Donald Trump's plan for a more muscular US nuclear posture got a ringing endorsement from the increasingly right-wing government of Japan. Not long after the Trump administration released its Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) in early February, Foreign Minister Taro Kono said he “highly appreciates” the new approach to US nuclear weapons policy, including the emphasis on low-yield nuclear options the United States and Japan can rely on to respond to non-nuclear threats.

Contemporary Australia is a case of dependent, high-technology liberal militarization, but with distinctive characteristics pointing to a model that must look beyond standard concerns with increasing national defense budgets, more and better weapons systems, an “exceptionalist” approach to immigration security and a predilection for use of military force in international affairs.

In a world and time where militarization is a global norm embedded in globe-spanning military alliances and world-wide networks of foreign military bases, discerning the lineaments of one particular national instance can be both difficult and potentially misleading. In liberal democracies, national self-conceptions resist identification with the harsh implications of reliance on, or valorization of, military force, unless it can be viably represented as defense of freedom, just war, or wars against unspeakable Others. And in the case of liberal democracies originating in a settler state with ongoing unrecognized conquest of indigenous peoples – think Australia, the United States, Canada and Israel – the racially inflected violence at the foundations of state-formation and national identity continues to ramify through the default settings of contemporary foreign policy. All three qualities distinguish the contemporary pattern of Australian militarization from the standard versions of either exceptionalist or liberal militarization.

This paper provides a contextualized reading of the South Korean 2016 hit drama ‘Descendants of the Sun’, the most prominent pop cultural manifestation of the Republic of Korea’s rising status as a global middle power. Through linking the fictional peacekeeping mission to a confidently nationalist conception of South Korean identity, the drama normalizes troop deployments by circumventing traditional narratives for legitimation. This argument rests on observations concerning the omission of any historical and UN context for the deployment, the Othering of the United States as main antagonist, and the unchallenged sense of righteousness and morality displayed by the main protagonists in an otherwise passive local setting.

Chang Kang-myoung’s provocatively titled novel Because I Hate Korea (Han’gugi sireoseo) became a best-seller in 2015 and is among the most notable literary works to address rampant dissatisfaction among South Korean millennials. In recent years, Chang, a former journalist (b. 1975), has developed a reputation for adroit and prolific fictionalized expressions of local discontent. Because I Hate Korea reflects a pervasive desire on the part of the nation’s younger people to escape from “Hell Joseon,” a coinage that has attained widespread circulation. This piece briefly introduces the novel, setting it within its wider contemporary context, and then provides a translation of the first chapter.

In 1830 a group of pioneers from Hawaii settled the uninhabited Bonin Islands (Ogasawara Guntō), located about 1,000 km south of Edo (present-day Tokyo) where their descendants formed their own cultural identity. This article explores some of the challenges the Bonin Islanders have faced since the Japanese takeover in the late 1870s. An emphasis is placed on their struggles with a fabricated history that continues to define their relationship with the Japanese state.

Did the movements of “1968” change societies fundamentally worldwide? This article examines “1968” from the perspective of Japanese history. Japan's “1968” shared such common elements with “1968” in other countries, as the social background, development of visual media, and progress of modernization. This article investigates Japan's “1968” in light of the common background and characteristics of the movements in Japan and globally. I conclude that “1968” was a product of the resonance of unrelated phenomena throughout the world, and many evaluations of “1968” confuse the general trend of modernization with the specific influences of the movements.