Much ecological thought today turns to Japan's past for inspiration. The reason, according to conservative Japanese ecologists, deep ecologists, and environmental philosophers, is that Japan's history of aesthetic “oneness” with nature provides a model for the world to emulate as it addresses the global environmental crisis. I critique this view by showing that conservative, or more accurately, reactionary ecology in Japan is closely intertwined with ethnic communitarianism, Japan's wartime ideology of the 1930s, and deep ecology. I suggest that these forms of reactionary ecology reflect a fascist desire to create or rely upon a nationalistic narrative of Japanese cultural uniqueness that conceals the excesses of capitalism and operates to sustain the socio-economic order that is today generating ecological catastrophe.

While Dorothea Lange has long been widely known and acclaimed for her photographs depicting the impact of the Great Depression on farmers and laborers, her documentation of the Japanese American internment was long impounded by the US army. This article tells the story and shows some of the signature images contained in her documentation of the internment as well as explaining their long suppression.

This article examines and assesses the nature of civil society responses to the great Sichuan earthquake of May 12, 2008 which took the lives of 70,000, injured 375,000 and left five million homeless. The analysis is set against the rise of civil entrepreneurship of the preceding decade and considers its implications for democracy.

A “Japan-Is-Great” boom sweeping the nation in recent years invites comparison with the comparable phenomenon in the 1930s at the height of empire. This increase in self-praise has not come about merely as a spontaneous reaction to the decline of self-confidence in the aftermath of the collapse of the bubble economy. The reassertion of national pride and identity by the Japanese has also been actively encouraged as healthy and desirable by the United States. As the Cold War came to an end, Washington pressured Japan to shake off its postwar self-constraints and project its influence and political power (even its military power) in international affairs more forcefully.