The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus Newsletter
 
Newsletter No. 49. 2013    

December 9, 2013    
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Alex Calvo
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Greetings!

 

What will it take to keep the Asia-Pacific Journal free and vibrant?

 

Our annual fund-raising campaign is now in its fifth week, with over $6,500 raised with your generous support. Our short-term goal is $10,000, our long-term goal, to place the journal on a firm foundation: $50,000.

We have now had a challenge grant, to match gifts of $50 or more up to $1,000. We hope that you will take advantage of this opportunity to maximize your tax-deductible gift.

If we succeed, the journal will remain available at no charge to readers. 12,000 regular readers now receive our work via the Newsletter or Facebook and Twitter, and we are investigating making content available through other electronic channels. Last month, readers in 205 countries accessed more than 120,000 articles. We have created a major archive on Japan's 3.11 triple disaster, the flawed responses, and the creative search for new green energy approaches beyond nuclear power. And our work on US-Japan-Okinawa relations, on territorial conflicts in the Asia-Pacific, and on war and historical memory is now supplemented by a wide range of contributions in the realm of culture . . . film, music, anime, manga and the like in Asia-Pacific perspective. We are reaching out to schools and teachers through our course readers, with ten more to be published shortly. For the first time, The Asia-Pacific Journal is a 501 (C) (3) non-profit organization recognized by the Internal Revenue Service. Contributions are tax deductible. If you wish to support our campaign in the form of a subscription (we recommend $25 or $50; $10 for students and developing countries and hope that those in a position to provide more will do so) please go to the red Sustainer Button on our home page and use Paypal or a credit card. 
 
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.

Contact Japan Focus by email at info@japanfocus.org 
 
Subscription information
The Asia-Pacific Journal is freely available to all. We invite those who wish to support our work by allowing us to make technical upgrades, defray technical, mailing and maintenance fees, and to enable us to expand our output since the 3.11 earthquake and tsunami. Recommended support level: $25 ($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 
Alex Calvo, Marines, Missiles, and the Iron Lady: The Military Leg in Japan's Ocean Strategy 
 
The complex situation in East Asia and the wider Pacific-Indian Ocean Region is prompting governments to deploy a full range of tools, from economic diplomacy to humanitarian relief operations to declarations of exclusive air space, in their search for a balance between what they consider to be their key national interests and their shared wish to avert open conflict. Tokyo is one of these actors who feel compelled to defend their national interests while at the same time recognizing that war would imply harsh costs, to itself and the region, at many levels, from the human to the economic to the political. While many Asian leaders have expressed the wish to see tensions ease and differences settled without recourse to violence, all understand the high risk of conflict and look to higher levels of military preparedness to enhance their position. Japan is no exception. Japan is unique, however, in moving to reinforce military capabilities despite a restrictive legal and constitutional framework. This paper examines these factors, on the understanding that developments in the military sphere are only part of Tokyo's foreign policy towards East-Asia.
 

Alex Calvo is an international law and international relations professor at European University, and guest professor at Nagoya University. 

  

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Shoji Masahiko, 

The Rage of Exile. In the Wake of Fukushima
Translated and introduced by Tom Gill

All of a sudden two years have passed since that once-in-a-thousand-years calamity, the Great East Japan Earthquake, and the explosions that followed at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant - and nothing has changed. All that has happened is that our houses are crumbling, our fields are running to weeds, and our village is drifting back to a primitive state. 
 
The national government and the village mayor, insist now as ever that they will decontaminate the village, that they will enable us to go home, to return to the village as soon as humanly possible, that their plans will be executed swiftly, that the living environment will be getting the top priority as they open up the road to recovery, and no-one wants to abandon their homeland. But why, when human life and health should be the top priority, should that be reason to choose return, return to the village, as a higher priority than the people's health, our children's health, our grandchildren's health? - That is something I cannot fathom.

Shoji Masahiko is among the 250 inhabitants of Nagadoro, who until the nuclear disaster supported his wife and four children as a part-time farmer and part-time carpenter. 

 

Tom Gill is a professor at Meiji Gakuin University. He is the author of Men of Uncertainty: the Social Organization of Day Laborers in Contemporary Japan and co-editor of Globalization and Social Change in Contemporary Japan.

 

 

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