For more than two decades, the Asia-Pacific Journal has paid close attention to the “Okinawa problem.” However, today that “problem” becomes increasingly complex and difficult to grasp, even as it enters a major, possibly decisive, moment. The more the crisis deepens, the less it is covered by mainstream national and global media. This essay resumes the situation as of August 2018, and reflects on the significance of the 27 July move by Okinawa prefecture towards halting base construction works at Henoko-Oura Bay.

The Mainichi is holding an international essay contest on the theme of Inoue Hisashi's play, “The Face of Jizo,” for young people. To commemorate this contest, we have asked the play's translator and long-time friend of the late playwright to write about him. We publish that here, together with Inoue's prologue, the first part of the play and profiles of both playwright and translator.

Details of the essay contest and information for participants may be seen here.

This interview is accompanied by Margherita R. Long's essay Japan's 3.11 Nuclear Disaster and the State of Exception: Notes on Kamanaka's Interview and Two Recent Films

Born in Toyama Prefecture, Kamanaka Hitomi entered Waseda University and joined her friends in a filmmaking club. Kamanaka won a scholarship from the Japanese government and spent time in Canada and the US between 1990 and 1995 studying at the National Film Board of Canada and working as a media activist at Paper Tiger in New York. Kamanaka then returned to Japan at the time of the Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake that caused over 6,000 deaths and displaced over 300,000 people in the greater Kobe area of Japan in 1995. While working as a volunteer for the victims of the earthquake, she began to produce documentaries for NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation) as a freelance director. Kamanaka's first nuclear-related film, Hibakusha at the End of the World (Radiation: A Slow Death, 2003), won several awards, including one from Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs for excellence in documentary. The film shed light on the transnational links of nuclear policies and their fatal consequences by comparing radiation effects at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in the State of Washington, the effects of depleted uranium on Iraqi citizens during and after the first Gulf War, and victims of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

This essay accompanies Katsuya Hirano's Interview with Kamanaka Hitomi, “Fukushima, Media, Democracy: The Promise of Documentary Film”

Documentary filmmaker Kamanaka Hitomi's interview with historian Katsuya Hirano takes the post-Fukushima debate in a number of fresh directions.

At the level of facts, Kamanaka draws from her vast knowledge of Japanese nuclear politics and the global nuclear industry to share developments that may startle even those who have tried to keep up with the unfolding crisis.