Gen. Douglas MacArthur said that old soldiers never die, they just fade away. It seems that old military commitments also never die. But they also don’t fade away — they live on forever.
Bring Them Home…from Asia
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Japan
The Abduction Narrative of Charles Robert Jenkins
This essay originally appeared in Japan Focus.
Japan and the Future of Nuclear Disarmament
Australia’s Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s entry in the visitors’ book at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum last month may not sound so astonishing or dramatic. His words — “Let the world resolve afresh, from the ashes of this city, to work together for the common mission of peace for this Asia-Pacific century, and for a world where nuclear weapons are no more” — sound like many other entries written in the visitors’ book after people learned the truth of the effect of the use of nuclear weapons against humanity.
New Deal’s Unsung Japanese Victory
Seventy-five years ago, major media outlets have reminded us over recent weeks, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal had its American debut. But when exactly did the New Deal end? The American Journal of Public Health has just published a fascinating article that suggests a surprising answer.
Article 9’s Global Impact
The Japanese government is on the verge of abandoning its historic commitment to pacifism. The current prime minister, Shinzo Abe, has made constitutional revision a major plank of his reform agenda. Coming to power in September 2006, Abe said that he would aim for a constitutional revision within five to six years. The central focus of attention is Article 9, in which Japan renounces the sovereign right to wage war. In May 2007, with relatively little fanfare, the Japanese Diet passed legislation to hold a national referendum to revise the constitution and amend Article 9.
Interview with David Mura
David Mura is a poet, creative nonfiction writer, critic, playwright, and performance artist. A Sansei or third-generation Japanese American, Mura has written two memoirs: Turning Japanese: Memoirs of a Sansei (Grove-Atlantic), which won a 1991 Josephine Miles Book Award from the Oakland PEN and was listed in the New York Times Notable Books of Year, and Where the Body Meets Memory: An Odyssey of Race, Sexuality and Identity (1996, Anchor/Random). Mura’s third and most recent book of poetry is Angels for the Burning (2004, Boa Editions Ltd.). His novel, Famous Suicides of the Japanese Empire, will be published in 2009 by Coffee House Press. E. Ethelbert Miller: As a well known Japanese-American writer, do you find yourself looking over your shoulder at economic, political, and cultural events taking place in Japan today?
Japan’s Persian Gulf Policies in the Koizumi Era
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has managed to create one of the warmest eras in U.S.-Japan relations by standing in solidarity with Washington through the Sept. 11 attacks and the Iraq War. But how have these decisions impacted Japan’s crucial energy strategies in the Persian Gulf and its long history of friendly relations with the Islamic world? As Prime Minister Koizumi makes what is likely to be his last visit to Washington as the leader of Japan, the time has come for reflection on the achievements and the failings of the surprisingly long and important Koizumi Era in Japanese postwar history.
Okinawa and the U.S. Military in Northeast Asia
The Dragon & the Chrysanthemum
At first glance, the growing tension between China and Japan seems almost inexplicable. Massive anti-Japanese demonstrations in China over events that took place more than half a century ago? A heated exchange filled with mutual threats over an offshore petroleum field that western oil companies think is not worth exploiting? Has a Shinto shrine and slanted textbooks really driven the two great Asian powers to the edge of a Cold War or worse?
Breaking the NPT (Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty) Stalemate: Japan Could Help
Deterring attack is usually cited as the main motivation for states to keep or acquire nuclear weapons. Yet today’s NPT stalemate involves both security and economic concerns. Nuclear and nonnuclear weapons states alike have associated nuclear-energy-generating capabilities with economic growth. By far the biggest problem that the NPT faces today is that nations have come to see and use it as a self-serving accord.