| The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus Newsletter |
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Newsletter No. 43 2011
| October 24, 2011 |
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Greetings!
Our home page has two new features. One is a guide to the more than 100 articles we have published on the 3.11 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear power meltdown which is transforming Japan and reshaping issues of nuclear power globally. Articles are arranged topically and will shortly be supplemented by a guide to other sources. Coming this week. In addition, we have added a guide to some of the most important, and liveliest, online and print sources on 3.11 including blogs and websites. Secondly, the list of articles now indicates all articles available in Japanese translation or original, as well as other languages. Please draw the attention of colleagues and friends to our comprehensive coverage of 3.11.
Many of our most important articles appear in What's hot and they bring a diversity of sources and reports from Ground Zero in Tohoku and Tokyo. "What's hot" presents breaking stories and provides information beyond the headlines, to cast them in broader perspective. What's hot is regularly updated, at times on a daily basis, and we invite you to consult it and contribute to it. http://japanfocus.org/site/view/126
We encourage those who wish continuing coverage of the earthquake and aftermath to follow Fukushima on Twitter http://twitter.com/#!/FukushimaEng and the English and Japanese coverage on the Peace Philosophy Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Peace-Philosophy-Centre/138024751212 More than fifteen hundred people now follow Focus through Twitter or Facebook and their numbers are growing steadily. Please consider joining them by clicking at the appropriate link on our home page: http://japanfocus.org Growing numbers of colleges and universities are subscribing to the journal for use in classes. If you or colleagues wish to incorporate Asia-Pacific Journal articles into courses, please encourage your library to join subscribers on three continents by taking out a subscription to the journal. The rate is $40/year for unlimited access to, and reproduction of, all articles. Please contact your reference librarian and provide us with an e-ddress to contact and send an invoice. Please send the information to info.japanfocus@gmail.com.
We invite authors, publishers and directors to bring their books, films and events on East Asia and the Pacific to the attention of our readers. See the home page for information about presenting relevant books and films at our site and for examples of authors, publishers and filmmakers who are presenting their work at the Journal.
Thanks to readers who subscribe or become sustainers of the Journal, and who order books and other items through Amazon via our website. A small portion of the sales of books and any other products purchased when accessing the Amazon site through one of the book logos on our home page go to the Journal at no cost to you.
Contact Japan Focus by email at info@japanfocus.org
To access our full archive with more than 2,000 articles, and to view the most widely read articles through their titles or via our index, go to: http://japanfocus.org
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Subscription information
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The Asia-Pacific Journal is free and accessible to all. We invite supporters, authors and readers who find the journal useful to join our sustainers by making a small contribution to support technical upgrades, defray technical, mailing and maintenance fees, and help us to expand outreach. As we have expanded our output since the 3.11 earthquake and tsunami, our costs have risen sharply. Recommended support level: $20 ($10 for students and residents of developing countries); $40 for institutions including libraries, research centers, government offices. If you experience difficulty in subscribing, write to us with the error message at info@japanfocus.org
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Yoshio SHIMOJI, Futenma: Tip of the Iceberg in Okinawa's Agony
While well aware of strong local opposition, Washington and Tokyo as early as 1996 agreed to relocate the U.S. Marine air base at Futenma to Henoko, Nago, in northern Okinawa. Eventually, in 2009, in the final days of the Aso Taro cabinet, with the Democratic Party on the eve of power, a hastily concluded bilateral agreement of Februry 9, 2009 committed Tokyo to carry out the 2006 relocation plan.
On July 16, 2011, former Defense Minister Kitazawa Toshimi and newly appointed U.S. Defense Minister Leon Panetta held a telephone conference and again reaffirmed that "Tokyo and Washington will move forward with the plan to relocate the controversial Futenma base within Okinawa."
On September 7, the Noda cabinet's newly-installed Foreign Minister Gemba Koichiro, in an inaugural telephone call to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, assured her that Japan would "stick to the accord reached last year to relocate" Futenma to Henoko. Gemba also said at his inaugural news conference that he would do his best to persuade Okinawa residents to accept the bilateral accord.
How is he going to do this? By lavishly bribing Nago residents to consent? But recent elections in Nago, and throughout Okinawa, have confirmed strong opposition to the new base. Alternatively, Tokyo would have to resort to police force, invoking state power, an approach certain to result in bloodshed and social turmoil. Meanwhile, continuing to ramp up the pressure, Washington repeats its stock phrase: "It's Japan's domestic problem. It has nothing to do with the U.S."
Yoshio Shimoji, born in Miyako Island, Okinawa, M.S. (Georgetown University), taught English and linguistics at the University of the Ryukyus from 1966 until his retirement in 2003.
Recommended citation: Yoshio Shimoji, 'Futenma: Tip of the Iceberg in Okinawa's Agony,' The Asia-Pacific Journal Vol 9, Issue 43 No 3, October 24, 2011.
Read more . . .
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Jeffrey Lewis, Peter Hayes & Scott Bruce, Kim Jong Il's Nuclear Diplomacy and the US Opening: Slow Motion Six-Party Engagement
For the first time since the Obama administration took office, the prospect looms of significant negotiations with North Korea. The following are among the straws in the wind as both nations prepare:
First, as reported by one of the authors, the DPRK has begun to develop a road-mobile long range missile-which would be quite an achievement given that it has yet to achieve a workable long range missile fired from a static launch platform.
Second, various DPRK military units have reportedly deployed fighter jets to an airfield near the disputed Yellow Sea area, and moved ground-to-air missiles to a region close to the ROK's northern-most island (Baengyeong)-similar to movements noted before the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island in November 2010.
Third, the DPRK's propaganda machine referred over recent weeks more frequently and loudly to launching another satellite in the near future--obvious threat to fire a missile yet again over Japan. Typically, the DPRK acts in ferocious and aggressive ways in the lead up to diplomatic engagement.
Fourth, Kim has opened diplomatic dialogues on a number of fronts in 2011-most importantly with the Chinese, but also with the ROK in Indonesia on July 22, 2011 followed by two rounds of ROK-DPRK talks in Beijing--a far cry from the ugly threats made after alleged secret ROK-DPRK talks in Beijing in June 2011 at which time the DPRK threatened to release tapes of the talks in which the South Korean envoys offered to pay the DPRK for cooperation with the ROK.
For its part, aware that China was moving to embrace the DPRK in ways that controvert US interests in the region, the forever "strategically patient" United States initiated its own direct talks with Pyongyang with a visit by US special envoy Stephen Bosworth to Pyongyang in December 2010. In July, after the inter-Korean July 22 meeting in Beijing, US diplomats met directly with North Korean first vice foreign minister long-time nuclear negotiator, diplomat, Kim Kye-gwan, in a meeting arranged via the DPRK UN Mission in New York.
On October 19, the new US envoy to North Korea, Glyn Davies, was appointed, and will attend talks, again with North Korea's Kim Kye-gwan, on October 24-25, 2011 in Geneva.14 A senior North Korean official will also attend a track 1.5 US-DPRK dialogue in Hawaii on October 26-2011. This article assesses the prospects for upcoming negotiations.
Peter Hayes, Professor of Global Studies RMIT University and Executive Director of Nautilus Institute
Jeffrey Lewis, Director of East Asia Nonproliferation Program of the James Martin Center for NonProliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute
Scott Bruce, Director of the Nautilus Institute, San Francisco
Recommended citation: Jeffrey Lewis, Peter Hayes, Scott Bruce, 'Kim Jong Il's Nuclear Diplomacy and the US Opening: Slow Motion Six-Party Engagement,' The Asia-Pacific Journal Vol 9, Issue 43 No 1, October 24, 2011.
Read more . . .
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Kayano Shigeru and Kyoko Selden, The Goddess of the Wind and Okikurmi
Kayano Shigeru (1926-2006) was an inheritor and preserver of Ainu culture.
The following piece by Kayano Shigeru, published in 1999 as a children's book with Saitō Hiroyuki's illustrations, is an adaptation-translation from an old kamuy yukar (songs of gods) dramatizing a contest of strength between the goddess of the wind and the demi-god Okikurumi.
Kyoko Selden is the translator of Kayano Shigeru's Our Land Was a Forest, and Honda Katsuichi's Harukor: An Ainu Woman's Tale. With Noriko Mizuta she edited and translated Japanese Women Writers and More Stories by Japanese Women Writers. She is the coeditor and translator of The Atomic Bomb: Voices From Hiroshima and Nagasaki and an Asia-Pacific Journal associate.
Recommended citation: Kayano Shigeru, 'The Goddess of the Wind and Okikurmi. Translated and introduced by Kyoko Selden,' The Asia-Pacific Journal Vol 9, Issue 43 No 2, October 24, 2011.
Read more . . .
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Yuki Tanaka, Photographer Fukushima Kikujiro - Confronting Images of Atomic Bomb Survivors
Just before 8:16 am on August 6, 1945, the atomic bomb named Little Boy dropped from the Enola Gay B-29 bomber and exploded 580 meters above Shima Hospital near the Aioi Bridge in the center of Hiroshima City. After the bomb was detonated, powerful heat rays were released for approximately 0.2 to 0.3 seconds, heating the ground to temperatures ranging from 3,000 to 4,000ºC. These heat rays instantly burnt people to ashes and melted bricks and rocks within a 1.5 kilometer radius of the hypocenter. In addition, heat rays burnt buildings, triggered large-scale fires and ignited an enormous firestorm. The blast and fire from the atomic bomb destroyed all 75,000 wooden houses within a 2.5 kilometer radius, leaving only the skeletal remains of a few concrete buildings. In the areas surrounding the hypocenter, people were slammed into walls and crushed to death by collapsing houses. Injuries were sustained from flying glass and other debris even in areas far from the hypocenter. People who survived the blast, many of them severely injured, ran through the flames trying to escape, but many burnt to death. For reasons that will become clear, Fukushima Kikujiro survived the bombing to become the most profound photographer-chronicler of the hibakusha, the victims of the bomb, over the next two thirds of a century. This article tells his story and presents a sampling of his extraordinary photographs.
Yuki Tanaka is Research Professor, Hiroshima Peace Institute, and a coordinator of The Asia-Pacific Journal. He is the author most recently of Yuki Tanaka and Marilyn Young, eds., Bombing Civilians: A Twentieth Century History and of Yuki Tanaka, Tim McCormack and Gerry Simpson, eds., Beyond Victor's Justice? The Tokyo War Crimes Trial Revisited. His earlier works include Japan's Comfort Women and Hidden Horrors: Japanese War Crimes in World War II.
Recommended citation: Yuki Tanaka, 'Photographer Fukushima Kikujiro - Confronting Images of Atomic Bomb Survivors,' The Asia-Pacific Journal Vol 9, Issue 43 No 4, October 24, 2011.
Read more . . .
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