Thursday, September 08, 2005
News from Japan Focus, Indochina, Bloomberg’s NY Prison
(Znet) U.S. War Crimes in Indochina and Our Duty to Truth
Herbert P. Bix, The Faith That Supports U.S. Violence: Comparative Reflections on the Arrogance of Empire
City of Nagasaki Peace Declaration
David McNeill, The Island Idyll and the US Occupation
Chung Chinsung, Resurgence of the Right and Japan’s World War II Accountability
The City of Hiroshima Peace Declaration
Mark Caprio, North Korea Cool to United States “Surprises”
Tomaki Juda and Charles J. Hanley, Bikini and the Hydrogen Bomb: A Fifty Year Perspective
Mark Schilling, Life After the Bomb
Suzuki Chieko, The Hundred Head Contest: Reassessing the Nanjing Massacre
Satoko KOGURE, Japan’s New Security Regime and the Rights of Foreigners
Minami Norio, Resolving the Wartime Forced Labor Compensation Question
Tanaka Nobumasa, Yasukuni Shrine and the Double Genocide of Taiwan’s Indigenous Atayal: new court verdict
Shin Sugok, Japan’s outspoken ‘weak’ confront the ire of the masses
Umehara Takeshi, Official Visits to Yasukuni Shrine Invite the Revenge of Reason
Mark Selden, David Allen, Kyodo, Marine Major Convicted of Molestation on Okinawa
Adam Lebowitz, Hashi-yan’s Last Dispatch From Iraq
Associated Press, Scandal Erupts Over Japan’s Radioactive Nuclear Waste
Ishida Takeshi, A Foreign Country in Japan: Sugamo Prison
Mori Takemaro, Colonies and Countryside in Wartime Japan: Emigration to Manchuria
Nishida Yoshiaki and Ann Waswo, Re-thinking Rural Japan
Gerard Greenfield, Writing the History of the Future: The Killing Game
Ha-yung Jong, Caught in America’s War: South Korea and Iraq
Mark Selden, Notes From Ground Zero: Power, Equity and Postwar Reconstruction in Two Eras
Moriguchi Katsu, Once More the Doctors have Disappeared from the Okinawan Islands
Thursday, September 01, 2005
Latest Postings as of Early September
Donate to help cover hosting costs. To date TokyoProgressive has received only 1880 yen.
FOR TOKYOPROGRESSSIVE READERS
You can register as a member over on the left side of the main page or right here and be able to (1) post in the forums and (2) get email announcing the latest news. You can also write for TokyoProgressive in the Reader Sections in English or Japanese by sending mail to us with your first article. We will send you instructions telling you how to send articles automatically.
LATEST JAPAN-RELATED STORIES
Some of the most recent Japanese stories include:
ADDED SEPT 1
The Japanese Media, the Comfort Women Tribunal, and the NHK Affair
Press Freedom on Trial in Japan
The Emperor and the Japan-U.S. Relationship
Peak Oil-ピーク・オイル：石油争乱と２１世紀経済の行方
Ultra Right Taking Charge in Changing Japan
EARLIER STORIES
韓共催キャンドルイベント, JOINT KOREA-JAPAN CANDLE MESSAGE FOR PEACE, Japanese activist sites, Hirsohima-the story that wasn’t, Hiroshima Ex-Mayor Opposes U.S.-Japan Nuclear and Iraq Policies, Yasukuni Visits, Japanese Court Again Rejects Germ Warfare Damages, Acknowledges Crime Itself and many others. Click a story to read it and leave comments. Japanese stories go all the way back to 2002.
OTHER STORIES
ADDED SEPT 1
Middle East in Conflict From the New Standard, including (1) Israeli Terror Compensation Rules Treat Jew’s Victims Differently, (2) Israel to Take West Bank Land for Settlement Barrier, (3) Gaza Disengagement, Resistance Continue Amid Tragic Incidents and more
Environment and Health Also from the New Standard, including (1) Anti-immigrant Propaganda Scapegoats Undocumented Californians, (2) Apparently part of the pattern recently dubbed “the greening of hate,” another group opposed to immigration has come on the scene using spurious reasoning to turn people against undocumented immigrants, (3) Gitmo Captives Say Medical Personnel Approved, Participated in Abuses and more
EARLIER STORIES
Introducing Radical Voice of East Asia, Arundahti Roi Essay on Tide and Ivory Snow and Empire, Seeds of Death, Tsunami in Indonesia, and Recent Stories on Tsunami, North Korea, Koizumi Era, Minamata, Toyota Suicide... all the way back to 2000. Again, you can click any story and leave a comment or post in the forum after becoming a member. And don’t forget that members may, on request, write stories for publication.
TOKYOPROGRESSIVE SECTIONS
(1) Latest: Latest site-wide changes in English Also a Japanese listing.
(2) Blogging: Our blog plus best of other blogs
(3) Creative: Poetry, music, etc.Registered members can submit contributions as well.
(4) Japan News: News/Opinion
(5) World News : News/Opinion
(6) Links: Past stories of interest on Japan, Asia and the world, organizations and websites involved in social and political activism, etc. Readers can submit links too.
EXCLUSIVELY READER CONTRIBUTED SECTIONS
As noted above , we have both English Reader and Japanese Reader weblogs that are available to registered members initially via the contact page. Note that both readers and editors contribute to the Links and Creative sections.
The Japanese Media, the Comfort Women Tribunal, and the NHK Affair
By Tessa Morris-Suzuki
At the start of each week, the commuter trains and subways of Japan are adorned with a mass of multi-colored advertisements, enticing the passengers to buy the latest of issue of the country’s many weekly magazines. The advertisements are an art form in themselves. All follow a similar format. A tightly packed mass of text, some of it almost too small to be readable, sets out the fare on offer. Amongst these smaller titles, a few select words, picked out in giant black or red characters, proclaim the catch-cries of this week’s news. Crime, death, sex and scandal figure prominently in the advertisements’ lexicons. Mixed in with the text are small photographs of the main protagonists in the magazine’s stories, photographs (of course) carefully chosen to complement the accompanying text—radiant smiling images of this week’s heroes; blurry, scowling shots of the current villains of the political or entertainment world.
The same process is repeated once a month when the leading monthly magazines hit the newsstands. Though the monthlies offer longer and more analytical articles, they commonly pick up themes first aired in the weeklies, and some, like the market leader Bungei Shunju (commonly abbreviated to Bunshun) echo the heated rhetoric of their weekly counterparts.
In the last week of January and the first weeks of February 2005, the words which leapt out at commuters’ eyes from the advertisements were “lies,” “witch hunt,” “political pressure” and everywhere, the names of two of Japan’s largest and most influential media institutions: the national broadcasting company NHK and the daily newspaper Asahi. The two organizations were embroiled in an intense battle over problem of media ethics and freedom, and their rival media organizations were observing the struggle with considerable glee.
Unlike the entertainment world scandals that often fill the headlines of the weekly magazines, this struggle has profound political and social significance. Despite the image of a vibrant free press conveyed by the magazine advertisements, deep and disturbing questions have emerged about the capacity of the Japanese media to maintain their political independence and provide a forum for unfettered political debate. [1] The NHK controversy also touches on long-standing but still unresolved problems of historical responsibility: problems which have a powerful bearing on the future of Japan’s relations with its East Asian neighbors.
Bite the Dog-Press Freedom in Japan on Trial
By David McNeil
The watchdog role of journalists in Japan is on trial in several cases with enormous implications for freedom of the press here
In a summer laden with portentous anniversaries, several important skirmishes between journalists and the people they keep tabs on passed by almost unnoticed.
In July, Matsuoka Toshiyasu, president of the Rokusaisha publishing company, was arrested on a deformation charge that has editors across the country nervously consulting their rolodexes for libel lawyers.
In the same month, the Tokyo District Court heard the opening salvos in an anti-government suit by former Mainichi political reporter Nishiyama Takichi, which may ultimately expand—or more likely shrink—the limits of press freedom in Japan.
And Dutch journalist Hans van der Lugt waded in with support for freelancer Yu Terasawa’s suit against the press club system, which both men hope will put the final nail in the coffin of this much criticized, government-sponsored wing of Japan Inc.
All three cases have serious implications for how journalists here do their jobs, but observers say that with the possible exception of the press club fight, the balance is likely to tip in favor of the powerful.
The Emperor, Modern Japan and the U.S.-Japan Relationship:
The foremost Western authority on the life and times of Emperor Hirohito—known posthumously as the Emperor Showa—talked to The Japan Times about the role of Japan’s former “living god” and his place in history in comparison with other powerful twentieth century leaders including Hitler, Mussolini, Roosevelt and George W. Bush.
In 2000, historian Herbert P. Bix shattered the image of Emperor Hirohito as a mere figurehead who was detached from Japan’s imperialist warmongering in the first half of the 20th century.
Bix argued in Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, which won him the Pulitzer Prize, that the emperor was intimately involved in the decision-making behind his military’s ruthless campaigns. Hence Bix contends, the Emperor bore heavy moral, legal and political responsibility.
Bix explains why Japan will be unable to realize its full democratic potential without re-evaluating Emperor Showa. Bix also explores what lessons today’s world leaders can learn from a study of this enigmatic figure.
At the postwar Tokyo war crimes tribunal, the Allies indicted 28 Japanese war leaders for “crimes against peace,” “violations against the laws and customs of war” and “crimes against humanity,” including the Nanjing atrocities in 1937-38 and the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. Seven were hanged.
Bix maintains that Emperor Showa was shielded from trial by Allied commander Gen. Douglas MacArthur and his staff, who feared communists and wanted to harness the Emperor’s domestic popularity to hasten Japan’s recovery, and so suppressed damning evidence of his war involvement.
In this interview, Bix ranges widely from wartime Japan and the U.S. at war to Washington’s contemporary policies in Iraq.
Environment and Health
Anti-immigrant Propaganda Scapegoats Undocumented Californians
Apparently part of the pattern recently dubbed “the greening of hate,” another group opposed to immigration has come on the scene using spurious reasoning to turn people against undocumented immigrants.
California Power Plant May Skirt EPA Rules, Continue Fish Kills
One energy company is looking to get away with legally flouting the environmental regulations meant to restrict an electricity generation facility from ruining an ecosystem by sucking fish into its cooling system.
Gitmo Captives Say Medical Personnel Approved, Participated in Abuses
Guantanamo detainees detail abuses allegedly committed by nurses and doctors assisting interrogations, violating patient privacy and frightening some prisoners out of seeking medical care altogether.
Middle East In Conflict -from the New Standard
Israeli Terror Compensation Rules Treat Jew’s Victims Differently
Israel to Take West Bank Land for Settlement Barrier
Gaza Disengagement, Resistance Continue Amid Tragic Incidents
Group Calls on Washington to Fund Palestinians, Not Settlers
Judge Orders Gov’t. to Release Papers Filed in Abu Ghraib Lawsuit
Group Refuses to Pay Fine for Providing Aid to Iraqis
US to Increase Troops for Iraq Year-End Polls
CIA-Trained Iraqi Death Squads Interrogated U.S. Detainees
Pentagon Rejects Order to Release Abu Ghraib Abuse Images
Pentagon Misses Deadline for Required Iraq Report
Lack of Funding, Security Holds Back Rebuilding of Iraq’s Water System
Iraqi women burned with acid for non-religious clothing
ピーク・オイル：石油争乱と２１世紀経済の行方
ピーク・オイル：石油争乱と２１世紀経済の行方
リンダ・マクウェイグ著、益岡賢訳
作品社、386ページ、上製、2400円
2005年8月31日発売
我田引水情報です。２００５年８月３１日に作品社から拙訳の最新刊『ピーク・オイル：石油争乱と２１世紀経済の行方』が出版されました。書店にそろそろ並んでいますので、ご案内致します。
原書は Linda McQuaig, It’s the Crude, Dude: War, Big Oil, and Fight for the Planet (Doubleday, CANADA, 2004) です。２００５年１月末、たまたまカナダのバンクーバーで一夜を過ごした際に、町の本屋さんでベストセラー棚に並んでいたもの。
Ultra-right Takes Initiative in Changing the Postwar State
by MUTO Ichiyo
Collision Course with Asia
The Japanese state-remaking project with the reinstatement of the Japanese empire as a major pillar faces a crisis as it is causing serious deterioration of Japan’s relations with its Asian neighbors. As regards China, the problem drastically came into the open as “anti-Japan” demonstrations exploded and spread throughout China in April. The demonstrators were protesting against recent Japanese government actions justifying and glorifying what the Japanese Empire had done to neighboring Asian peoples. About simultaneously, the South Korean government also came out with renewed criticism of the current Japanese political stance in its new Japan policy guidelines. President Roh Moohyun, referring to recent Japanese government actions, said that it was a great tragedy for the whole world to have to live with those who glorify their past – one of aggression and victimization. He rightly pointed out that although Japan had apologized more than once, it recently began to nullify its apologies. (Frankfurter Algemeine, interview, April 9) Given the worst imaginable relations with North Korea and absence of any warmth in Russo-Japanese relations, Japan now risks total isolation from all its neighbors.
