Somewhat lost in the current heightened military tensions on the Korean Peninsula, following a quick succession of events that started with a South Korean live-fire drill on an island held by South Korea in the contested sea area near North Korea's coast. This prompted an artillery response by the North that killed four South Koreans (two soldiers and two civilians), and now a major 4-day US-South Korean maritime exercise (including maneuvers by a US aircraft carrier) in waters west of the Korean peninsula that has drawn strong complaints from China and North Korea.

In 2008, 8,140 women working in Japan brought sexual harassment or sekuhara claims to prefectural equal employment opportunity (EEO) offices. This represents 64% of the 12,782 EEO related reports that women made to regional governments – a large increase since 2005. Sekuhara in fact is the largest discrimination concern reported to EEO offices among employed women in Japan today. These numbers do not simply reflect difficult employment conditions women face, but also provide evidence of growing legal consciousness among working women in response to broader legal and social change. How does such sekuhara consciousness emerge?

It is over forty years since the Shinkansen (‘bullet train‘) began operating between Tokyo and Osaka. Since then the network has expanded, but other countries, most notably France and Germany, have been developing their own high speed railways, too. As other countries, mainly in Asia, look to develop high speed railways, the battle over which country will win the lucrative contracts for them is on. It is not only a matter of railway technology. Political, economic & cultural influences are also at stake. This paper will look at these various aspects in relation to the export of the Shinkansen to China in light of previous Japanese attempts to export the Shinkansen and the situation in Taiwan.

This article describes the impressive, resilience-targeted greening of Japan, evident in nationwide deployments of renewable energy, radical efficiency, and other core aspects of sustainability. These developments are already underway, and include public- and private-sector actors as well as community groups. The greening also has promising stamina due to being increasingly deeply inscribed in the fiscal, regulatory and other mechanisms of a rapidly emergent industrial policy.

With the Bush administration in deep trouble on many fronts, the government of Japan is striving to carry out a reorganization that will integrate Japanese forces in American strategic actions throughout the Arc of Instability. For ten years, from 1996, Japan's longest unfulfilled promise has been to build a new base for the US marines in Okinawa to replace the inconvenient, obsolescent and politically charged Futenma. All efforts at construction have been blocked by a coalition of local Okinawan residents and citizens.

Kawakami Kenji's weird inventions have brought him notoriety in his native Japan and in Europe, where some call him a surrealist genius and even a neo-dadaist. But there is method in his madness.

Let's be frank. Kawakami Kenji looks a bit barmy: hooded eyes staring unnervingly beneath what appears to be shaved eyebrows, topped by an unruly mop of spindly hair. And this is before he happily poses for photographs with a toilet-roll dispenser on his head. “It's for sufferers of hay fever,” he explains. “They blow their noses a lot.”

While well aware of strong local opposition, Washington and Tokyo as early as 1996 agreed to relocate the U.S. Marine air base at Futenma to Henoko, Nago, in northern Okinawa. Eventually, in 2009, in the final days of the Aso Taro cabinet, with the Democratic Party on the eve of power, a hastily concluded bilateral agreement of Februry 9, 2009 committed Tokyo to carry out the 2006 relocation plan.

At midnight on April 22, 2011, the Japanese government designated the zone within a 20-kilometer radius of the Fukushima nuclear power plant a controlled area under the Basic Law for Disaster Countermeasures. As a result, all entry into the zone was prohibited without special government permission. Some 78,000 people were separated from their homes, without knowing when they might return.

Two prominent leaders of the Middle East headed abroad last weekend, canvassing support from the international community. Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad went on a tour of Venezuela, Nicaragua and Ecuador, the “red rain land” of Latin America, while Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert headed for China.

[In recent weeks Japan Focus has highlighted tensions in the US-China relationship, notably Richard Tanter's account of The New American-led Security Architecture in the Asia Pacific and Paul Rogers' The United States, China and Africa. M K Bhadrakumar's geostrategic analysis approaches the issues from an alternative perspective which highlights the weakness of the China-Russia relationship, and a comprehensive deepening of US-China ties. Japan Focus.]

The following text appears as chapter 8 in the just published book Client State: Japan in the American Embrace (New York and London, Verso), and is reproduced here by kind permission of the publishers.

When the European Union and China agreed to cooperate to develop the E.U. Galileo Satellite System in 2003, the United States reacted with strong skepticism since Washington was against the sharing of sensitive dual-use technology (with civilian and military applications) with China. In the past, the United States had tried unsuccessfully to impede the European Union's ability to set up Galileo, which is an alternative to the U.S.-established Global Positioning System (G.P.S.). At the time, U.S. analysts questioned why Brussels was spending money (3.6 billion euros) to duplicate an existing system that was available “for free,” and why it was eager to accept Chinese participation in the program.

The surprise film success in the United States in the summer of 2005 was March of the Penguins, a French-made nature documentary on the heroic mating habits of the emperor penguin in Antarctica. The American religious right endorsed the film with particular enthusiasm, celebrating the traditional family values demonstrated by the birds in their long, slow march from the sea to their breeding grounds and back again. Churches booked movie houses and organized visits for their congregations. Rich Lowry, editor of National Review, announced that the “Penguins are really an ideal example of monogamy,” and other neo-conservative commentators reflected on the penguins' devoted child-rearing practices and penchant for familial sacrifice. March of the Penguins became the second-highest grossing documentary ever made, eclipsed only by Fahrenheit 9/1l, a film that also has something to say about family values and sacrifice. For American audiences that cared to make the connection, the pro-nature fable and the anti-war exposé came together around conceptions of globalism and isolation, as well as of family and hardship.

Richard Weitz in “The Sino-Russian Arms Dilemma,” clarifies important elements of strategic dimensions of their deepening and expanding relationship. In previous articles, notably

[Intended to console the souls of victims and usher in the busy “Year of Minamata 2006,” a taiko drum concert was held on New Year's Eve on land reclaimed from Minamata Bay, atop the tons of mercury-contaminated sludge and sealed containers of poisoned fish now entombed in concrete. May 1 will mark the fiftieth anniversary of the official discovery of Minamata disease, the horrific neurological disorder caused by the organic mercury that Chisso Corp. discharged into the bay until 1968. The commemorative logo and posters were chosen through public design competitions, and there will be new books, museum exhibits and international forums. The emphasis is on education and healing, as this is supposed to be the year that Minamata and the nation finally put the industrial pollution disaster behind them.

A presidential election will be held in South Korea at the end of next year to choose a successor to Roh Moo Hyun, leader of the Uri Party, who is due to step down in February 2008.

While it is rather early to talk about his replacement, I recently led a Japan National Press Club mission to South Korea to observe the situation and to meet with the leading contenders for the presidency.

The sad saga of Fukushima, with its recurrent revelations of incompetence and obfuscation, carries on. Among the latest, as related in detail in this July 31 Reuters article, are radioactive releases into the sea, unexplained ventings of steam, and the lack of a credible plan to deal with a daily 400-tonne influx of groundwater. Tokyo Electric, or TEPCO, is clearly unable or unwilling to devote the resources necessary to resolve this crisis, which will continue for decades. As United Nations University research fellow Christopher Hobson argues, the only solution is for the government to take over.