Japan News

USA: September 10, 2003WASHINGTON - The premier export market for American wheat could be destroyed if the United States approved production of a genetically modified variety of the commodity, a Japanese industry official said this week."If there is GM (genetically-modified) wheat, there is some potential for the collapse of the U.S. wheat market in Japan," said … [Read more...] about -Japan wheat buyers warn against biotech wheat in US

The following is the gist of an Akahata reporter's analysis (Aug. 27) of the recent Prime Minister Koizumi Jun'ichiro's move to instruct the ruling Liberal Democratic Party to draft a constitutional revision.When he directed the LDP secretary general to finish drafting amendments to the Constitution by November 2005, Prime Minister Koizumi assured that this will not be on the … [Read more...] about – Constitution revision call analyzed/Missile Defense (Akahata)

Introduction: Sixteen years ago, in 1987, Ui Jun left his post as an assistant in the engineering department at Tokyo University to go to Okinawa, then becoming an important new front in the anti-pollution struggle. With three of Japan's five most polluted rivers, and with the nation's worst water pollution, tropical Okinawa was simultaneously the crucible of American military … [Read more...] about -U.S. Military Bases and Environmental Problems by UI Jun

Commemorating the 60th anniversary of this dark event, students at Princeton University organized a conference out of which grew the 11 short essays in this collection. The authors address Japanese crimes in China from different viewpoints and probe postwar issues of remembrance by both victims and perpetrators. Some try to make sense out of the post-cold war interregnum during … [Read more...] about – Book Review: Nanking 1937: Memory and Healing (Review by Herbert Bix)

The plight of Kurdish refugees in Japan shows this country may well have the world's stingiest policies on asylum seekers.Of the hundreds of thousands of Kurds who have fanned out across the world over the last decade to escape repression and war, mainly from Turkey and Iraq, just 300 have managed to make it past Japanese immigration officials since 1998, and not one has been … [Read more...] about -Japan Treats refugees like Criminals