Focusing on Ōnobu Pelican's play Kiruannya and U-ko-san (2011), this article analyzes documentary theater from the area afflicted by the triple disaster of March 11, 2011. Kiruannya and U-ko provides a rich tapestry of the multiple and often contradictory features of Fukushima Prefecture in the aftermath of the Fukushima calamity, weaving a dense fabric of fictional material, newspaper clippings, and reality. I show that Ōnobu's play opposes national discourses of a spatially limited disaster, and that it offers keen insights into the highly ambivalent and emotional landscape of those residents of Northern Japan, whose homeland was turned into a disaster zone and/or radioactive wasteland after 3.11.

On the fifth anniversary of the establishment of the Kyoko Selden Memorial Translation Prize through the generosity of her colleagues, students, and friends, the Department of Asian Studies at Cornell University is pleased to announce the winners of the 2018 Prize.

On 14 December, the Okinawa Defense Bureau officially began reclamation work in preparation for the building of a massive US Marine Corps airbase at Henoko, in Northern Okinawa. I use the word “officially” advisedly: they announced it well in advance, with what could almost be called fanfare. The people opposing this base – the folks carrying out the six-day-a-week sit-in at the construction site and the dock where the ships are being loaded with dirt – call this “construction for show” (misekake koji). As they understand it, the Okinawa Defense Bureau is trying to persuade them, and the Prefectural Government, that all is lost, that they should give up their protest and stay home, so that full-fledged construction can finally begin. And so at every turning point in their preparations the Agency stages a performance, a kind of ceremony, the not-so-hidden message of which is “now there is no turning back: resign yourselves to the inevitable and give up”.

Mt. Paektu/Changbai is a 9,000 foot volcano that straddles the border of North Korea and China. As the source of the Korean foundation myth, it has become a potent symbol of both North and South Korean nationalism. Historically, Sino-Korean border demarcation generally followed the Tumen and Yalu Rivers converging on Mt. Paektu. The Sino-North Korean border agreement in 1962, however, is still disputed by South Korea and contentions over territorial jurisdiction as well as cultural claims to the region have generated tensions between China and the two Koreas for decades. How significant is this national symbol in shaping foreign relations on the Korean peninsula? Will it become an issue on the path towards Korean reunification?

While all eyes have been focused on the evolving US-China trade war, China has been pursuing multiple initiatives of which its long-term global investment strategy known as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is the most ambitious – and now (finally) being addressed by mainstream media and US Congressional hearings. China's BRI, encompassing the land-based Silk Road Economic Belt and the sea-based 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, is the world's largest multilateral infrastructure-building project. This initiative is now creating a community of states that have common interests in the building of infrastructure with China's financial assistance and in setting rules and standards for international trade within the BRI area. Through this process, the BRI is creating the world's largest trade and investment area, and one with clear security implications as China's geopolitical profile rises. Enjoying the highest level of political support in China, the multiple projects of the BRI utilize Chinese finance provided primarily by state development banks in an extension overseas of the industrial development model fashioned at home. Critical commentary has fastened on the possibility of countries entering “debt traps” as they sign up for BRI projects. Such claims need to be scrutinized from the perspective of China's own debt-fuelled economic development strategy and the mutual goals tying China to dozens of industrializing countries in a new arc of Chinese economic and financial diplomacy. The wider significance of BRI explored here includes its role in promoting the internationalization of China's currency and reinforcing China's industrial and energy strategies abroad.