Japan Focus: Recent Articles
Alain Gresh - The West's Selective Reading of Eastern History and Values: From Thermopylae to the Twin Towers
The West’s Selective Reading of Eastern History and Values: From Thermopylae to the Twin Towers Alain Gresh Translated by Donald Hounam Shortly after the First World War, the French literary critic and historian Henri Massis (1886-1970) preached a crusade against the dangers threatening European values and thought – largely identified with those of France, in his mind. He wasn’t entirely misguided: across the world, colonised nations were in revolt. He wrote: “The future of western civilisation, of humanity itself, is now under threat... Every traveller, every foreigner who has spent any time in the Far East agrees that the way in which the population thinks has changed more in the last 10 years than it did over 10 centuries. The old, easy-going submissiveness has given way to blind hostility – sometimes genuine hatred, just waiting for the right moment to act. From Calcutta to Shanghai, from the steppes of Mongolia to the plains...
J McCurry, D McNeill - Japan's King of Fish Faces Extinction
Japan’s King of Fish Faces Extinction Justin McCurry & David McNeill talk to fishermen in the north and south of the country and find widespread alarm at depleted tuna stocks. On a gloomy day pregnant with rain and the weight of past expectations, Nakamura Minoru is welcomed back to port in Iki-shi like a conquering hero. Three family generations, including Nakamura’s father Toshiaki and newborn child Misaki wait ashore, smiles wide as his boat sails into harbor. “Good for him,” says a beaming Okubo Terutaka, head of the local fishing cooperative. “That’s wonderful to see.” On this remote island off Nagasaki in southern Japan, where rusting boats wait for fishermen who increasingly stay at home, few sights excite more than Nakamura’s precious cargo: a 172-kg bluefin tuna, splayed across the deck of his small trawler. Dubbed Japan’s...
Elizabeth Van Kampen - Memories of the Dutch East Indies: From Plantation Society to Prisoner of Japan
Memories of the Dutch East Indies: From Plantation Society to Prisoner of Japan Elizabeth Van Kampen Introduction In 1928, at the age of one and a half years, Elizabeth van Kampen, daughter of a Dutch plantation manager, arrived with her parents in the former Dutch East Indies (today’s Indonesia), a land which she evokes from childhood memory as “paradise on earth.” But the attack on Pearl Harbor of December 7, 1941, when she was fourteen, was quickly followed by Japanese invasion of the Dutch colony and the nightmare to follow. Elizabeth and her family experienced extraordinary times between two empires, that of Holland in Asia at the end of a 400-year epoch, and that of a rising militarist Japan. For the young girl, it was a passage from heaven to hell, but an experience that she faced with the resilience of a spirited youth. With Japan’s capitulation in August 1945, Elizabeth was finally released...
Shoko YONEYAMA - The Era of Bullying: Japan under Neoliberalism
The Era of Bullying: Japan under Neoliberalism Shoko YONEYAMA Introduction Bullying (ijime) and school nonattendance (futoko) have been the key ‘behavioural problems’ among students in Japan since the mid-1980s. School nonattendance has been consistently dealt with by the Ministry of Education and Science (MoE),[1] but there have been few systematic efforts to curb bullying by the school administration either at national or local levels. The contrast is clear also at the grassroots level. Unlike school nonattendance, which led to the development of a major social movement in support of futoko students and their parents,[2] bullying has rarely been considered by Japanese citizens to be an issue deserving of coordinated action.[3] One apparent reason for this difference is that bullying is generally hard for adults to recognise,[4] whereas school nonattendance is highly visible; adults find school students outside school during class hours and teachers find...
Kim Hyo-sun - Allied and Korean Forced Labor at the AsÅ Mining Company and Japan-South Korea Relations
Allied and Korean Forced Labor at the AsÅ Mining Company and Japan-South Korea Relations Kim Hyo-sun A story broke last week that was noted by the foreign media but not dealt with in great detail in South Korea. The Japanese government acknowledged “for the first time” that in the late stages of the Pacific War, 300 Allied prisoners-of-war were forced into labor at a coal mine affiliated with AsÅ Mining, which has been run for generations by the family of Japanese Prime Minister AsÅ TarÅ.According to documents released Dec 18 by Fujita Yukihisa, a Democratic Party member of the House of Councillors in the Japanese Diet, a total of 101 British prisoners, 197 Australians and two Dutch were forced to work at the Yoshikuma coal mine POW branch camp in Fukuoka Prefecture for three months beginning in May 1945.Fujita Yukihisa with Ibuki Yuka (left) and Kinue Tokudome of the U.S.-Japan Dialogue on POWsResearchers...
L Wittner, D Samuels - Atomic John: The Bomb as Fetish
Atomic John: The Bomb as Fetish Lawrence S. Wittner and David Samuels The Bomb as Fetish Introduction by Lawrence S. Wittner "Atomic John," an intriguing article that appeared in the New Yorker on December 15, 2008, is particularly remarkable for what it reveals about the inability of some Americans to confront the consequences of the U.S. atomic bombing of Japan. On the surface, it is the story of John Coster-Mullen, a 61-year-old "truck driver" from Waukesha, Wisconsin, who, through years of painstaking effort, has succeeded better than the ostensible experts have in constructing a precise model of the weapon that annihilated Hiroshima. This is a formidable intellectual achievement, and the author of the article, David Samuels, emphasizes this fact. Moreover, Coster-Mullen has made available his findings about the bomb's technology in a self-published book and on the Internet. Actually, however, as...
Kazuhiko TOGO - Japan's Historical Memory: Reconciliation with Asia
Japan’s Historical Memory: Reconciliation with Asia Kazuhiko Togo Introduction Historical issues haunt Japan. The world is facing a crisis, which may become a once in a century depression in the wake of Wall Street’s financial meltdown and the subsequent recession throughout the world. Japan is no exception. At this time of crisis each country must show its resilience to alleviate immediate pain while implementing a long-term policy to strengthen the fundamentals of its economy and society. Japan is asked to come up with a powerful economic policy to overcome its crisis and contribute to global solutions. Barack Obama was elected president of the United States, and expectations are rising not only in the States but throughout the world that the U.S. will confront this challenge effectively. This is a golden opportunity for Japan because the fundamentals of Japan-US relations are solid and much of Obama’s agenda coincides precisely with what...
M K Bhadrakumar - Afghanistan, Iran, and US-Russian Conflict
Afghanistan, Iran and US-Russian Conflict M K Bhadrakumar The measure of success of president-elect Barack Obama's new "Afghan strategy" will be directly proportional to his ability to delink the war from its geopolitical agenda inherited from the George W. Bush administration. It is obvious that Russia and Iran's cooperation is no less critical for the success of the war than what the US is painstakingly extracting from the Pakistani generals. Arguably, Obama will even be in a stronger negotiating position vis-a-vis the tough generals in Rawalpindi if only he has Moscow and Tehran on board his Afghan strategy. But then, Moscow and Iran will expect that Obama reciprocates with a willingness to jettison the US's containment strategy towards them. The signs do not look good. This is not only from the look of Obama's national security team and the continuance of Robert Gates as defense secretary. Central Asia On the contrary, in the dying weeks...
Dai Qing - Beijing's Aqueous Heritage and the 2008 Olympics
Beijing's Aqueous Heritage and the 2008 Olympics Dai Qing Edited and translated by Geremie Barmé Introduction: The article posted here by Dai Qing appears in a December 2008 special issue on The Heritage of Beijing Water, guest edited for The China Heritage Quarterly by the Beijing-based writer, historical investigative journalist and water activist. The issue focuses on the aqueous heritage of China's capital city. Reflecting on the well-springs of the Olympic year and the bountiful supply of water during 2008, Dai Qing discusses the diminishing heritage of a resource that sustained the ancient city in the past, shaped much of its life, and determines its future. The issue features a map of Beijing Waterways and an important study, 'Beijing's Water Crisis, 1949-2008' with important contributions by Probe International, an independent Canada-based think-tank and environmental protection group. The Dai Qing article is available through this link. See also: Probe International...
Yves Smith - So Now the US is Trying to Emulate Japan's Lost Decade?
So Now the US is Trying to Emulate Japan's Lost Decade? Yves Smith US economists have relentlessly harangued the Japanese for their supposed mismanagement of their post bubble era, which has led to nearly 20 years of low growth, borderline deflation, with a not-much-discussed, robust export sector. Along with others, we complained in the early days of the Fed/Treasury emergency response that they were taking one of the worst elements of the Japanese playbook, namely, trying to prop up the value of dud assets, rather than figuring out how to do more price discovery and ameliorate the attendant reaction (not damage, mind you, the damage was already done when the bad loans were made). Yes, the Treasury has made some capital injections into banks, but without cleaning up the balance sheets, the benefits are limited. Even with supposedly more aggressive action on realizing losses, our banks act a lot like their Japanese pre-writedown zombie counterparts. Japan’s...
