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Japan Focus: History and Historical Events, Politics and Ideology, Education, Culture - Look Back in Anger. Filming the Nanjing Massacre Look Back in Anger. Filming the Nanjing Massacre David McNeill A crop of new movies released to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Nanjing Massacre is set to again dredge up the controversy about one of the 20th Century’s most notorious events. How will Japan react? One way to learn what happened in one of history’s most noxious but disputed episodes is to ask Mizushima Satoru. After what he calls “exhaustive research” on the seizure of the then Chinese capital by Japanese troops in 1937, estimated to have cost anywhere from 20,000 to 300,000 lives, Mizushima offers a very precise figure for the number of illegal deaths: zero. “The evidence for a massacre is faked,” explains the president of right-wing webcaster Channel Sakura. “It is Chinese communist propaganda.” For support, he brandishes a book containing what he says are dozens of doctored photos. One shows a beheaded Chinese corpse with...


Japan Focus: History and Historical Events, Politics and Ideology, Education - Ruth Benedict's Obituary for Japanese Culture: An Exchange Ruth Benedict’s Obituary for Japanese Culture: an exchangeToru Uno and C. Douglas LummisWhat is the nature of Japanese Culture? Japan Focus published Douglas Lummis’s critique of Ruth Benedict’s Chrysanthemum and the Sword, arguably the most influential work ever written on Japanese culture.Below find a response from Toru Uno and Lummis’s rejoinder. Japan Focus welcomes further contributions to this debate. How to Critique: Lummis on the Legacy of Ruth BenedictToru UnoRuth Fulton Benedict’s intellectual presence is still being felt in the field of comparative cultures and beyond, even though almost six decades have elapsed since her passing. We have come to see her epistemological orientation as our own as much as uniquely hers. So much so that we are no longer conscious of our indebtedness to her pioneering work today. In observing a culture different from our own, we try, almost instinctively now, to elicit a discernable pattern while...


Japan Focus: Diplomacy and Security, The Military and Security, Politics and Ideology, Economics, Social Issues - Recasting Japan-Australia Relations in the 21st Century Recasting Japan-Australia Relations in the 21st CenturyMalcolm CookIntroduction by Gavan McCormackIn the following discussion, Malcolm Cook addresses the important and neglected subject of the Japan-Australia relationship. Since the relationship is mostly developing behind closed doors, this paper, offering some insight into bureaucratic debate and focussed on the economic ancd security relationship, is welcome. However, four comments may be made about it. First, the relationship is presented as if it were bilateral, Washington’s hand in it remains hidden, and only vague reference is made to China’s “rise.” The US role as middle man who brings the courting couple to the negotiating table and has a third party view of what function their union might serve, deserves greater attention than it is given here. Second, the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) currently under negotiation is presented as an unqualified good for both countries. Bureaucratic, corporate,...


Japan Focus: Social Issues, Energy Resources - Thirsty Dragon Prepares for the Olympics Thirsty Dragon Prepares for the Olympics Dai Qing The picture on this page was taken by a People's Pictorial photographer in 1953. The sixty-year-old Mao Zedong had just finished writing a calligraphic inscription that read "Celebrate the successful completion of the Guanting Reservoir Project." The man sitting next to him was my father-in-law, Wang Sen, the project manager for the dam. Mao and Wang Sen in 1953 The photograph was probably published in some newspaper or other around that time. Even if I'd seen it, I wouldn't have paid any attention to it. I certainly never imagined that fifteen years later I'd marry the project manager's son, Wang Dejia, thereby becoming the daughter-in-law of a man once shown relaxing on the bank of the dam, chatting and laughing with the "Great Leader." The first time I saw this photograph was in 1968, during the Cultural Revolution. I found it at the bottom of a pile of discarded documents beneath some quilts....


Japan Focus: War and Peace, History and Historical Events, Politics and Ideology, Social Issues, Administration of Justice - Revising the Past, Complicating the Future: The Yushukan War Museum in M... Revising the Past, Complicating the Future: The Yushukan War Museum in Modern Japanese History Takashi Yoshida I. Introduction In this three part series, we introduce historical museums in Japan and their role in public education. Following this introduction to peace museums, Ms. Nishino Rumiko, a founder of the Women’s Active Museum on War and Peace (WAM), introduces WAM’s activities and the 2000 Citizens Tribunal on the ‘comfort women’. The final article is by Mr. Kim Yeonghwan, the former associate director of Grassroots House Peace Museum who describes the peace and reconciliation programs that the Museum sponsors. Both museums are privately funded and modest in size. One may perhaps call them micro museums, as their exhibition spaces are limited. What is noteworthy, however, is that both museums display artifacts that preserve memories of the victims of Japan’s colonialism and devastating atrocities during the Asia-Pacific War;...


Japan Focus: Politics and Ideology, Social Issues, Culture, Population groups, population policy, and demography - The Question of the Other: Kara Juro and Letters from Sagawa The Question of the Other: Kara Juro and Letters from Sagawa Mark Morris This essay proposes looking back at a story which is one of the most unusual winners of Japan’s best-known literary award, the Akutagawa Prize. Kara Juro’s Letters from Sagawa (Sagawa-kun kara no tegami) first appeared in November 1982 in the journal Bungei; it was announced co-winner of the 88th Akutagawa Prize in January 1983, and subsequently reprinted that March in the official prize-confirmation section of the quality monthly which hosts the award, Bungei Shunju. Kara’s publisher Kawade Shobo Shinsha had already published a slim single-volume version the preceding January. I want to go back to Letters from Sagawa for several reasons. One is that the author, Kara Juro, has had something of a come-back in recent years, not that he had ever really gone way. For example, his short story "Glass Messenger" ("Garasu no tsukai") was adapted by him...


Japan Focus: Diplomacy and Security, History and Historical Events, Politics and Ideology - The Manchurian Incident, the League of Nations and the Origins of the Pacific War. What the Geneva archiv... The Manchurian Incident, the League of Nations and the Origins of the Pacific War. What the Geneva archives reveal Yoshizawa Tatsuhiko At 9:18 p.m. on Sept. 18 of this year, I was standing in front of the Sept. 18 History Museum in Shenyang, China. It was raining. A siren went off. It sounded like the wailing of a fire engine. On this day each year, Shenyang holds a ceremony to mark the anniversary of a military crackdown against the city's unsuspecting citizens by the Imperial Japanese Army. This year was the 76th anniversary of that event. Japanese forces swiftly overran a vast area of northeastern China. The annual ceremony seeks to keep this memory alive. It is also serves as a prayer for peace. The wailing of the siren, reminiscent of an air-raid alert, lasted three minutes. High school students, soldiers and armed police officers all turned out for the ceremony and stood rigidly at attention in the rain. Two days later, I was in the nearby city of Fushun to attend a sym...


Japan Focus: Diplomacy and Security, War and Peace, Politics and Ideology - Power Shift? Australia and the Asia Pacific Power Shift? Australia and the Asia PacificThe Asahi Shinbun, Ramesh Thakur & Richard TanterThe election of Kevin Rudd as Australian Prime Minister in a Labor Party sweep has led many to anticipate a major shift in Australia’s international relations and environmental policies, and possible realignments in Asia. We offer four brief assessments of the significance of the election for the region at a time when long-entrenched governments in England, Poland, and many parts of Latin America point to possible sea changes in international affairs.Asahi Shinbun Editorial: Power shift in AustraliaAustralia's opposition Labor Party swept to victory in Saturday's federal election by defeating the ruling Liberal-National party coalition, ending 11 years of conservative rule. Labor leader Kevin Rudd, a 50-year-old former diplomat, will be the country's new prime minister.Kevin RuddHe replaces John Howard, who has been in power since 1996. Howard will retire from politics, having...


Japan Focus: Diplomacy and Security, War and Peace, History and Historical Events, Politics and Ideology, Energy Resources - From Indochina to Iraq: At War With Asia From Indochina to Iraq: At War With Asia Noam Chomsky interviewed by Kevin Hewison Vietnam and Laos 1970 Kevin Hewison: The Journal of Contemporary Asia (JCA) is now in its thirty-seventh year of publication, and you have been on the Editorial Board since Volume 1, No. 2. Could you tell us how it was that you came to be associated with this new journal, and why issue 2 rather than issue 1? Noam Chomsky: This was 1970, which was a pretty complicated time in Southeast Asia, Indochina and the United States. I had been very active in the anti-war movement since the early 1960s, but at that time it was peaking. 1970 was absolutely the peak, with colleges closed; the country was falling apart and there was tremendous opposition to the war in Vietnam. This opposition was explicitly elicited by the Nixon-initiated invasion of Cambodia at a time when there had been enormous pressure to withdraw. The reaction in the administration to this pressure was to escalate - not unlike what is ha...


Japan Focus: History and Historical Events, Politics and Ideology, Economics, Social Issues, Administration of Justice, Population groups, population policy, and demography - The Ainu and Their Cul... The Ainu and Their Culture: A Critical Twenty-First Century Assessment Chisato ("Kitty") O. Dubreuil Chisato (“Kitty”) Dubreuil, an Ainu-Japanese art history comparativist, has charted connections between the arts of the Ainu and those of diverse indigenous peoples of the north Pacific Rim. Currently finishing her PhD dissertation, Dubreuil co-curated, with William Fitzhugh, the director of the Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center, the groundbreaking 1999 Smithsonian exhibition on Ainu culture. Insisting on the inclusion of the work of contemporary Ainu artists, as well as art and artifacts of past Ainu culture, her input redefined the scope of the exhibition and reflected her ongoing activism to challenge the “vanishing people” myth about the Ainu. Dubreuil explains, “We are still here and our culture is still vibrant.” Dubreuil, with Fitzhugh, co-edited Ainu: Spirit of a Northern People, published by...