ran as their top story, “Deterrence was [just] a Pretext,” (Yokushiryoku wa hoben).1 In a joint interview held in Tokyo on January 31 and February 8 with the two Okinawan papers and the Kyodo News Agency, former Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio conceded that he had just given “deterrence” as the factor necessitating retention of the US Marine Corps on Okinawa (and hence the building of a new Okinawa base for them) because he needed a pretext. Nine months after stepping down as Prime Minister, he conceded that this was not true. Since then, Hatoyama has scarcely stopped talking, even giving an interview to a Hong Kong TV station,2 and in the process he has shed vivid light on Japanese policymaking and the US-Japan-Okinawa relationship. Japan scarcely needs a Wikileaks when it has a Hatoyama.
  He had campaigned on pledges to establish political (rather than bureaucratic) leadership in governance, to build a more equal US-Japan relationship, and secure the return of the Futenma Marine Air station without replacement in the prefecture. Hatoyama had also advanced the view that Japan’s security should be achieved without a permanent US troop presence, and envisaged a more harmonious relationship among China, Japan and Korea as a foundation for the nation’s foreign policy.
  As military analysts had long recognized, the Marines functioned not as a “deterrent” against attack on Okinawa or Japan, but as a force used in attacking enemy territory. The role of the Marines was not to protect Okinawan or Japan, but to train for the role they have played in US wars from Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan.
  The perceived threats of North Korean nuclear weapons and missiles, often cited as objects of “deterrence,” cannot be deterred by Marines. What these are deterred by are “US nuclear weapons and the Japanese missile defense system,” and, on the Korean Peninsula, “South Korean and US ground troops overwhelm the military balance against the North Korean counterpart.”20 [Threat] [Pretext] [Bases] [Takeover]
• Japan’s Colonization of Korea in Light of International Law
  Totsuka Etsuro Introduction At the centenary of Japan’s Annexation of the Korean Empire in August 2010, speculation centered on whether Japan could achieve a radical departure from its traditional foreign policy of ‘Datsu-A Nyu-Ou”1, namely leaving Asia to become a Western style country. This policy, resulted in Japan’s colonization of Korea in August 1910 and led further to the invasion of China and other Asian nations, ending in Japan`s utter defeat in August 1945. [Imperialism] [Legality]

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FEBRUARY 2011

• Rumored island deal angers Japan
  Source: Global Times [08:06 February 17 2011] Comments Japan's NHK TV reported Tuesday that a Dalian-based Chinese aquaculture company had signed a memorandum with a Russian company to breed sea cucumbers off one of the Kuril Islands. Photo: Google By Li Zhen in Tokyo and Huang Jingjing in Beijing Outrage blared across Japanese airways Wednesday over a report that companies from China and Russia had reached an agreement to explore an island chain that is under the control of Moscow but also claimed by Tokyo. Citing an unnamed Russian businessperson, Japan's NHK TV reported Tuesday that a Dalian-based Chinese aquaculture company had signed a memorandum with a Russian company to breed sea cucumbers off one of the Kuril Islands, which Japan calls the Northern Territories. [Territorial disputes]
• China Replaced Japan in 2010 as No. 2 Economy
  By HIROKO TABUCHI Published: February 13, 2011 TOKYO — Japan’s economy contracted in the fourth quarter when compared with the previous three months, though analysts are optimistic about the country’s prospects for the rest of the year. Japan’s gross domestic product fell 0.3 percent in the October-December quarter as the end of generous government incentives on environmentally friendly cars resulted in a temporary decline in spending. At an annualized rate, Japan’s economy shrank 1.1 percent from the previous quarter. The contraction, the first in five quarters, brought Japan’s economy for 2010 to $5.47 trillion, the Japanese Cabinet Office said. That compared with a $5.88 trillion economy for fast-growing China. The latest numbers were further evidence of China’s rapid ascent as an economic superpower, as China surpassed Japan last summer after the half-year gross domestic product numbers were released. Just five years ago, China’s gross domestic product was around $2.3 trillion, about half Japan’s. Japan’s economy has stagnated over the last two decades, reflecting its continued decline in economic and political clout. [China rising]
• North Korea: Why Seoul-Tokyo cooperation is necessary
  February 9th, 2011 Author: Ryo Sahashi, Kanagawa University From territorial disputes to non-traditional security concerns, 2010 will be remembered as the pivotal year for East Asian security. The sinking of the Cheonan and the shelling of Yeonpyeongdo reminded us of the deeply-rooted risks lying in the Peninsula. But, additionally, it has created momentum for bilateral and trilateral cooperation between South Korea, Japan and the US.
• U.S. report finds no electronic flaws in Toyotas that would cause acceleration
  By Peter Whoriskey Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, February 8, 2011; 10:50 PM Government investigators have rejected claims that electronic defects caused Toyota cars and trucks to accelerate out of control, a finding released Tuesday that offers a measure of long-awaited vindication for the world's largest automaker and shifts blame to the drivers who reported the incidents. The report, based on work by NASA engineers, deflates accusations by drivers suing Toyota that mysterious electronic glitches instigated the episodes of runaway cars. It also supports the industry trend of entrusting critical engine operations to ever more sophisticated electronics and microprocessors. Toyota has been at the center of a public furor since 2009, when thousands of drivers reported a defect that became known as "sudden unintended acceleration." Eventually, Toyota recalled nearly 8 million vehicles in the United States and paid a record $48.8 million in fines for delaying recall campaigns. While the company said some of the incidents - including a widely reported quadruple fatality in California - could have been caused by sticky gas pedals or misplaced floor mats, safety experts, plaintiffs' attorneys and many in Congress suggested that the flaw was a more ominous glitch in newfangled engine electronics. With the ubiquity of computer chips, the operation of all carshas become increasingly complex, and Toyota had been transitioning from mechanical throttles to electronic ones. In some models, such as the Camry, the number of complaints of unintended acceleration appeared to jump after the cars were equipped with the new electronics, according to data presented to Congress. So some experts suggested that the root of the defect was in the computer code. But Tuesday's finding largely dismissed such notions and was quickly embraced both by Toyota and by regulators at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The agency's critics had said that it too easily dismissed consumer complaints of acceleration as "pedal misapplication," or driver error.
• Japanese PM Pledges Tenacious Effort to Recover Disputed Islands
  Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan is promising his government will "tenaciously" pursue the return of four disputed islands from Russia, ahead of a diplomatic mission to Moscow. [Territorial disputes]
• Japan with Long History of Missile Development
  Pyongyang, February 7 (KCNA) -- Japan, in its new "defense program guidelines", describes the DPRK's nuclear and missile development as military threat. This trite description is aimed to realize its militarization. Japan's missile program reveals that its missile technology has already reached a high level. Japan's first anti-ship missile is "ASM-1" designed to attack large or middle-sized warships. Japan started the development of the missile in 1972 and completed it in 1981. Next year the missile was introduced in the "air self-defense force." Its maximum range was 50 kilometers but increased considerably later. The Defense Agency of Japan launched in earnest the development of medium-range missile "XSSM-1" in 1984. The hedgehopping missile, 5 meters long and 650 kilograms heavy, went into commission in 1990. As for anti-tank missile, Japan developed its first generation in 1957 and second generation seven years later. The third and fourth generations already came into being. A laser-guided anti-tank missile developed in 1978 underwent tests in 1982 and 1985 and began to be supplied to military units in 1990. The above-mentioned facts are part of Japan's missile development. Japan's carrier rockets for "H-2," "M-5" and "N" satellites can be simply changed into long-range missiles. All the facts show that Japan's talk about the DPRK's missile threat is just for hoodwinking the international community. [Japanese remilitarisation] [Threat] [Missile]
• Jan. 31: Japan's Neonationalists on China
  Criticism of China in Japan's public space has intensified since the Senkaku collision incident of September 2010. Despite the resulting strain in bilateral relations, however, the Naoto Kan government seems to be laying down plans for détente as described here and here. The political rift takes place against a background of ever increasing economic ties between the two countries. Even a conservative publication such as the Sankei Shimbun refers to renewal of stable relations as a "business chance" for Japan. Japan's neo-nationalists, however, continue to flirt with the idea that the only way of dealing with China is to sever relations across the board - economic, political, and cultural. [China confrontation]
• What to do about North Korea now?
  January 27th, 2011 Author: Tetsuya Endo, JIIA In the wake of last year’s North Korean military provocations and given recent offers by North Korea to reestablish dialogue, North Korea’s policies warrant consideration from two perspectives: strategic and tactical. North Korea has four main strategic objectives. Firstly, it will aim to quickly solidify the process of succession to Kim Jong-un, working to glorify Kim Jong-un and strengthen regime legitimacy. Secondly, it will aim to continue development of its nuclear weapons and missiles. Thirdly, the North Korean government has advocated rehabilitating the economy and improving people’s livelihoods. But here it is in fact running after two hares: the military and the civilian population. Finally, North Korea’s utmost foreign policy objective is to establish better relations with the US, particularly via the conclusion of a peace agreement. But for the moment, North Korea is seeking to strengthen relations with China. [NK US policy]

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JANUARY 2011

• South Korean footballer's monkey impression angers Japan
  Ki Sung-yeung says Asian Cup goal celebration was directed not at opponents but at racist spectators in Scotland where he plays Share31 Justin McCurry in Tokyo guardian.co.uk, Friday 28 January 2011 13.25 GMT Article historyThe South Korean footballer Ki Sung-yeung has sparked a row with Japan amid accusations that he directed a racist gesture at Japanese fans during the countries' Asian Cup semi-final this week. Replays of the match, which Japan won on penalties, show Ki pulling a monkey face after opening the scoring against Japan, South Korea's fiercest football rival. The gesture is viewed as insulting towards the Japanese, the Korean peninsula's colonial rulers for 35 years until the end of the second world war. The Celtic forward later said he had intended to highlight racism in the Scottish game after he and another South Korean footballer were subjected to monkey chants during a Scottish Premier League match this season. But his explanation has failed to convince the Japanese: TV news shows broadcast endless repeats of the goal celebration and feelings were running high online.
• Japanese Press Upset at Obama 'Slight'
  The Japanese press is upset that U.S. President Barack Obama mentioned Korea and China several times during his state-of-the-union address on Tuesday night but did not make a single reference to Japan. The Yomiuri Shimbun said, "From the U.S. point of view, the economic rise of emerging countries is notable, while there was a lack of new achievements that stood out for Japan." The Sankei Shimbun said Obama mentioned Korea five times, China four times, India three times and Russia twice, but made no mention of Japan. "This gave the impression that the main economic rivals of the U.S. had changed from Europe, hit by a fiscal crisis, and deflation-marred Japan to the rapidly growing emerging economies," it said. Kyodo News Agency reported, "It looks like the U.S. could not find anything from Japan worth emulating."
• Japanese, US troops hold major war games
  By ERIC TALMADGE The Associated Press Thursday, January 27, 2011; 5:26 AM CAMP KENGUN, Japan -- Several thousand American and Japanese troops simulated missile attacks, guerrilla warfare and a full-scale invasion of Japan as part of a major war games that began Thursday. The exercises, called "Yama Sakura," involve about 1,500 U.S. troops and 4,500 Japanese military personnel. Yama Sakura, being held on the southwestern island of Kyushu, is the biggest annual joint maneuver held with Japan's army. Lt. Gen. Shunzo Kizaki, the commander of the Japanese troops in the exercises, said they involve simulations of ballistic missile attacks, special forces warfare and an invasion of Japan's southernmost main island. He said further details are classified. Yama Sakura, a command post exercise, is mostly done around computer simulations conducted at established bases, rather than real-world deployment of troops. Kizaki said the exercises - which run through Feb. 3 - are not directed at any particular threat, but contribute to Japan's overall ability to deter an attack and defend its territory. Japan has grown increasingly concerned about its defenses in its southwest, and particularly around the Okinawan islands, because of a number of incursions into its sea lanes by Chinese warships, including the movement of a Chinese flotilla through the Miyako Strait last April. In response, the government has announced that it will bolster its monitoring capabilities in the region, and is reportedly considering boosting its submarine fleet. Japan is also concerned over possible aggression from neighboring North Korea. Lt. Gen. Benjamin Mixon, commander of the U.S. Army Pacific, said the exercises are designed to enhance the troops' ability to fight together, and demonstrate the U.S. resolve to support the security interests of Washington's allies. "Many countries throughout the region face increasing security challenges and transnational threats," he said. Under a mutual security treaty, about 50,000 U.S. troops are deployed throughout Japan, including major Air Force, Marine and Navy units. The U.S. Army component is smaller, but trains intensely with its Japanese counterpart. [Joint US military] [US Japan alliance] [China confrontation]
• Japanese Abduction Victim 'Alive in Pyongyang'
  Yaeko Taguchi, a Japanese woman kidnapped by North Korea, is alive and living in an apartment complex in Pyongyang, Kyodo News reported Wednesday quoting government sources. The sources said the Japanese and South Korean governments were told of the claim in December. Taguchi is presumed to be "Lee Eun-hye," who taught Japanese to a North Korean agent who later bombed Korean Air flight 858 in 1987. Pyongyang has told Tokyo that Taguchi died in a traffic accident in July 1986, but the families of Japanese abduction victims believe the North is lying. North Korean sources say that Taguchi lives in an apartment complex in Pyongyang's Mangyongdae area and was seen spending time with two South Korean abduction victims, including a high school teacher from Seoul who was abducted in 1978. Taguchi may be married to the other, the sources speculated. [Abductee] [Media]
• The Firebombing of Tokyo: Views from the Ground
  Special Issue of The Asia-Pacific Journal edited by Bret Fisk and Cary Karacas
  The Firebombing of Tokyo and Its Legacy: Introduction Bret Fisk and Cary Karacas More than sixty-five years after the Great Tokyo Air Raid of March 10, 1945, and the subsequent firebombing and destruction of Japan’s cities by the United States Army Air Forces in World War II, a cursory examination of the relevant English-language literature, both popular and academic, reveals a striking lacuna. Researchers have covered substantial ground in analyzing various historical aspects of the U.S. bombing campaign against Japan. Specifically, much has been done to situate the events within the emergence of strategic air war in the twentieth century and within the concurrent evolution of American military air power doctrine. Scholars have discussed the air raids within the context of the evolution (and subsequent violations) of principles of noncombatant immunity during war, and have also provided important analyses regarding when and why the United States chose to target Japan’s cities for destruction.1 Nihei Haruyo, eight years old during the Tokyo firebombing of March 10, 1945 shows a map of the areas destroyed by the bombing at the Tokyo Air-raid Center. Photo by Norimatsu Satoko. See also this site. In stark contrast to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, however, historians and other professional scholars working in the English language have yet to fathom the tremendous societal impact – both immediate and long-lasting – of the destruction by firebombing of Japan’s cities. What remain particularly underdeveloped are an historical understanding and appreciation of the Japanese civilian experience, specifically an understanding of the effect of the air raids on Japanese communities, cities, and social institutions. For example, although it is easy to obtain statistics that illustrate the catastrophic nature of the Great Tokyo Air Raid, few have attempted to provide a sense – through oral histories or in-depth explanations based on survivor accounts and other available sources – of the actual experience and legacies of the firebombing.[War crimes]
• Unit 731 and Preserving the History of Wartime Medical Atrocities
  On January 11, Japan's Mainichi Shimbun reported that groups in the northern Chinese city of Harbin have announced a six-year plan to preserve historical sites associated with the Japanese Army Unit 731 medical and germ warfare atrocities. According to Unit 731 Exhibition Hall curator Jin Chengmin, local groups will repair the sites, which were converted into factories and schools in the postwar decades, in preparation for a bid to have them registered as a UNESCO World Heritage site alongside Auschwitz and Hiroshima's Peace Memorial, both preserved as examples of human destructiveness and continued appeals for world peace. Elements of the Harbin plan stress both the importance of preserving and disseminating testimony in the face of denial by some Japanese neo-nationalists and neo-nationalist attempts to avoid linking stories of past victimization with contemporary nationalism or thoughts of vengeance. The site will include both a "Monument of Testimony" inscribed with the confessions of Japanese war criminals and a "Forest of Peace and Friendship" which will stress positive future Sino-Japanese ties. [cbw] [War crimes]
• Japanese FM urges NK to take concrete action
  Japanese Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara said Saturday that North Korea should take concrete steps demonstrating its seriousness of purpose and first hold dialogue with South Korea if six-party nuclear talks are to reopen. Maehara arrived in Seoul for talks with South Korean Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan and other officials on North Korea and bilateral and international issues. It is his first trip to South Korea since taking office in September last year. The one-day visit came after the top Japanese diplomat expressed willingness to hold direct talks with North Korea this year to tackle Pyongyang's nuclear and missile programs and past abductions of Japanese nationals. Pyongyang welcomed the suggestion. [Sequencing]
• South Korea, Japan continue hard line on NKorea
  By KIM KWANG-TAE and KELLY OLSEN The Associated Press Saturday, January 15, 2011; 8:55 AM SEOUL, South Korea -- The top diplomats of South Korea and Japan showed North Korea a tough, unified face Saturday, saying it must prove it is serious about giving up its atomic ambitions before they will allow a new round of aid-for-nuclear disarmament talks. [Sequencing]
• U.S.-Japan ties should deepen, Gates says, citing threats from China, N. Korea
  Video Gates visits Great Wall of China U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates says North Korea will pose a direct threat to the United States within five years if the communist dictatorship isn't reined in. Gates made the comments while visiting with leaders in China. (Jan. 12) By John Pomfret Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, January 14, 2011; 1:02 AM TOKYO - Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates on Friday invoked threats from North Korea and China's modernizing military as reasons to strengthen the U.S. alliance with Japan and to keep U.S. forces strong in the Pacific. Speaking at Keio University, Gates also said he was worried about a "disconnect" between China's civilian and military leadership. While he was in Beijing earlier this week, the country's military conducted the first flight test of its new stealth fighter jet on the same day as Gates met with President Hu Jintao. Hu told Gates that he didn't know the test had taken place. [US-Japan alliance][China confrontation] [Threat]
• N. Korea pushes for talks with Japan
  North Korea has extended a recent diplomatic offensive to Japan, saying that it welcomes Japanese government‘s willingness to resume direct talks, a news report said. North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said on its website that Japan’s Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara’s last week comments “is a positive step and match the tide of the time to advance peace and stability in the new century and developments of nation-to-nation relations.” “We are ready to meet and talk with countries that are friendly to us,” KCNA said. “If Japanese authorities move to improve ties, it would contribute to peace and development on the Korean Peninsula and in Northeast Asia.” Maehara said in Tokyo on January 4 that talks with North Korea should be one of Japan’s major diplomatic agenda items for this year and they want to create an environment that will make it possible to further strengthen (efforts) to hold direct dialogue this year, and not only in multilateral settings. Maehara will visit Seoul later this week to hold talks with his South Korean counterpart on bilateral relations, North Korea and other regional and global issues, South Korea’s foreign ministry said Tuesday. [Overtures]
• New Year 2011, Okinawa and the Future of East Asia
  Gavan McCormack, Norimatsu Satoko and Mark Selden The mood across East Asia as 2011 dawns is one of foreboding. Can the militarization and confrontation that gathered momentum through 2010 in the spiral of incidents (Cheonan in March, Senkaku in September, Yeonpyeong in November) and massive regional war rehearsals by the US and its allies be halted and reversed? The fear that events might slide during 2011 into catastrophe is hard to resist. In Japan, the gloom was compounded by a sense of despair at the betrayal of its electoral pledges by the Democratic Party of Japan, and the reassertion of precisely the clientelist and neo-liberal policies the DPJ had attacked on the part of its conservative Liberal Democratic Party predecessors when it won office in 2009. Then, Hatoyama Yukio, enjoying near landslide support, promised far-reaching change: an “equal” relationship with the United States, closer ties with China, the vision of an East Asian Community and the transformation of the South China Sea into a “Sea of Fraternité,” a reversal of the “structural” (i.e., inequality deepening) “reforms” of the LDP, and the recovery without substitution in Okinawa of the US base lands in the middle of Ginowan City (Futenma Marine Air Station). By late 2010, these promises had either evaporated or been reversed under a combination of American and conservative Japanese pressures, and reinstatement of policies if anything to the right of the LDP. As this happened, the nine month Hatoyama government’s support fell steadily, from 70 plus per cent in September 2009 to around 20 per cent in May 2010 on the eve of its collapse, and that of the Kan Naoto government that succeeded it from 60 plus per cent in June 2010 to around 25 per cent by year’s end. Dispirited, disillusioned and feeling disfranchised, far more Japanese people supported no party than either of the two main parties. One looked in vain to the Kan government for any regional or global diplomatic initiative to reverse the vicious cycle of regional confrontation. Instead, it seemed to have embraced at least as passionately as its predecessor the role of US subordinate “client state” in which resort to military power increasingly overshadowed diplomacy.
  It is a mistake to see the Okinawan struggle as local, or “Okinawan,” because its implications are national, regional, and global with the nature of Japanese democracy and US strategic planning for its empire of bases across the Pacific in the balanc
  . Expansive plans for US base construction in both Okinawa and Guam thus need to be assessed in light of the responses to conflicts between North and South Korea and between China and Japan, responses notable for provocative joint US-Japan-South Korea military exercises replicating the Cold War alliance structures of the 1950s and directed against China and North Korea
  Okinawa was once the independent Ryukyu Kingdom, negotiating treaties with neighboring foreign countries and kingdoms through the 1850s and only fully subordinated within the modern Japanese state in 1879. As resentment deepens today over ongoing discrimination, some begin to draw attention to the past, and to suggest a future either on a renegotiated and more autonomous basis within the Japanese state or as an independent entity outside it. [US Japan alliance] [Client] [Joint US military] [Buildup] [Separatism]
• Forum Addresses Okinawa’s Future
  Week of January 2, 2011 At the Asia-Pacific Journal (APJ)/Okinawa University co-sponsored forum in Naha on December 19, 2010, the main theme was "Where is Okinawa going?" Speakers at three sessions – environmental, geopolitical, and economic – mixed discussion with nearly 200 participants on goals and ideals while addressing serious contemporary challenges. [NLL]
• S.Korea, Japan Discuss Stronger Military Ties
  Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin and his Japanese counterpart Toshimi Kitazawa enter the Defense Ministry in Seoul on Monday. Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin and his Japanese counterpart Toshimi Kitazawa on Monday agreed to pursue pacts to facilitate the sharing of military information and cooperation in exchanging military goods and services. The agreements would mark the first formal military pacts signed between the two countries. [SK Japan] [Japanese remilitarisation]
• [Editorial] Problems with a South Korea-Japan military pact
  Yesterday, the defense ministers of South Korea and Japan held a meeting in Seoul where they reportedly exchanged opinions on establishing a pact for intelligence protection and mutual munitions support between the South Korean armed forces and Japan’s Self-Defense Forces. It was reported that the talks went no further than a basic gathering of each other’s views. In any event, discussions toward a military pact between the two countries have officially begun. A military pact between South Korea and Japan is problematic first and foremost because it legitimizes Japanese military expansion. Tokyo has been striving for some time to broaden the range of activity for the JSDF. [Japanese remilitarisation] [SK Japan]
• South Korea, Japan to discuss military pact
  By HYUNG-JIN KIM The Associated Press Monday, January 10, 2011; 1:16 AM SEOUL, South Korea -- South Korea and Japan planned military talks Monday on accords to share intelligence and provide each other with fuel and medical support, officials said, in what would be their first military agreement since Tokyo's brutal colonial rule of the Korean peninsula ended in 1945. Seoul and Tokyo are important trading and diplomatic partners, but the possibility of such a military treaty is a sensitive topic in South Korea, where many people still harbor strong resentment against Japan's 35-year occupation. Bilateral ties often suffer over territorial and historical disputes stemming from the colonial legacy. Monday's talks, however, come as Tokyo and Seoul struggle to deal with a shared worry over North Korean aggression, including the deadly shelling of a front-line South Korean island on Nov. 23. South Korean Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin and his Japanese counterpart Toshimi Kitazawa were to have talks Monday on the military accords, North Korea's nuclear weapons programs and the artillery attacks, according to the South Korean Defense Ministry. The accords are aimed at strengthening defense cooperation by sharing important intelligence, mostly on North Korea, and assisting each other's military with fuel and medical supplies during peacekeeping operations abroad, a Defense Ministry official said. [SK Japan]
• [Column] The comeback of North Korea-Japan negotiations?
  Lee Jong-won, Vice President, Rikkyo University The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) administration has drawn attention with repeated expressions of interest in dialogue with North Korea over the past few days. The statements carry considerable weight, as they were made in public on several occasions by foreign minister Seiji Maehara, who is both the figure with general responsibility for Japanese foreign affairs and someone known to be a hard-liner. Nothing has yet surfaced as concrete action, but it certainly seems evident that a diplomatic message was intended for Pyongyang.
  Of course, underlying this is the realistic determination that Japan must not be left behind in the Korean Peninsula detente efforts currently under way, primarily through the efforts of Washington and Beijing. Domestic political calculations and considerations are another major factor, as the Kan administration seeks a way to turn around its floundering support ratings through diplomatic efforts. Having lost a majority in the Senate, Kan’s Cabinet finds itself in a situation where the future is impossible to predict. Nor is it likely to find a clear means of turning around the support ratings slump through economic measures before the unified local elections this spring. While it may be not a surprise North Korea visit like that undertaken by former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, the attempt to break the diplomatic deadlock does have significance in terms of domestic politics. The limitations are clear for a weak administration on shaky ground, but it is worthy watching closely to see how it factors into Korean Peninsula diplomatic efforts [Domestic]
• Japan Seeks Direct Talks with N.Korea Seiji Maehara
  Tokyo has pledged to seek direct talks with Pyongyang. In a New Year's press conference on Tuesday, Japanese Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara said, "We have no diplomatic relations, but as one of the major themes of this year, we should not handle the North Korean issue only on multilateral occasions or six-way talks by relying on other countries." Unlike other participating nations in the six-party talks, "We have the abduction issue, which is related to Japan's sovereignty," he said. "It is important to create an environment that will allow us to hold talks on the abductions, missiles and nuclear weapons issues between the two countries firmly and directly." [Bilateral]
• S.Korea, Japan 'Seek 1st-Ever Military Pact'
  Japanese Defense Minister Toshimi Kitazawa will visit Seoul next week for talks with his South Korean counterpart Kim Kwan-jin over agreements on mutual military support and the sharing of military secrets. Seoul and Tokyo reportedly plan to sign the agreements this year. They would mark South Korea's first-ever military pacts with the former colonial power following several memorandums of understanding in the past. The Korean Navy and Japan's Self-Defense Forces conduct a joint search and rescue drill in the sea between the two countries in June 2007. Military experts believe the aim is to deal with an emergency on the Korean Peninsula including the collapse of North Korea, but the Defense Ministry denies the plans. Responding to a Japanese media report, a South Korean Foreign Ministry official said, "We have not considered or discussed the new declaration with Japan." The Yomiuri Shimbun reported the two countries are preparing a joint declaration to be signed when President Lee Myung-bak visits Tokyo in the first half of this year. [Japanese remilitarisation] [SK Japan]
• Military Cooperation with Japan Must Be Clearly Limited
  Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin and his Japanese counterpart Toshimi Kitazawa plan to meet in Seoul next Monday and discuss the sharing of military information and supplies. The Defense Ministry says the two countries plan to sign agreements within this year in those two areas, which would mark the first-ever military pact signed by Seoul and Tokyo. South Korea has signed agreements with eight countries including the U.S., Thailand and Turkey over the sharing of military supplies and services in times of emergency, and pacts or memorandums of understanding with 21 countries over the sharing of military information. These are the most basic areas of military cooperation. But the plan is stirring up considerable controversy because it involves Japan.
  The U.S. is also keenly interested in bolstered military ties between South Korea and Japan. Both Washington and Tokyo cite the North Korean threat as the main reason, but an underlying aim is to keep China in check. [Japanese remilitarisation] [SK Japan] [China confrontation] [Threat]
• The Prospects of Korea-Japan Military Cooperation
  South Korea on Tuesday denied a Japanese media report that Seoul and Tokyo are preparing a joint declaration to bolster military cooperation. "We have neither negotiated nor considered it," a government official said, adding, "Bolstering bilateral military cooperation is merely Japan's wish." Another said, "There are many obstacles that must be overcome for Japan to boost security cooperation with South Korea." The official complained that Tokyo "is leaking information to the press that has yet to be discussed with us." The biggest obstacle is possible opposition from the South Korean public.
  With both countries exposed to the North Korean threat, they have many security issues of mutual concern to discuss, while the U.S. also seeks to bolster trilateral military ties between Seoul, Washington and Tokyo to keep China in check, as well as prevent North Korean provocations. [Japanese remilitarisation] [SK Japan] [China confrontation] [Threat]
• Small Islands – Big Problem: Senkaku/Diaoyu and the Weight of History and Geography in China-Japan Relations
  Gavan McCormack “Senkaku Islands Colonization Day” In December 2010, the Okinawan city of Ishigaki (within which Japanese administrative law incorporates these islands) adopted a resolution to declare 14 January to be “Senkaku Islands Colonization Day.” The “Colonization Day” is intended to commemorate the incorporation of the islands by cabinet decision 116 years earlier. China immediately protested. [Territorial disputes] [China confrontation]
• The Battle of Okinawa 2010: Japan-US Relations at a Crossroad
  Gavan McCormack Five decades after the adoption of the (revised) US-Japan Security Treaty, and two decades after the end of the Cold War, Cold War assumptions still underpin the relationship between the world’s leading industrial democracies. A belated Japanese attempt to change and reform the relationship in 2009-2010 ended in failure and the collapse of the Hatoyama government. Whether the Kan government can do better, remains to be seen. The “Client state” relationship that I wrote about in 2007 proves difficult to transcend. The “Okinawa problem” has emerged as a crucial bone of contention, not only between the US and Japanese governments but between the people of Okinawa and both governments. This paper addresses the implications of the now 14-year long attempt to resolve the Okinawan demand for closure and return of Futenma Marine base in Ginowan City.
• Ko Tae Mun, Ko Chung Hee, and the Osaka Family Origins of North Korean Successor Kim Jong Un
  Kokita Kiyohito, Tessa Morris-Suzuki and Mark Selden The following article by Kokita Kiyohito, on the family origins of Kim Jong Un, the leader designate of North Korea, is illuminating above all for the language, assumptions and treatment of issues related to North Korea in contemporary Japanese media, including the Asahi. Two brief commentaries locate some of the issues in broader perspective. The headline and article are taken from the Asahi’s weekly Aera; photos have been provided from other sources. The major story addressed in the commentary by Tessa Morris-Suzuki is the collaboration of the Japanese government and the International Red Cross in arranging the migration of more than 93,000 Korean residents of Japan, who had been deprived of Japanese citizenship following Japan’s wartime defeat, to North Korea. Mark Selden examines a range of issues related to the perspective of the Japanese journalist on Zainichi Koreans and North Korea. Osaka Black Mark in Kim's Life? Kokita Kiyohito Osaka--Without fail, North Korea's propaganda machine deifies any location associated with the Kim dynasty, but the birthplace of the mother of future leader Kim Jong Un is unlikely to be accorded such reverence. In any event, the sad history of her family in Osaka is hardly the stuff of legend. Specifically, Ko Young Hee came from Osaka's Tsuruhashi district, an area that for decades has had a thriving Korean community.

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