This is the English translation of the original Japanese letter to Emperor Akihito written by Yuki Tanaka. The letter was sent to Emperor Akihito on January 6, 2019 under two names - Yuki Tanaka, as the representative of the annual conference of “August 6 Hiroshima Assembly for Peace,” and Kuno Naruaki, a committee member of the same conference.

After a long silence, the Abe government has finally admitted that the construction of a U.S. military base at Henoko-Oura Bay in Okinawa requires significant changes to the original land reclamation plan (see Asahi Shimbun). Parts of the seafloor of the construction site have proven to be extremely fragile, having the consistency of mayonnaise. To solidify the seafloor sufficiently to support a functional airport, a “sand compaction pile method” needs to be carried out (see this video for sand compaction pile method). Casing piles will be driven into the seafloor as deep as 60 meters (or 90 meters below the water surface), and the piles, which are hollow, will be filled from the top with sand and other compacting materials. Then the piles are raised or removed slowly leaving the compacting materials in the form of a pillar, thus solidifying the seafloor. This procedure is to be repeated 76,000 times, implanting 76,000 compacting pillars in the seafloor (see Ryukyu Shimpo).

One hundred years on from Korea's Sam-il (March First) Independence Movement, this article outlines a number of factors that led to the mass mobilization of Koreans in sustained nationwide efforts to oust the Japanese colonizers from the peninsula. Although much of the pro-independence activism took place at the grassroots level in Korea, the movement also provided an opportunity for contemporaneous transnational commentators to publicly make known their disapproval of Japan's escalating imperial expansionism and its rigid colonial policies. In Japan, a number of concerned observers questioned the dominant mode of thinking at the time which pitted the colonial project as a noble and altruistic venture that would “civilize” Koreans. Criticisms ranged from a distrust of the empire's political motivations to the economic costs of running the colonies, and moral opposition based on humanitarian grounds. One Japanese commentator who demonstrated solidarity with the colonized Koreans was the art critic Yanagi Sōetsu 柳宗悦 (1889-1961), who published a number of impassioned appeals in an effort to demonstrate his indignation at Japan's occupation of the peninsula and to highlight the importance of acknowledging and protecting Korea's vast repository of extraordinary visual cultures.

Following the Great East Japan earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster of 11 March 2011, the Japanese government began constructing a series of 440 seawalls along the north-eastern coast of Honshu. Cumulatively measuring 394.2km, they are designed to defend coastal communities against tsunami that frequently strike the region. We present a case study of the new seawall in Tarō, Iwate Prefecture, which had previously constructed massive sea defences in the wake of two tsunami in 1896 and 1933, which were subsequently destroyed in 2011. We ask whether the government has properly imagined the next disaster for the era of climate change and, therefore, whether its rationale for Tarō‘s new seawall is sufficient. We argue that the government has implemented an incremental strengthening of Tarō‘s existing tsunami defence infrastructure. Significantly, this does not anticipate global warming driven sea level rise, which is accelerating, and which requires transformational adaptation. This continues a national pattern of disaster preparedness and response established in the early 20th century, which resulted in the failure to imagine the 2011 tsunami. We conclude by recalling the lessons of France's Maginot Line and invoke the philosophy of Tanaka Shōzō, father of Japan's modern environmental movement, who urged Japanese to adjust to the flow (nagare) of nature, rather than defend against it, lest they are undone by the force of its backflow (gyakuryū).

This paper explores the parochialism overshadowing the representation of Africa in Wolf Warrior 2, a popular Chinese film released in 2017. Set in Africa, the film portrays the continent as chaotic, characterized by lawlessness, ravaged by war and disease, and destined for doom. Of particular interest to this paper is the role assigned to the Chinese characters, which reveals stereotypes of Africa in the face of a rising Sino-African economic, political and diplomatic engagement which highlights principles of egalitarianism. The article uncovers a “White Saviour Complex” in the film's Chinese characters in ways similar to Western colonial narratives. This is despite the fact that there is no colonial history linking Africa and China that would substantiate the new face given to this White Saviour Complex. This paper posits that Wolf Warrior 2 reasserts a superiority complex in views of Africa, often bundling the entire continent's countries into one hopeless entity desperate for a foreign saviour. It further suggests that the film announces China's displacement of the West on the continent. This paper argues that Wolf Warrior 2 reveals hegemonic anti-African racist stereotypes.

This article assesses the necessity, and provides a technical evaluation of options for a new railway line in the Tokyo - Osaka corridor. It discusses the introduction of SCMaglev technology for the Chuo Shinkansen project and the logic of decisions for its implementation. I examine problems in scheduling an effective timetable for the first phase of a new line between Tokyo and Nagoya. A capacity comparison is provided between the new line, using SCMaglev technology, and the Tokaido Shinkansen, using wheel-on-rail, technology.

After 1973, employers in Japan who had been promising to adopt a weekend system began to withdraw those plans. Thus began a yet-unfinished debate in Japan about how to balance need for employee rest with the demands of employers to increase economic output. The Liberal Democratic Party's current approach to the overwork problem, including its recent labor reforms—which emphasize granting legal flexibility to employees without creating firm regulations to prevent employers from demanding excessive labor—reflects the continued refusal of employers and political leaders to accept the need for employee work-life balance.

During the recent years the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) has rapidly advanced to the rank of a nuclear power, drawing simultaneously lots of attention on itself both by other states and the media. We argue that this means much more than only increase in its weaponry. Combined with its decades old steadfast strive for independence and opposition to the United States, this means a qualitative change in its position in the international system. The theoretical tool used for this analysis is not statistical size, but rather the style of behaviour. Small and great powers tend to have different styles of behaviour. Small powers usually orient towards acting as “good international citizens” performing important integrative and stabilizing tasks for the system, while great powers tend to play classical realist power games, ranging from readiness for military conflict to willingness for occasionally breaking international law. Despite its small size, North Korea systematically behaves like a great power, and its actions can meaningfully be interpreted from that angle.

The material introduced here is a re-working of a chapter from my monograph, Dangerous Memory in Nagasaki: Prayers, Protests and Catholic Survivor Narratives, Routledge (2019), which discusses the symbolism around water and a ‘cry for water’ in the aftermath of the atomic bombing. Dangerous Memory in Nagasaki is a collective biography of twelve survivors of the Nagasaki atomic bombing, including nine Catholic survivors in which I employ a ‘political theology’ as framework to interpret the survivor narratives, showing that their memory upholds the historiography of Nagasaki as distinctive from Hiroshima. Survivor testimony subtly subverts the notion that the atomic bombings made Japan a victim, as Catholics were already victims of prejudice and persecutions carried out by the magistrate on behalf of the Tokugawa and Meiji authorities. Their memory is also dangerous to dominant Catholic narratives which argue that the atomic bomb could be understood as providential, and I argue in the book that survivors are angry, dispelling a common perception that Nagasaki Catholics show passivity, exhibiting no sense of resistance, and therefore lack agency.

Ending a war is like stopping a heavy truck. Even when you slam on the brakes, the mass and inertia of the conflict takes a very long time to halt; the violence might end but the effects can reverberate through decades and generations. German units still find and defuse bombs in Germany dropped during World War II; French deminers regularly collect and destroy artillery shells on the Western Front from World War I, over a hundred years ago. During the active phase of a war, many of the shells and bombs hurled by armies on both sides fail to explode upon impact; many land mines are never tripped. Later they are forgotten in the forests or jungles, covered by vegetation or shifting soil, washed away by rain or floods - or sometimes they just sit there in plain sight. They linger for years or decades, waiting for children or unsuspecting villagers, scrap metal scavengers, or construction workers to wander by.

Confucius Institutes, the language and culture programs funded by the Chinese government, have been established in more than 1,500 high schools and colleges worldwide since their debut in 2004. A centerpiece of China's soft power policy, they represent an effort to smooth China's path to superpower status by enhancing its global appeal. Yet Confucius Institutes have given rise to voluble and contentious public debate in host countries, where they have been both welcomed as a source of educational funding and cultural enrichment, and feared as spy outposts, neocolonial incursions, and obstructions to academic freedom. China in the World turns an anthropological lens on this highly visible and controversial globalization project in an effort to provide fresh insight into China's shifting place in the world.

A vivid close up view from the front lines of the protest by Okinawans and their supporters against construction of a new US Marine Base at Henoko, Okinawa.

Latin America's shifting geopolitics and the prolonged slowdown in China's economic growth in recent years have led to a significant change in Beijing's strategic approach to the region. The commodities boom at the beginning of this century coincided with a period of dramatic economic expansion in China. At the time, China seemed to buy everything, invest in everything and to welcome its new role as the principal geopolitical alternative to the United States for many of the countries in the hemisphere. And, the shift to the left in many Latin American countries - called the Pink Tide - invited the Chinese presence. Over the past year, however, China has adopted a more conservative approach to its role in the region. At the same time, in a number of the countries in the region, left-leaning government have been replaced by right-of-center ruling coalitions,

China has reduced its exposure in Venezuela and Ecuador, where it had accumulated significant shares of both countries' sovereign debt in exchange for promises of petroleum at below-market prices. It has hit the pause button on several major infrastructure projects linked to its Belt and Road Initiative and has reduced its financing of private corporations, particularly in manufacturing. Most significantly, it has focused its investment in very specific strategic industries, such as lithium mining and renewable energy.

The March, 1954 “Bravo Shot” H-bomb test in the Pacific dumped radioactive debris on the Marshall Islands, U.S. servicemen, and the crew of a Japanese fishing boat. The multi-megaton blast infected Marshall Islanders with radiation sickness and caused cancers in the years that followed. Their contaminated home on Bikini Atoll remains uninhabitable to this day. U.S. servicemen who had been purposely transported by the Navy into the blast zone have suffered from multiple cancers from radiation exposure. For years their claims denied were denied by the Veterans Administration. It took an act of Congress in 1990 to provide compensation for them and their children with birth defects. The crew of the Japanese fishing boat, Lucky Dragon No. 5, suffered from acute radiation poisoning. One crew member, Kuboyama Aikichi (age 40), died while in treatment for exposure.

On July 8 1969, 19-year old US soldier Daniel Plemons was working at Chibana Ammunition Depot, Okinawa, in one of the most dangerous – and secretive – jobs in the US military: the maintenance of chemical weapons.

“There were 500-pound (227 kg) bombs filled with nerve agent and we were sandblasting the old paint off them before repainting and stenciling their markings. Our team had finished around 25 – then I started having trouble breathing and my vision became strange. Thinking it was just the dust, I stepped outside for a moment but when I went back inside, everybody was gone. I found them out the back of the building and they yelled at me to inject myself with my automatic spring-loaded antidote. I injected it into my upper thigh. It hurt – but that's what saved my life.”

A comment by the female star of the Disney film Mulan, supporting Hong Kong police crackdown on democratic protests has led to a massive boycott of the film in Hong Kong.

This essay describes a campaign by nationalist Japanese journalist Komori Yoshihisa against a public symposium and workshop on historical memory and reconciliation in East Asia held at George Washington University in 2003. When conservative politicians, led from behind the scenes by current prime minister Abe Shinzo, alleged anti-Japan bias in the Diet (parliament), the cosponsor and funder of the workshop, the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership, wilted under intense political pressure from the Right and withdrew support for the book project. A counterprotest in defense of academic freedom by senior American Japan specialists revived the workshop only to have the Foreign Ministry intervene. Funder interference—insistence on progovernment authors—undermined the project and the essay collection based on conference papers was never published. Fear of the Right led American and Japanese professors to reject a highly qualified fellowship applicant in 2015 and still haunts prominent bilateral intellectual exchange competitions. This essay's scrutiny of the Komori Affair leads to other contemporary concerns, such as the integrity of peer review in a context of funder intervention and the compromise of US academic partners dependent on intellectual exchange activities bankrolled by foreign governments.

Shin Sugok is an advocate of human rights in Japan and a leader of “Norikoe Net,” an “international network to overcome hate speech and racism.” Norikoe Net's broad purview encompasses discrimination against Koreans, women, Okinawans, Burakumin, children born out of wedlock, the disabled, LGBT people, and other disadvantaged minority groups. In essence, their aim is to champion human rights in Japan as a universal value.

Every day except for Sundays, holidays and typhoon days hundreds of huge dump trucks enter the US Marine Corps' Camp Schwab at Henoko, in northern Okinawa, carrying landfill – dirt, sand, stones – and dump it into the sea offshore from the base. Eventually, they hope, they will be able to dump enough to support an airstrip on top of the pile, and transform Schwab from a camp into a superbase. Every day except for Sundays, holidays and typhoon days, Okinawans and their supporters from Japan and abroad carry out a sit-in at the gate aimed at preventing, or at least slowing, the entry of these trucks. This sit-in has continued now for more than 1700 days – possibly qualifying for the Guinness Book, if anyone would take the trouble to make the application. Okinawans have any number of reasons for opposing this new base: the fact that the land reclamation will probably kill one of the world's last undamaged coral gardens in the adjacent Oura Bay; the fact that US bases have always brought with them crimes, accidents and pollution; the fact that mainland Japan's refusing to accept this base but forcing it on tiny Okinawa is a straw-that-breaks-the-camel's-back act of discrimination. And there is the fact that this and all the other bases here trample on Okinawa's essentially peace-loving sensibilities.

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.