To anyone not serving in the American or Korean armies along the Korean Demilitarized Zone, the current talk of war and nuclear war is surreal and archaic, a throwback to an earlier and more dangerous era, a time when Bob Dylan sang about feeling lonesome and blue about walking into World War III with bad dreams in his head.

Apocalyptic panic and glib memes frame much of American discourse about the current North Korean nuclear crisis. Yet the North Korean crisis poses a challenge to the mandate of South Korea's new liberal president, Moon Jaein, to usher in an era of truly democratic politics, and indeed, to the fate of his administration. On the critical issue of US plans to install a terminal high area altitude defense (THAAD) system, an issue that has roiled the waters among South Korea, the United States and China, Moon has chosen to leave intact former conservative president Park Geun-hye administration's undemocratic legacy.

As the Tokyo Shimbun reported in its recent article, the expression “Japan Is Great!” and a distinctive nationalistic sentiment associated with it flood the mass media in Japan today. Journalists and television personalities praise Japan ad nauseam. Hayakawa Tadanori is an editor and writer who has extensively covered this “Japan-Is-Great” phenomenon. Analyzing issues surrounding nationalism and propaganda both in pre-war and contemporary Japan, he examines topics ranging from patriotic mobilization in pre-war and war-time Japan to post-war propaganda promoting nuclear energy. His most recent book, The Dystopia of “Japan Is Great”: The Genealogy of Singing One's Own Praises in Wartime (“Nihon sugoi” no disutopia: senjika jiga jisan no keifu, Seikyūsha, 2016) analyzes “precursors to the current ‘Japan Is Great!‘ discourse” in publications between 1925 and 1945.

Rasa Island, a small, remote coral atoll of Okinawa, was once a robust company town of Rasa Phosphate Industry Inc. Now abandoned and forgotten, the barren island nonetheless tells a rich story of Japan's industrialization, a counter-narrative to the problematically simplified and celebratory history provided at the Meiji Industrial Revolution Sites recently inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list. By using Rasa Island and critical heritage studies scholarship, this article examines the place of “industrial heritage” in post-industrial societies and what kind of heritage is performed at Japan's World Heritage sites.

1960 was marked by radical political and social upheavals as the Japanese wartime old guard returned to power after the end of the U.S. occupation (1945-1952). In May of that year, unindicted-war-criminal-turned-prime-minister Kishi Nobusuke (1896-1987) forced the controversial Japan-U.S. Security Treaty through the Diet in the dead of night after police removed members of the opposition parties. Over the next six months, millions of Japanese took to the streets to protest this subversion of the political process and the military alliance with the United States. The opposition included socialists, communists, radical student organizations, organized labor, peace and anti-nuclear proponents, and a wide swath of ordinary citizens who were still haunted by memories of wartime suffering. One particularly shocking episode punctuated this tumultuous year in Japan's postwar history: the assassination of the Socialist Party chairman, Asanuma Inejirō (1898-1960), by 17-year-old Yamaguchi Otoya (1943-1960). On 12 October, Yamaguchi, a young man enamored with militant, rightist doctrine, mortally wounded Asanuma in Hibiya Hall, where he was participating in a political debate. It was in this turbulent post-war crucible that future Nobel Prize winner Ōe Kenzaburō wrote the provocative novella Seventeen (Sebunchīn). This essay examines the controversy over the novel at the time and its place today.

“Harvest” is a story about the aftermath of a criticality accident that occurred at the Tokaimura nuclear fuel processing plant in Ibaraki Prefecture on September 30, 1999. Hayashi first learned about the accident from watching the TV news in a hotel room in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the night before she was to visit the Trinity site where the first atomic bomb was tested. After returning from New Mexico, Hayashi visited Tokaimura where she met an old farmer who had refused to evacuate. “Harvest,” which grew out of that meeting, seems eerily prescient today, six years after the Fukushima disaster, for in it, we find the same cloud of misinformation concerning the dangers of radiation, which threatens the survival of a rural community and its way of life.

This essay was the last major published work by Hayashi Kyoko, who died on February 19, 2017, at the age of 86. Born in Nagasaki on August 28, 1930, Hayashi spent most of her childhood in Shanghai, until she returned to Nagasaki with her mother and sisters, in the spring of 1945. On August 9, she was working as a student recruit at the Mitsubishi Munitions Factory. Her story “Ritual of Death” (Matsuri no ba, literally “The Place of the Festival”), a searing account of her experiences that day and during subsequent months and years, won her the Akutagawa Prize in 1975. Her next work, a short story collection, Cut Glass, Blown Glass (Gyaman biidoro 1978), was selected to receive the Geijutsu-senshō-mombudaijinshinjin-shō, a prestigious literary award by the Ministry of Education. Hayashi, however, refused this award on the grounds that, as a hibakusha, she could not accept an award from the Japanese government so long as it maintained the stubborn refusal to acknowledge the effect of internal exposure to radiation—a perspective that is made abundantly clear in the present work. Despite a relatively late debut, Hayashi was a prolific writer whose eight volume collected works was published in 2005.

Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop declared in September 2017 that the emerging US-India-Japan-Australia Indo-Pacific “quadrilateral dialogue” would be founded on “respect for international law and the rules-based order.” The reassurance was welcome, but it will mean some big changes, probably on all four sides, most of all for the US, which does not recognize itself as being bound by any rules, remains aloof from the International Criminal Court and commits war crimes including military interventions unauthorized by the UN (therefore acts of aggression), assassination and torture on a daily basis. As for Japan and Australia, they both appear to rank the US relationship above any principled application of law and to positively embrace the role of “client state” of the violent and lawless United States, while India as of 2017 seemed to be following a similar path with its quadrilateral partners. In July 2017, it banned all trade with North Korea except for food and medicine, and pledged to support steps to further isolate and pressure the country. These were drastic measures since India was North Korea's third largest trading partner till 2015-16.

In recent years we have seen a worldwide increase in debates surrounding memorials that celebrate historical personalities. In the United States, statues of generals who commanded the troops of the Confederacy in the Civil War (1861-65) have been demolished or strongly criticized as inappropriate. In Oxford, students have demanded the removal of a statue of Cecil Rhodes (1853-1902) because of the role he played in British imperialism and his advocacy of racist ideology, which is today widely considered offensive. In 2015, the University of Cape Town removed a statue of Rhodes, which had been erected in 1934 near the entrance to the campus. In Namibia, the statue of a German colonial soldier was demolished in 2009 and later re-erected at a less prominent position, only narrowly escaping complete destruction. In some cases, the controversies around these monuments have led to violent clashes between those who consider them remnants of a former age, out of sympathy with the twenty-first century zeitgeist, and those who either favor their preservation as part of the country's “culture and heritage” or who continue to espouse the ideologies the statues represent.

The history of the “comfort women” (ianfu) concerns women and girls from Korea, China, the Philippines, and other parts of the Japanese empire who were forced into sexual slavery in Japanese military-run or sponsored stations during the Asia-Pacific War. Knowledge of this episode in human history is above all the result of the courage and persistence of the victims who have testified and chronicled their experiences, but also of the work of researchers, journalists, and concerned citizens inside and outside Japan, who investigated the facts and published their findings despite efforts by history denialists to intimidate them. For example, their experience is well documented in memoirs by former “comfort women,” such as South Korean Kim Hak-sun, the first woman to come forward in 1991, and Filipina comfort woman Maria Rosa Henson, who wrote a memoir describing her experience. Activists and NGOs, such as the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Sexual Slavery by Japan, recorded testimonies by former “comfort women.” In 2000, survivors from more than a dozen countries gathered and gave testimonies at the International Women's War Crimes Tribunal held in Tokyo. Works by scholars and journalists were also significant. For example, historians such as Yoshimi Yoshiaki discovered Japanese military archival documents describing the “comfort woman” system, and journalists such as Uemura Takashi covered the story of Kim Hak-sun for the Asahi Shimbun. Yoshimi, Uemura and others were subjected to vicious attacks by Japanese neonationalists.

As an outcome of the ongoing re-democratization movement in South Korea, the recent success of the Candlelight Revolution provides valuable perspective for those grappling with the crisis of democracy in the U.S. Tracing an unexpected material link to the 1986 People Power Revolution in the Philippines, this article also seeks to explain the relationship between the 2014 Sewol Ferry Disaster and the Candlelight Movement, a connection readily taken for granted among most South Koreans but often perplexing to those outside of Korea.

The Fukushima nuclear disaster of March 2011 has raised serious questions about nuclear power.

In our work since Fukushima, we have tried to answer two questions: What is the current status of nuclear energy in Asia? Does nuclear power have a future in East Asia? By answering those questions, we hope to contribute to the global debate about nuclear energy. To be sure, questions of such magnitude can rarely be answered with a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Decisions on energy are made at the national level, on the basis of both objective factors such as cost-effectiveness and notions of the national interest, and less objective ones, such as influence peddled by power plant operators, corruption, and bureaucratic self-interest. Nevertheless, by closely examining the status and probable future of nuclear power plants in specific countries, the authors of this volume come up with answers, albeit mostly of a negative nature. At the start of 2017, 450 nuclear power reactors were operating in 30 countries, with 60 more under construction in 15 countries. Thirty-four reactors are under construction in Asia, including 21 in China. The “Fukushima effect” has clearly had an impact in Asia, however. In China, no new construction took place between 2011 and 2014, although since then there has been a slow increase of licenses. Nevertheless, the full story of China's embrace of nuclear power, as told in this volume by M. V. Ramana and Amy King, is that the onset of a ‘new normal’ in economic growth objectives and structural changes in the economy have led to a declining demand for electricity and the likelihood of far less interest in nuclear power than had once been predicted. On the other hand, in South Korea, which relies on nuclear power for about 31 per cent of its electricity, Lauren Richardson's chapter which is presented here, shows that the Fukushima disaster and strong civil society opposition have not deflected official support of nuclear power, not only for electricity but also for export.

This paper inquires into the revival of the cement industry in postwar Japan. The Allied Occupation did not immediately undertake comprehensive plans to rebuild the country's infrastructure. Only after controls on the production of basic industries were lifted in 1948 did cement production begin to rise. By 1956, Japan produced 13,737,594 tons of cement, double that of the prewar peak in 1939. This paper examines the rebirth of the Japanese cement and limestone mining industries in the period between 1945 and 1956 and highlights the cement industry's role in the rebirth of Japan as a “construction state.”

What I refer to as “Japan-Is-Great” materials are “consciousness products” (Bewusstseins waren) in which “Japan” and “Japanese people” are praised and held out as special for their wonderful historical, cultural, or ethical qualities, and as excellent on a global scale. This class of products has now spread through the Japanese media ranging from books, magazines, and mooks; to television, radio, and government-sponsored programs; and furthermore, to human resources seminars and various types of courses on culture.

In November 2017, US President Donald Trump visited East Asia. In Japan, the country where he first stopped, he first played half round of golf with Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo as if he and Mr. Abe wished to show this visit was nothing but an expression of peaceful friendship. They talked about the North Korean issue for “a great deal of time”. The content of their talks was not disclosed. In the final press conference after the Summit Prime Minister Abe stated that he and President Trump “were in complete agreement as to the measures to be taken upon the analysis of the latest situation of North Korea”. He said,

North Korea is on the verge of developing boosted energy nuclear weapons with higher yield-to-weight ratios. It is test-launching mobile ICBMs and intermediate-range missiles to deliver them. It is churning out plutonium and highly enriched uranium at a rate of six or more bombs' worth a year.

Every day, the ranks of China's young workforce bubble with bright minds, a cosmopolitan vanguard, striving for a piece of the coveted “Chinese dream” — that level of technical and professional jobs and economic security never known to their parents' generation. But every day the race for Asia's globalization miracle masks a shadow labor market that uses the education system to exploit a hyper-competitive youth labor market, under crushing pressure to achieve middle-class status.

In September 2017, youth activists in Hong Kong launched a campaign to expose one facet of this growing phenomenon of youth in precarious manufacturing work: the labor advocacy group Students and Scholars against Corporate Misbehaviour (SACOM) called out one cutting-edge tech brand for perpetuating exploitative labor practices in its supply chains in China. The group's investigation into the Quanta Chongqing factory—a mega-industrial facility in one of China's rapidly developing inland cities, which Beijing has been promoting as rising global export hubs—revealed a small army of young laborers. Although these student workers were, on paper, described as temporary interns, presumably apprenticing for skilled positions in electronics—they hardly matched the international profile of China's best and brightest marching toward technological progress: rather, they were, according to a recent research investigation, often engaged in the grudge work of neoliberal capital, toiling as many as 12 hours a day, sometimes overnight, without the standard labor protections afforded to regular workers and in gross violation of China's regulations for protecting student interns.

This article seeks to make sense of the enigma of Charlie Chan by situating him at the intersection of critical legal studies, genre studies, cognitive psychology, and postcolonial critique. It contends that Chan is more than a shameful chapter in the history of American racism and Orientalism, rather a product of the legal Orientalist imagination's exploitation of a peculiar genre schema of detective fiction. As such, he is a figure of ambivalence, equivocation, and exception. On the one hand, Chan fits the stereotype of the maverick detective who must operate within the penumbra of formal judicial apparatuses—in the zone of the exception—in order to match wits with the master criminal. On the other hand, it is his “race” that reifies the power of the exception, making him the unctuous alter ego of the insidious criminal mastermind Dr. Fu Manchu.

This essay, adapted and expanded from an article published in Foreign Affairs, explores the origins of the legend used by Donald Trump to justify torture and war crimes against terrorists that Gen. John “Black Jack” Pershing had Muslim prisoners in the Philippines shot with bullets dipped in pigs' blood. While the story is patently false, it is worth revising Pershing's knowledge that his men attempted to terrorize Philippine Muslims with pigskin burials, while asking what widespread American beliefs about Islam the story traded in. Approached in this way, the Pershing legend emerges not just as Trumpian fabrication, but as an archetypal parable of the “war on terror.”

With the withdrawal of British troops from the Australian colonies in 1870, a sense of strategic exposure crept through the colonies over the following decades. This feeling of exposure was conspicuously felt in the New Hebrides (modern Vanuatu), where French settler intrigues threatened the Pacific “island wall” the Australian colonies increasingly hoped would guard against the “Yellow Peril” of an expansionist Japan. However, Whitehall found that the growing Australian-French settler antagonism over the New Hebrides interfered with its global imperial policy. Britain was forced to balance competing interests between its primary Pacific dominion and its emerging European ally. The move towards an eventual Anglo-French New Hebrides Condominium (1906), led to a distinct bifurcation of Anglo-Australian imperial policy in the Pacific. It also resulted in the physical, cultural and social decimation of native society.