When, in mid-2005, Japan's Yomiuri newspaper began to publish a series of articles on the question of “war responsibility”, the event attracted nationwide and even international interest. Now the newspaper series has become a book, published in a two-volume version in Japanese and in a one-volume abridged English translation entitled Who Was Responsible? From Marco Polo Bridge to Pearl Harbour. There can be no doubt that these publications mark an important moment in the long and vexed history of East Asia's “history wars” - the ongoing conflicts between Japan and its neighbors (particularly China and both Koreas) about memory of and responsibility for Japan's 20th century military expansion in Asia.

In July 2004 Israeli jurists on the High Court of Justice (HCJ) deliberated on Israel's separation wall in the occupied Palestinian West Bank. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague had just determined, by a vote of 13 to 2, that the 30-foot-high wall was part of Israel's policy of building settlements on stolen or confiscated Palestinian land, and had condemned it as an illegal land grab, which other states should not recognize. The UN General Assembly almost immediately called on Israel to comply with the ICJ advisory opinion and end its illegal wall building, whose real aim was the defense of settlements, not Israel itself.

Masses of Japanese living in exile, with some even turning to indiscriminate acts of terrorism, is an unimaginable situation–unless Japan sank deep into the ocean 25 years ago, forcing the entire population to scatter across the globe to survive. With no native soil to stand on, all Japanese have become refugees.

That spine-chilling scenario unfolds in the recently published “Nihon Chinbotsu Dainibu” (Japan Sinks, Part II, Shogakukan, 1,890 yen), by Komatsu Sakyo, Japan's leading science fiction writer, and writer Tani Koshu. The book is a sequel to Komatsu's 1973 “Nihon Chinbotsu,” whose two volumes sold nearly 4 million copies.

As everyone now knows, the current financial market turmoil spreading across the Atlantic economy and beyond started with rising defaults in the United States mortgage market. How did the US come to experience a gigantic house-price bubble?

The explanation starts with US trade deficits and their financing. The US has been running an increasing trade (or more accurately, current-account) deficit since the early 1980s, with only one short interruption. The excess of imports over exports is paid for by newly printed dollars or Treasury bonds.

The interaction between international law and constitutional law has been increasingly recognized as salient to understanding the functioning of both and hence as worthy of academic attention. This Introduction to a special issue on how a selection of five Asian courts engage with international law when adjudicating constitutional cases explains the significance of studying such judicial behaviours, outlines the conceptual framework to be used in this regard, and identifies and reflects on some of the key findings from the case studies, including by highlighting domestic constitutional factors that help account for observed divergencies in judicial approach. This contribution also points to the value of examining courts’ attitudes towards international law for a variety of scholarly debates.

On December 19, 2003, Japanese police arrested 54-year-old rightist Murakami Ichiro, along with five accomplices, charging them with violating the Firearms and Swords Control Law.

Murakami is accused of leading a terror campaign, under the banner of the Kenkoku Giyugun (Nation-Building Volunteer Corps), and the Kokuzoku Seibatsutai, (Volunteer Corps to Punish Traitors), which conducted 23 shooting, arson and bomb attacks on targets across Japan over a one-year period beginning in November 2002.

I'm going to provide a few words of introduction for readers of The Asia-Pacific Journal on the subject of a piece I wrote for The New Republic's website, The Plank, as background to President Obama's visit to Japan.

The invitation came about through John Judis. I've known John now for close on twenty years; not only is he a good friend, but he has been my most trustworthy guide (personally and in his writings) through the labyrinth of American politics. John is one of those rare American writers who extends his gaze beyond that stretch of land that lies from sea to shining sea when he grapples with the deep currents in American politics. I first got to know him when I was doing the research for my first book, The Weight of the Yen. As a student of the rise of American conservatism and the corruption and decline of the old internationalist American foreign policy elite, John seemed taken with my thesis that it was financing from Japan that had made that re-alignment of American politics known as the Reagan Revolution possible.

At 12, Pov knows the sexual geography of the riverfront area in Phnom Penh like the seasoned prostitute he has become. The four middle-aged Frenchmen in front of us? “They like girls,” he explains, giggling. “Small girls.” The sun-blackened and tattered woman a few yards away? She will rent her daughter for the price of a hamburger. If I don't like boys he can fetch girls. Otherwise, in exchange for the meager contents of my wallet, Pov and his three barefoot, scruffy friends will guide me to a safe hotel and stay the night. “What would we do there?” I ask. “Up to you,” he says.

In the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster, the fate of nuclear power appeared to hang in the balance as generating states scrambled to conduct safety checks on their existing nuclear reactors and newly-restarted nuclear programmes. A number of these states have since elected to phase out their nuclear power plants.

Takahashi Tetsuya's “The National Politics of the Yasukuni Shrine, ” is among the most important statements to emerge from the debate over Yasukuni Shrine, historical memory and war nationalism.

Japan Focus is pleased to present chapter seven of Naoko Shimazu, ed., Nationalisms in Japan. Philip Seaton is the translator.

We thank Takahashi, Shimazu, Seaton and Routledge for their cooperation in publishing this article.

Find a podcast of Takahashi Tetsuya's lecture of March 6, 2007 on Postwar Japan on the Brink: Militarism, Colonialism, Yasukuni Shrine. This was the inaugural lecture of The Tetsuo Najita Distinguished Lecture Series in Japanese Studies at the University of Chicago.

Prime Minister Koizumi Jun'ichiro and Tokyo Mayor Ishihara Shintarō have repeatedly worshipped at Yasukuni Shrine since 13 August 2001 and 15 August 2000 respectively, and have expressed their intentions to continue worshipping in the future. In the face of this worship, there has been bitter criticism from inside and outside Japan. There are doubts over whether worship by public figures at Yasukuni Shrine, which is an autonomous religious institution (shūkyō hōjin), contravenes Articles 20 and 89 of the Constitution, the provisions concerning the separation of religion and the state. Furthermore, worship at the shrine where Class A war criminals, those found guilty as the leading war criminals by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, are enshrined, is seen as Japanese political leaders’ neglect of Japan's war responsibility and causes distrust among the people of Asia, including China and South Korea.

Worried for years about a water shortage, the vast Tokyo metropolitan area is now overflowing in the stuff.

Water-saving appliances, bottled drinking water and good old-fashioned conservation have helped the average Tokyo household in fiscal 2004 use 6 percent less tap water than six years earlier.

This set of papers is adapted from the panel, “Labor Migration to Japan: Demography and the Sense of Crisis,” held at the Association of Asian Studies meetings in March, 2007. As the chair and discussant of the panel, I would like to introduce these papers to the Japan Focus audience. If there ever was a notion that a straightforward relationship exists between population decline, on the one hand, and the welcoming of immigration in a transparent, systematic, and coordinated manner, on the other, these papers show it to be totally mistaken. Even in the face of anxieties concerning labor shortages, the politics of migration in receiving countries prove to be complex indeed, as the state seeks to perfectly regulate and control immigration, and to define those worthy of some kind of regular status, versus those unworthy, illegal, and thereby, criminal. While migrants' 1.6% share of the population may sound insignificant in comparison with levels in Europe, the government has mentioned raising the level to three percent, so there is now an official discourse toward increasing foreign residents' presence. At three percent, Japan would approach Spain's ratio (3.1%) in 2002

The United States has pushed the international non-proliferation regime to the breaking point.

Anxiety over US attempts to define and direct the international non-proliferation regime may be provoking some dangerous decisions in the Middle East.

In the early morning of February 11, around 4 a.m., a devastating fire swept through the locked cells of a migrant worker detention center in the South Korean city of Yeosu, killing 10 detainees and wounding many others. The center staff tried to put out the flames by spraying fire extinguishers through the bars of the cells, but in an act that can only be described as barbaric, did not unlock the cell doors to free those trapped inside, out of fear that they would escape. Migrant workers behind the locked doors and barred windows were forced to breath in the toxic fumes emitted from burning mattresses. These fumes were the cause of most of the deaths and injuries. The cause of the fire is still under investigation, but the reality is that the roots of the tragedy lie with the Korean government's inhumane policy towards migrant workers.

What happens when a nuclear reactor overheats?

When nuclear cores overheat due to a lack of water coolant, they ultimately melt. Remaining water quickly turns to steam preventing replenishment of the water and endangering the integrity of the pressure vessel. Furthermore, the reactor pressure vessel may also melt leaking the melted fuel which may escape into the environment if the primary and secondary containment structures (concrete) have been damaged. Spent fuel is kept at around 25 degrees in cooling ponds for a few decades. The water must be continually replenished to maintain this temperature. If there is a loss of water or a failure of replenishment, the spent fuel will overheat and catch fire, releasing its radiotoxic contents. Note that the longer fuel is irradiated in the reactor core, the more radioactive it becomes due to the build-up of fission by-products which also contaminate the fuel limiting its usable life. Only about 1-2% of the uranium in fuel rods is actually used up in a reactor. It is these fission by-products that pose the greatest immediate danger if released into the environment.

The apparent success of Meiji Japan's rapid modernization project at the turn of the twentieth century did not go unnoticed by inhabitants of Ottoman lands concerned with their Empire's survival, including Ottoman statesmen and political activists determined to achieve the same results. Ottoman Arab journalists and intellectuals who were subtly objecting to their exclusion from political power within the Empire, however, produced a discourse on Japanese modernity that explored Japan's reform and modernizing projects as well as its distinct national identity. In doing so, these Arab writers formulated a critique of the Ottoman state by highlighting its failures in contrast to modern Japan, though their idealization of Japan resembled that of their Ottoman Turkish counterparts.

In Mongolia today, hunger for coal, copper, gold and uranium wealth is at odds with democracy as the demands of international resource giants collide with a stubborn political culture of resource nationalism.

In time for the June 2012 parliamentary elections, Mongolia's grand khural passed a law subjecting the purchase by “state-owned entities” of controlling interest in strategic Mongolian mining enterprises to government approval (as well as a host of other key industries).

The Asahi Shinbun and the International Herald Tribune recently published a five-part series on Korean residents in Japan. Many of these zainichi – the word literally means “residing in Japan” – have lived in the country for two, three and even four generations. Having been deprived of the Japanese citizenship that they obtained under colonial rule in the years 1910-1945, the 600,000 zainichi are those Korean residents who have not become naturalized Japanese citizens. The series shows that they now find themselves in a crossfire between the North Korean and Japanese governments. The zainichi are the largest ethnic minority in a country that often prides itself, mistakenly, on being homogenous.

Workers at the Fukushima Daiichi plant have been trying to reestablish electricity connections to pumps so as to restart the cooling system for the reactors at the plant. According to news reports, two of the major obstacles have been

• • a high radiation environment (on the order of 1,000 millisieverts per hour) due to contaminated water on the floor of the turbine buildings, and

• • a lack of light in the turbine buildings, which has forced the electricians to work in the dark. The combination of these two factors has made it exceedingly difficult to accomplish the objective and has so far frustrated it. Pumping water out of the reactor buildings has not been possible since there are no empty tanks on site of sufficient capacity to hold the water, which is too contaminated to be pumped into the ocean. Recent reports indicate that the water is also leaking out of the building on to the site, further contaminating the working environment and complicating efforts to bring the problem of cooling the reactors and spent fuel pools under control.