I'd like to start with a big question: "can the media overcome nationalism?" I ask this because the words "national interest" have been used both casually and often in communicating everyday information. The Japanese media seemingly lack awareness that these words are used contiguously with the words "conservative swing". What I'd like to know is the proportion of Japanese who felt angry versus those who remained calm when Korean president Lee Myung-bak visited Takeshima (Dokdo), and how that number changed when people learned that the reason for his visit was to pressure the Japanese government to take responsibility for the comfort women of the former Japanese military.
 
But the Japanese media are uninterested in such things. As I write this, what is on my mind is the capacity (or lack thereof) of Abe Shinzo, who has been re-elected as LDP leader, to make political judgements. In the LDP's draft election pledges, the party proposed to create an official "Takeshima Day" and to continue to object to "unreasonable viewpoints" regarding comfort women issues. Abe is also calling for a revision of the Constitution and proposing the establishment of "national defense forces." Can such a person provide an answer to such complex territorial issues and historical awareness? The editorial of Chosun Ilbo on 22nd November asked: "How can Abe meet with leaders of South Korea and China as Prime Minister, based on this election pledge?"    

Jinbo Taro writes for Sekai (World). This article appeared in the January, 2013 issue of Sekai.

Rumi Sakamoto and Matt Allen, who translated this article, are Asia-Pacific Journal Associates. They are coeditors of Popular Culture, Globalization and Japan.

December 2,4 2012. 

China is undergoing the most astonishing energy transformation underpinning the industrial revolution that is making it the workshop of the world. It is building its 'black' energy system at a prodigious rate - building the equivalent of a 1-GW thermal power station every 10 days, and burning vast amounts of coal in doing so. But at the same time it is building a 'green' energy system based on non-fossil sources (renewables and nuclear) faster than any other country on earth. China's green revolution is reflected in its targets for building renewable energy systems, which are being expanded as fast as is humanly and technically possible - in the name of energy security and nation-building infrastructure as much as for decarbonizing the economy. Which wins in this close race between black and green development is a matter of the highest importance, for China and for the world.

In October China's State Council released its Energy Policy white paper, locking in some stringent goals prior to the leadership transition that moved ahead in November, and updating previous targets that had been spelt out in the 12th Five Year Plan, covering the years 2011 to 2015. In the White paper, China committed itself to achieving by 2015 no less than 30% of its electric power generation coming from non-fossil fuel sources. China's electric power system, already the world's largest and operating at just over 1 TW in 2011, is expected to grow to 1.5 TW by 2015. Of this, 450 GW (30%) is to be accounted for by non-fossil sources. The remarkable growth in non-fossil and renewable power sources-if achieved-will start to match that of thermal (coal-burning) sources. This is a truly historic milestone. It means that China's carbon emissions - 50% of which come from power generation - are coming under control.   

John Mathews, Macquarie Graduate School of Management, Macquarie University, Sydney NSW 2109, Australia and Eni Chair in Competitive Dynamics and Global Strategy, LUISS Guido Carli University, Viale Romania, 32 00197 Roma, Italy;

Hao Tan, Newcastle Business School, University of Newcastle, Australia. Their article "The Transformation of the Electric Power Industry in China" appears in Energy Policy, Vol. 52, January 2013.

Recommended citation: John Mathews and Hao Tan, "China's Industrial Energy Revolution: Renewable targets just became even more demanding," The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol 10, Issue 52, No. 2, December 24, 2012.

This article brings together three Counterpoint columns published in The Japan Times on December 2, 9 and 23 and slightly edited here. Novelist, playwright, film director and translator Roger Pulvers provides a personal tour of Japan's disastrous experiment with nuclear power, compares the consequences of the Fukushima and Chernobyl disasters, and charts the uncertain future of Japan's nuclear industry. While the first two articles appeared prior to Japan's election, the victorious LDP leader Abe Shinzo has made plain his administration's determination to restart many of Japan's closed power plants in the face of public opinion polls revealing widespread opposition to the restarts, and scientific evidence of the high risk of restarts in earthquake-sensitive regions. Abe said on TV Asahi on December 23, "It is not yet clear what caused the Fukushima Daiichi accident." He added, "We will go ahead [with the reactor restarts] with the people [regulators and scientists] that we already have." His "people" appear to omit the strong Japanese majority that public opinion polls reveal are opposed to restarts. Abe appears poised to push forward with the status quo of ineffective regulation, business cronyism, and hand-picked subservient experts described below.     

Roger Pulvers is an American-born Australian author, playwright, theatre director and translator living in Japan. An Asia-Pacific Journal associate, he has published 40 books in Japanese and English and, in 2008, was the recipient of the Miyazawa Kenji Prize. In 2009 he was awarded Best Script Prize at the Teheran International Film Festival for "Ashita e no Yuigon." He is the translator of Kenji Miyazawa, Strong in the Rain: Selected Poems. The Dream of Lafcadio Hearn is his most recent book.

December 23, 2012 

David Fedman is a Ph.D. Candidate in Japanese and Korean history at Stanford University. He is the author of "Mounting Modernization: Itakura Katsunobu, the Hokkaido University Alpine Club and Mountaineering in Pre-War Hokkaido," The Asia-Pacific Journal, 42-1-09, October 19, 2009.

Recommended citation: David Fedman, 'Japanese Colonial Cartography: Maps, Mapmaking, and the Land Survey in Colonial Korea,' The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol 10, Issue 52, No. 4, December 24, 2012.