On October 26, 1967, John McCain (1936-2018), the naval aviator who later became a US Senator from Arizona was shot down while flying over Hanoi, Vietnam. McCain then became a war prisoner for five and a half years until his release in March 1973. Where McCain was captured became the site of a memorial, depicting a soldier kneeling with two arms raised in surrender. Originally intended to celebrate the Vietnamese victory, the memorial later turned into a symbol of McCain's relationship with Vietnam and the US's relationship to the country. McCain himself visited, as well as recent US leaders, including President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. Upon McCain's passing, both Vietnamese people and American expats brought flowers to the memorial to pay their respects. This commentary discusses how the memorial became an instrument of diplomacy, serving the present rhetoric of friendship the US has fostered with Vietnam and demonstrating both peoples' desires for an amiable future. By honouring the memorial, the Americans and the Vietnamese have engaged in what we argue is strategic remembering, reconfiguring the meaning of a war artifact and making it not only a testament to the past but also a marker of renewed reality in the present.

At the White House Festival of the Arts in 1965, the American novelist John Hersey read excerpts from his noted non-fiction work Hiroshima (1946) as an act of protest against President Lyndon Johnson's escalation of the Vietnam War. As Hersey linked Harry Truman's bombing of Hiroshima and Johnson's bombing of Vietnam within the same spectrum of American military interventions in Asia, he earned the ire of the First Family and raised questions about freedom of speech in the White House itself. Drawing on archival documents in the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library and the Library of Congress, this article argues that Hersey's literary protest revealed how the premises of cultural freedom that lay at the heart of Cold War American liberalism stirred far more controversy in practice than their placid articulation in theory would have ever suggested.

Since the July 2022 assassination of former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, Japan has seen a flood of media and legal responses to connections between religion and politics. However, there has been little analysis to date of how we know what we know about developments in religion, law, and politics in Japan that were precipitated by this shocking event. These articles by Saitō Masami and Ioannis Gaitanidis contribute novel inquiries into local-level journalism and lawyers’ activism through interactions by these two researchers with the people who produce media narratives and legal interpretations. This brief introduction situates their insights within readings of opponents and defenders of the Unification Church who have shaped public discourse on intersections between religion and politics since July 2022.

Despite the rise of the importance of the ‘Indo-Pacific,’ this article argues that discussions on the concept remain at the theoretical level, such as seen in the grand strategy debate. However, in the policy field, the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy has evolved to a much more detailed one that manifests as an action plan. Given the discrepancy between theory and practice, this article aims to provide a tool to read the development of the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy with a focus on U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM), which is in charge of operationalizing the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy in the security field.

With the review and analysis of mission, strategy, and operational essence of USINDOPACOM and its component commands, this article finds that first, at the mission and strategy level, the commands assume that their main position is to deter and defend rather than to preempt conflict in the region. The operational level finding is that to fulfill its mission and strategy, USINDOPACOM and its component commands consistently emphasize the importance of strengthening and enhancing its posture in the region. Third, USINDOPACOM and its component commands are establishing new types of troops equipped with enhanced mobility and capabilities covering multi-domains.

This analysis and review has implications for the allies and partners of the U.S. when pursuing their own Indo-Pacific strategies. Based on the current evidence, there is a likelihood that the U.S. will request allies and partners act jointly or mini-laterally beyond the established bilateral relationship. In addition, in order to overcome the logistical difficulty caused by the ‘tyranny of distance’ in the Indo-Pacific area, the U.S. may request allies and partners play additional roles in this context beyond what they have done to date. Allies and partners need to consider these practical trends toward which the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy is heading and what this means for their own national interests, strategies, and operations.

Four ugui portraits of kings of the Okinawan kingdom of Lūchū (Ryūkyū) were returned to Okinawa in March 2024 along with sixteen other artifacts stolen by American soldiers during the 1945 Battle of Okinawa. These are the first such royal portraits to be confirmed extant, and the first such royal treasures to be recovered since 1953. This essay describes the repatriated portraits, as well as the theft and search for the royal treasures looted in 1945 and their cultural and emotional significance for a people who lost a great volume of their tangible heritage in World War II.

The topic of how professionals' religious identity travels in a migratory context remains under-examined. Drawing on data from interviews with twenty Muslim Indonesians in Tokyo, this study discusses how Muslim professionals navigate their religious identity during employment and living in Japan. It finds that the image of Islam in Japanese professional settings is still positive, and suggests that working in Japan paves the way for Muslim Indonesians to promote cultural diversity in Japanese professional settings, which also serve as a platform for introducing Islam. This study contributes to the discourse on the emerging Muslim professional identity in non-religious societies.

This article examines the role that William Elliot Griffis's work played in Ozawa v. United States, in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1922 that Japanese immigrants were not “white persons” and therefore were ineligible to naturalized citizenship. Griffis, a prominent authority on Japan, had spent decades arguing that the Japanese were white. While Ozawa is an important case study in U.S.-Japanese relations and critical race theory, Griffis's previously unrecognized part in it further demonstrates the durability of racial thought even in the mind of an individual who sought to partially reshape such ideas.

A core issue for media outlets and politicians since the assassination of Abe Shinzō has been monetary transactions between religious organizations and their current or former members. Anxieties surrounding religion's role in the public sphere have informed legal arguments about consumer issues. A category of fraud called “spiritual sales” has become a particular concern. In this article, I describe how interpretations of consumer law have been instrumental in dealing with spiritual sales and I discuss reasons why problematic consumption practices associated with religions that have attracted intense criticism have led the Japanese government to comprehensively revise regulatory protections as they reassess consumer vulnerabilities.

In this transcription of a webinar from October 2023, speakers Kevin Blackburn (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore), Katharine McGregor (University of Melbourne, Australia), and Sachiyo Tsukamoto (University of Newcastle, Australia) talk about their new books on the “comfort women.”

After a decade of effort, China has established its geopolitical influence in Southeast Asia through its rail projects, which will grow further as more lines are completed. Chinese rail projects, especially those involving high-speed rail (HSR) systems, are and will be of considerable benefit to Beijing's geopolitical ambitions, but their impact may be limited by lack of progress, lack of connection, and unstable situations in some host states. Further, although China is actively shaping the landscape of Southeast Asian rail, there are opportunities for Japan, China's competitor with regards to infrastructure investment in rail systems, to explore.

In September 2024, after 56 years under a sentence of death, Hakamada Iwao was acquitted in a retrial in Japan. This article summarizes what went wrong in his wrongful conviction case and what should be learned from it. The Shizuoka District Court's retrial decision concluded that police and prosecutors conspired to frame Hakamada with evidence they had fabricated, but there is more to the case than that. This tragedy occurred because of mistakes and misconduct that were exacerbated by underlying weaknesses in Japan's criminal process. To prevent a recurrence, many things need to change in Japanese criminal justice. The conclusion identifies five priorities for reform.

Numerous complex issues concerning the history of Japanese war crimes cloud the trials that adjudicated justice in postwar East Asia. Discrepancies between fact and fiction, or facts that can be proven in a court of law, result in a situation that even today renders what actually happened during the creation of empire and the ensuing war in Asia open to interpretation. More than seven decades after the war, disagreements about the justice or injustice of these processes continue to feed political friction in the region.

The South Seas nation of Tokelau is officially comprised of three islands: Atafu, Nukunonu, and Fakaofo. But many people believe there is a fourth island in the group. Its indigenous name is Olohega (oloˈhɛŋa). Since 1925, Olohega (Swains) has been a U.S. territory by way of American Sāmoa and is privately owned by one family. The basis of the claim involves two American claimants, William W. Taylor and Eli Jennings.

“The Question of Olohega” is presented in two parts. Part One, published in APJJF in 2021, is an in-depth investigation of Taylor's fraudulent claim to all four of Tokelau's islands under the U.S. Guano Act of 1856. Part Two, presented below, is an investigation of Jennings' claim to Olohega, with a focus on the trajectory of events and questionable statecraft that led to the island's eventual annexation.

An extraordinary photograph by well-known modernist photographer Horino Masao depicting schoolgirls parading in gas masks through the Ginza in 1936 launched me into this project. That is why it sits on the cover of my book (Fig 1). The questions this image elicited, particularly the ambivalent symbolism of the gas mask as a technological instrument of protection and a grotesque fetish of monstrous transformation, sent me on a journey of curiosity that revealed a wide-ranging air defense (bōkū) movement permeating every aspect of Japanese culture from the 1930s through the end of the war. The Japanese government, along with many businesses, utilized rich and creative marketing campaigns to sell, engage, and prepare the public for the possibility of war from the air. And while I found the expected patriotic posters illustrating how model citizens should prepare their homes and bodies, and the propaganda pieces warning of the horrors that could come if lights were not properly blackened out during an air raid, I also discovered a surprising assortment of aestheticized imagery, some even humorous, that went far beyond this usual wartime patriotic fare. The volume of production was staggering. I began to see the widespread creative investment in communicating air defense to the Japanese people.

For almost 150 years, the Yūshūkan military museum on the grounds of Yasukuni Shrine has been one of the most prominent tourist sites in Tokyo. Opened in 1882 as Japan's first Western-style museum, the Yūshūkan is often seen as the emblem of the so-called “Yasukuni view of history, ” which downplays Japanese militarism and imperialism and is at the heart of tensions with other nations. This study is the first dedicated treatment of the long history of the Yūshūkan from its conceptualization in the 1870s to its place in Japan and the world in the 2020s. It argues that the origins of the Yūshūkan should be seen in the context of the global spread of the military museum as an institution in the late nineteenth century. Over the past 140 years, the Yūshūkan has gone from appealing to an emerging global standard to claiming a Japanese uniqueness as justification for its existence and has always been closely intertwined with global discourses on war, commemoration, and Japan's place in the world.

This article investigates the popular social media channels of former Happiness Realization Party official Yukihisa Oikawa, who has built himself a profile as a media personality within the Japanese language conspiracy narrative realm. In our analysis, we put a particular focus on his statements concerning the Russo-Ukrainian war and examine them within the context of his larger ideological and political views. Using mixed quantitative and qualitative discourse analysis methods, we are able to trace radicalization and semantic shifts within his terminology, as well as investigate the connection between metapolitical communication strategies and the monetization of anti-media and conspiracist disinformation – a connection that is common for the political strategy of the global far-right.

“I Am A Comedian” (Dir. Fumiari Hyuga, 2022) is a documentary featuring a prominent Japanese comedian, Daisuke Muramoto, who “disappeared” from TV programs despite his popularity and talent, due to the shift of his comedy routine to political satire. The author watched the film with students in a Japanese pop culture class at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and also invited Muramoto himself to the class. This essay reviews the documentary within its social context and reports on the engaging class discussion with Muramoto. Creative expression provides people, especially those who are impacted and marginalized, means to contest power. At the same time, we are in an era when political and social conflicts have become exceedingly intense, making it imperative that the manifestation of ideas and opinions be both compelling and sensitive to others. Muramoto's journey in pursuing his comedy provides us with insights to reflect on what true freedom of speech is and the power and responsibility that accompany artistic expression.

This article examines photographs taken by U.S. Marine Joe O'Donnell, who was tasked with documenting bombed urban centers immediately after the Asia-Pacific War. O'Donnell's photos document not just the physical damage wrought by U.S. bombing raids, but the human suffering as well. While most published images at the time projected the U.S. military's destructive potential through mushroom clouds or razed cities, O'Donnell shifted the visual focus to the struggles of Japanese citizens in the ruins. In doing so, O'Donnell disrupted notions of American superiority by giving voice to those rebuilding their lives in the war's aftermath.

This article chronicles how two commercial TV stations in Toyama Prefecture exposed deep links between politicians and the Unification Church. It discusses how a local community of investigative journalists with close ties to adherents and politicians revealed ways the church and lawmakers cooperated on electioneering and policymaking, and it analyzes how their exposés were taken up in national-level coverage. Through a self-reflexive consideration of complex relationships between broadcasters, church representatives, and elected officials in Toyama, I affirm that attending to local media is vital for understanding ways religion and politics are narrated.

This introduction to the special issue on food charity, religion, and care in Vietnam compares grassroots philanthropy in Vietnam with broader trends toward religious humanitarianism happening across Asia. The co-editors of the special issue examine why food charity has become popular in urban areas like Ho Chi Minh City by exploring how food holds spiritual, moral significance for both donors and recipients. This survey illuminates how grassroots philanthropy in Vietnam can offer a comparative study for spirituality, ethics, and food practices across Asia, as well as religious humanitarian- ism globally.