The Japanese manga and animation industry was established under special conditions in the high growth period of the 1960's. At that time the domestic market of the publishing industry and the film industry was large, the literacy rate was high, other entertainment was little developed, and the industry did not yet confront the challenges of globalization. However, the industrial structure established during this period has deteriorated to one that exploits creators who have weak bargaining power. This reflects the situation throughout Japanese society in the sense that the social structure originating in the 1960s has lost flexibility, creating dysfunction and growing disparities.

This article provides a summary of the first comprehensive overview of Japanese youth justice, locating it within wider conceptual considerations of youth justice before outlining its historical development and questioning its uniqueness. It discusses the contested notion of pre-delinquency, its net widening potential, and its place in the wider trends in Japanese youth crime. The study critically assesses the overall organization, administration, and impact of the Family Court (equivalent to youth or juvenile courts) and summarizes recent developments in youth crime policy. The Family Court is the fulcrum of youth justice, but involves many social welfare elements. Despite the increasingly punitive rhetoric, policy, and legislation for juveniles in Japan, there is no evidence that more juvenile offenders are being committed to the adult courts. Overall, we found a clear precedence of social welfare over criminal policy considerations.

Political parties on the far right are today enjoying a surge of support and access to government power that they have not experienced since their heyday in the 1930s.

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.

The U.S. deployed a missile defense system, Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) in South Korea in April 2017, citing North Korea's nuclear and missile “threats” as justification. Its deployment, however, needs to be seen in the wider strategic context. Not only does the measure raise the arms race with North Korea, it also facilitates Japan's “proactive contribution to peace” and exacerbates the security dilemma between the U.S. and its allies on one side and China and Russia on the other.

The following important essay, by the respected and reliable journalist Allan Nairn, reports what Indonesian generals and others have told him of an army-backed movement to overthrow Indonesia's civilian-led moderate constitutional government. Its thesis is alarming: that “Associates of Donald Trump in Indonesia have joined army officers and a vigilante street movement linked to ISIS in a campaign that ultimately aims to oust the country's president… Joko Widodo (known more commonly as Jokowi).”