Since the death of Okinawan Governor Onaga Takeshi on 8 August, the Henoko base construction plan has been in flux. With the issues coming to a head, the media in Japan and the world shows ever less interest, easing the way for the Abe government to have its way. Crucial phases in the long-running contest between state and prefecture have been noted many times, but perhaps none is comparable to today as the commencement of works to reclaim the base site on Oura Bay is imminent.

“I want Japan to ask for forgiveness.” Ching-lin Yuen, testimony at the Women's International War Crimes Tribunal on Japan's Military Sexual Slavery, 2000

Yuen was among 64 women from 8 countries who came to Tokyo to testify about their experiences as former “comfort women.” The judges in this citizens' tribunal found Emperor Hirohito guilty of responsibility for sexually enslaving women and girls in the Asia Pacific, and recognized direct government and military responsibility for the “comfort women” system, one of the largest and cruelest cases of sex trafficking in the 20th century.

China's green energy shift is now attracting increasing attention, as its strategic implications become clearer. In a recent article in Foreign Affairs, Amy Myers Jaffe has argued that China is effecting a “pivot” to green and clean energy that puts the country on a superior footing in international competition – particularly competition with the United States, that remains committed to its fossil fuel industries. Jaffe cites a number of statistics and trends, such as the shift to green power generation and the shift to electric vehicles (EVs) – but she does not offer any definitive demonstration of China's greening. We tackle this central issue in this article, and offer fresh evidence that in a fundamental sense, China is indeed greening its total energy system. What we do is construct a picture of China's total fossil fuel consumption over the past decade where coal, oil and gas consumption are aggregated not just in terms of coal-equivalent or oil-equivalent but in electric power-equivalent (in TWh) – so that a direct comparison can be made between burning of fossil fuels in aggregate and generation of electric power from renewable sources (i.e. from water, wind and sun). What we show is that in each of the past six years, from 2012 to 2017, China's increase in fossil fuel burning in aggregate has been exceeded by the generation of green electric power. In this precise sense, where “blackening” is defined as the increase in fossil fuel consumption in aggregate (across the entire economy), and “greening” is defined as green electric power generation, we can demonstrate that in each of the past six years, China's greening has outpaced its blackening – as shown in Fig. 1.

The town of Namie is the largest in both area and population among eight towns and villages within Futaba Country in Fukushima Prefecture. At the time of the Great East Japan Earthquake in March 2011 that precipitated the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster, the town's population was 18,464. Although Namie is located just 11.2 km from the nuclear power plants, it took four days from the explosion of the power plants before Tokyo issued an evacuation order. The government's belated order was consonant with its decision to withhold information on radiation levels provided by SPEEDI (System for Prediction of Environmental Emergency Dose Information) in order to avoid “public panic.” Consequently, many residents of Namie as well as other neighboring villages and towns were exposed to high radiation. On April 15 2012, the town of Namie asked the Japanese government to provide free heath care for its residents, including regular medical check-ups to monitor the internal radiation exposure and thyroid examinations. The evacuated government of Namie obtained a monitoring device and installed it in temporary housing in Nihonmatsu City, Fukushima where many evacuees were relocated. On April 1, 2017, the central government lifted one set of restrictions on one zone—areas in which people were permitted to enter freely but were not allowed to stay overnight—and another on a second zone—where access was limited to short visits—based on its judgment that decontamination work had successfully removed radioactive contaminants from the areas. Since the termination of the evacuation order, the government has been encouraging residents to return to those areas although only 1-2% of the residents, mostly senior citizens, have returned so far and a recent poll indicates that less than a quarter of the population intends to return in the future. In this regard, Namie is no different from other towns and villages in that the so-called return policy remains a de facto failure and the former residents simply do not trust or refuse to follow the central government's “reconstruction” programs. At the same time, local governments have been thrown into extremely difficult situations where they have no choice but to go along with the “return policy.”

In her articles published in the Ryukyu Shimpo on 4 and 31 December, Satoko Oka Norimatsu reminds us of three important things. First, of the meaningfulness of formally remembering lessons learned from significant historical events that occurred outside the bounds of our home countries. Second, of the importance of connecting the dots when explaining how the outrages committed by Japanese soldiers towards the civilian population during the Battle of Okinawa can be traced back to atrocities that the Imperial Japanese Army committed in Nanjing and other parts of China. Third, she questions whether men who only avoided being tried for war crimes by taking their own lives can be given pride of place in a commemorative setting.

In these dangerous times, those with the authority and capability to unleash tremendous harm upon hundreds of thousands of people should take a moment to consider the lessons from the past. ME

Cries of “Shitaihya” and “Yushittai” (Okinawan words meaning “Well Done [People of Okinawa!]” and “Take That [Abe government!]” rang out across Okinawa. The 30 September 2018 gubernatorial election occasioned by the sudden death of Governor Onaga Takeshi was literally an all-out war between the Okinawan people doggedly opposing the construction of a new military base at Henoko and the Abe government trying by all means to crush the will of the people. As Onaga's second son, Takehiro, kept insisting during the election period, “this is not an election to be won, or an election we want to win, it is an election we simply must win at all costs.” Needless to say, this election was not just a struggle against candidate Sakima Atsushi but against the Abe government that backed him, to decide whether or not former Governor Onaga Takeshi would be able to pass the baton of our struggle to the candidate (Tamaki Denny) who inherited his mission of no new base.

Kim Jong Un's meeting with Moon Jae-In and the coming summit with Donald Trump do not constitute a volte-face by the North Korean leader. He has consistently sought meetings to find a solution to the nuclear problem, but equally consistently responded with nuclear or missile tests when his diplomatic initiatives are rejected. The recent virtuous cycle began when Moon seized the opportunity of the Winter Olympics in South Korea to create an opening for inter-Korean meetings and Kim reciprocated. Kim has also been consistent in his quest for engagement with the world economy as a strategy of economic development, and steadily taken steps away from his father's Military First policy toward his Economy First policy. His consistency creates an opening, which Moon effectively used to engage the North to propose a Korean Peninsula free of nuclear weapons and end the state of war. The United States will have a historic choice to make in June when Trump meets Kim in Singapore.

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.

Revision of the Japanese Constitution is a heated topic, associated with nationalistic sentiment. Conservatives insist the constitution was imposed by the US occupation and call for an “autonomous constitution” created without foreign interference. This article critiques this discourse within the historical context of modern democracy. I emphasize the need to distinguish two questions: whether a constitution was established democratically and whether it has contributed to enhancing democracy. I highlight the importance of the second question. The Constitution of Japan may not have democratic origins, but it has enhanced democracy. The article provides a historically rooted and theoretically solid framework for constructive discussions of constitutional revision as the Abe administration prepares to submit its proposal for revision.

In this article I seek to show that, while the Ryukyu shobun refers to the process by which the Meiji government annexed the Ryukyu Kingdom between 1872 and 1879, it can best be understood by investigating its antecedents in the Bakumatsu era and by viewing it in the wider context of East Asian and world history. I show that, following negotiations with Commodore Perry, the bakufu recognized the importance of claiming Japanese control over the Ryukyus. This study clarifies the changing nature of Japanese diplomacy regarding the Ryukyus from Bakumatsu in the late 1840s to early Meiji.

Mother,

How are you getting on there?

It's been five months since I moved here. Long enough for winter to turn to spring, and now the blazing days of summer have arrived.

At first, I was too busy unpacking and tidying to spare a glance outside. It took me a good week just to sort your things. With the place unoccupied for five whole years since you went into the hospital, I was not at all sure what the chests of drawers and cupboards might harbor, but all that emerged were endless dead cockroaches and roach droppings; I never did see a live one, nor any mice. I guess in an empty house the cockroaches breed initially, then die out in due course as the food supply runs low. But goodness, what a mass of things! There were four kitchen scales alone, and three rice cookers.

Woody Guthrie is an American icon best known for his 1940 song “This Land is Your Land” which has been sung in countless classrooms, political conventions, demonstrations, and even at the Obama presidential inaugural. Sometimes forgotten is the fact that the song, written in response to Irving Berlin's “God Bless America,” has a subversive message in paying tribute to public rather than private ownership of land and property and in its striving for social equality. Woody was a radical whose worldview was forged by the poverty he witnessed growing up in rural Oklahoma during the 1910s and by the Sooner Socialist Party, the second largest in the country outside of New York City. His music celebrated working class struggles and condemned oppressive institutions and authority. Drawing on the legacy of Joe Hill, whose music inspired the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), he was active in the popular front of the 1930s, a radical social democratic movement promoted by the Communist Party and forged around anti-fascism, anti-lynching, and the industrial unionism of the Congress of Industrial Organization (CIO).

The year 2018 has witnessed extraordinary changes in the Korean peninsula. So many, in fact, that the initial amazement may have worn off a little, and discontent with the pace of change may have set in. But even a brief recapitulation of major occurrences will remind us what an amazing year it has been.

History tends to memorialize the stars and leaders, yet both musical and social movements are also made possible by people who work in the background, organize, seed trends, and otherwise help make things happen. The Japanese rap pioneer and activist ECD, who passed away on January 24, 2018, was neither the earliest nor most commercially successful rapper, and he would have eschewed calling himself a leader of any protest group. Nonetheless, he was what Gramsci would have called an organic intellectual of the working class. The frankness of his music, writing, and performances touched his audiences at an affective level, connecting them to the movements in which he participated. This article looks back at his life, which embodied the worlds of hip-hop, contentious politics, and the working class. It also examines his songs, which not only convey a vivid account of his life, but also reflect his personal and political concerns as well as the ambience of street protests. ECD was a key figure in the development of the underground hip-hop scene, organizing events that allowed it to take root and be lifted into commercial viability. He was on the front lines of several Japanese social movements—anti-Iraq War, anti-nuclear power, anti-racist, pro-democracy, and anti-militarization. He wrote protest anthems, inspired Sprechchor, performed at protests, and helped to establish a new mode of participatory performance, which engaged protesters more fully. His sheer presence at demonstrations, constant and reliable, energized and reassured protesters. Part I describes his years as a hip-hop pioneer, and Part II portrays his role in Japanese social movements of this century.

This paper explores a previously unexamined context to the firebombing of Japan. Analysis of the decisions leading up to construction and military testing conducted in 1943 at the Japanese Village at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah allows important insights into the evolution of US bombing strategy. The shift in US strategy from precision to carpet bombing, the testing and development of incendiary weaponry, and the institutionalization and rationalization of pursuing civilian targets throughout Japan are considered alongside this untold history. Additionally, a broader appreciation of World War II timelines is suggested.

The Asian Studies Department of Cornell University is proud to announce the recipients of the 2017 Kyoko Selden Memorial Translation Prize competition, concluded on November 1. The prize for an unpublished translator has been awarded to Erin L. Brightwell, Assistant Professor of Premodern Japanese Literature at the University of Michigan, for her translation of “The Torrent” (奔流, Hon'ryū, 1943) by the Taiwanese writer Wang Changxiong (王昶雄, also known by his Japanese name, Ō Shōyū/Ō Chōyū), who lived from 1916 to 2000. Brightwell's translation is a welcome contribution to recent scholarship on Japanese-language literature produced in the era of Japan's multi-ethnic empire. The translation vividly renders into English the numerous subtly charged dialogues in this story, with their attendant psychic repercussions.

You could not make these landscapes up and have people believe it. Even as fiction, no one would believe it. That is why, for over sixty years, I kept what I saw to myself… until the day others [who] spoke about it, were called liars, [supposedly] because the atom bombs could not have happened that way. For people underneath an A-bomb to have become shadows on the wall, and charcoals, before they could fall to the ground, no one wanted to believe it. But it happened.

A “global industrial rebalance” refers to a recent relocation of some energy-intensive industries from China to technologically more advanced countries. This is a reversal of the trend of several decades, which has resulted in a global concentration of energy-intensive manufacturing in China, notably steel, cement, aluminum, paper and glass. In this article, I argue that such a global industrial rebalance would benefit both China and the world. The relocation of energy-intensive production is also economically viable, as illustrated by a number of recent investments in the U.S. by Chinese firms in those industries.

As a global powerhouse in manufacturing, China now produces more steel, aluminium, glass and cement than the rest of the world combined (Fig. 1). The global concentration of energy-intensive manufacturing has been at the center of China's rapid industrialization and its positioning as the world's factory in the course of recent decades, as well as the deindustrialization that has concurrently occurred in many western countries.

As part of this latest phase of what Japanese right-wing extremists refer to as the rekishi-sen (history wars), the Abe administration is now mobilizing female storm troopers such as Sugita Mio into the fray launching an aggressive, almost libelous, attack on overseas-based Japanese peace-activists. In her article Norimatsu outlines some of the key characteristics of how Japanese history deniers operate when overseas.

Sugita Mio is an LDP member of the House of Representatives who returned to parliament in 2017. A former civil servant of Nishinomiya City, Hyogo Prefecture, Sugita retired from her job in 2010 and joined her first political party, Minna no To (Your Party). From there she switched to Nihon Ishin no Kai (Japan Restoration Party) and was elected to the House of Representatives for the first time in December 2012. When the Restoration Party dissolved, she joined the new far-right party called Jisedai no To (Party for Future Generations) led by former Tokyo Governor Ishihara Shintaro. She lost her seat in the House in the December 2014 election. Between then and her come-back last year, in conjunction with the far-right women's group Nadeshiko Action, she pursued a neonationalist agenda centering on the denial of the history of Japanese military sexual slavery during the Asia-Pacific War. She is a board member of Atarashii Kyokasho wo Tsukuru Kai (Japan Society for History Textbook Reform).

When Minobe Ryōkichi declared war against garbage in September 1971, he thrust waste into the public's attention and rendered it visible. The governor of Tokyo was not just encouraging the construction of incinerators and landfills to deal with the rapid proliferation of rubbish then facing the metropolis, but was also provoking discussions about the inescapable costs of high economic growth and mass consumption. The Garbage War (gomi sensō), described below in an excerpt from Waste, ultimately proved to be pivotal in changing conceptions of waste in postwar Japan. Coupled with the Oil Shock of 1973, it revealed how deeply waste had insinuated itself into the values and practices of everyday life, and how a society of mass production and mass consumption was also one of mass waste. Shaped too by ideas of environmental protection, the waste of things, resources, and energy came to be seen as tightly interwoven problems that threatened the security and longevity of middle-class lifestyles.