As Okinawa struggles to assert its new form of "All Okinawa" politics in the face of Japanese determination to impose a new US Marine base at Henoko, confronts nation-wide indifference allowing the Abe government to proceed as "All Japan." Gavan McCormack looks forward: in the coming months, Okinawa will either have forced an unprecedented change of policy direction or it will have suffered devastating defeat.

While China's energy system is now firmly entrenched as the "blackest" system as measured by fossil fuel consumption, it simultaneouly is advancing the world's most ambitious green energy program. John A. Mathews and Hao Tan analyze new data to highlight important implications for the future of the country's energy profile and for  global efforts to avert environmental catastrophe.

China has been actively engaged in Africa since 1960, but the new Maritime Silk Road announced in 2013 promises an intensification of Chinese substantial investment on the continent, especially infrastructure. Alvin Cheng-Hin Lim examines these developments as one of China's new engines of growth, while inquiring whether China is engaged in neocolonialism in Africa.

Doug Slaymaker translates an excerpt of award-winning novelist Furukawa Hideo'sHorses, Horses, In the Innocence of Light. The work tells the story of the author and his family through the shock of the triple disasters of 3.11 that arguably has made the novels yet to be written suddenly meaningless, ephemeral, and somehow devoid of life.