In Ian Morris's book on energy and civilization, Why the West Rules–For Now, he writes that “greedy, lazy, frightened people” develop institutions that express “their own preferred balance among being comfortable, working as little as possible, and being safe.” But under conditions of crisis, they often innovate very rapidly. And, as is often noted, energy policy is not driven by elections but rather by crises.

“Kisha (reporter) Clubs” are a much-discussed and controversial part of Japan's media environment. Laurie Anne Freeman's Closing the Shop: Information Cartels and Japan's Mass Media argues that these groups, which organize press access to officials in government, police and other areas of Japanese public life, limit contact to a core of “approved” journalists from Japan's big media organs, effectively cutting off freelancers and foreign journalists and freezing out anyone deemed too critical. Since the March 11, 2011 disasters, several of Japan's major newspapers, notably the Mainichi and Tokyo Shimbun, have provided critical reportage on TEPCO and government silences and irresponsibility. Freelancers, as outlined in a May 23 press release from Reporters Without Borders, however, have been denied adequate access and another potential avenue for critical examination of the government and TEPCO response to the nuclear disaster has been cut off. The Paris-based international organization is dedicated to defend freedom of the press, journalists and netizens world wide.

Japan's Mainichi Shimbun recently described Japan's nuclear industry and regulatory organs as a “black box” – an apparatus with visible inputs and outputs but no way to see its inner workings. A recent series of reports from the Mainichi and Asahi, which, together with the Tokyo Shimbun have leveled the sharpest mainstream media criticisms of TEPCO and the Japanese government, describe a climate of secrecy and collusion that reveals the continued power of Japan's “nuclear village”. The five articles reproduced below were published between May 24 and May 26. They reveal a series of “secret” meetings between government officials, nuclear company representatives, and regulators that excluded critics of nuclear power among regulators and at which no minutes were kept. Transparency and collusion have come to the fore as major issues since the 3.11 disasters. In the immediate aftermath of the Fukushima Daiichi meltdowns, it was revealed that regulators, politicians and TEPCO had repeatedly ignored warnings about the plant's general safety and about tsunami resistance specifically. The Mainichi and Asahi reports reveal continued collusion and a lack of transparency as Japan moves toward nuclear restarts. The revelations have thrown the regulatory authorities into confusion and empowered the critics of nuclear power.

Just when it seemed Japanese politics was being pulled back into the hands of the collusive interests who brought us Fukushima, it's thrown up another surprise. The reformists, centred in innovative capital and local government, seem to have found a new, and very promising, avenue to fight against the revanchist old guard that still dominates the central government. On June 10, Iida Tetsunari, the director of the Institute for Sustainable Energy Policies and of Softbank CEO Son Masayoshi's Japan Renewable Energy Federation, announced that he would be a candidate for governor in the July 27 Yamaguchi Prefectural election.

Immigrant groups in the United States routinely build monuments and memorials to commemorate historical traumas in their homelands. Plaques and statues that recall the Nazi destruction of Jewish communities throughout Europe in the middle of the 20th century together with commemorative stones dedicated to Ireland's 1972 Bloody Sunday are as American as California rolls (to name but two examples). Collectively, these monuments mark a particular group's ascendant political power, which, by American definition, comes about through economic success. Moreover, such testimonials weave a common narrative that binds people of disparate backgrounds within the same group in a diffuse land. The history involved is as much about the present as the past.

Greenpeace has released a report Toxic Assets: Nuclear Assets in the 21st Century, which presents evidence on the costs of nuclear accidents from the point of view of risk to investors. Greenpeace is not following the capital because of any corporate attachment. The report counters the common post-Fukushima argument that nuclear power is both inexpensive for consumers and a good investment for investors. The “cheap nuclear” mantra, they argue, fails to take into account the fact that nuclear plants can break a company and pass huge liabilities on to taxpayers. According to this report, nuclear seems represents everything wrong with contemporary capitalism – private companies reap profits while the public underwrites tremendous and obvious risks while concerns about sustainability are muted to assure short-term profits. The Japan Center for Economic Research places the likely Fukushima clean-up total at between 72 and 250 billion $US. This is at least several times the company's market value before the Fukushima disaster, an indication that the massive risks tied up with nuclear power are simply not being factored in to market valuations, which reflect estimates of future profitability.

Introduction: In recent years controversy has centered on China's advance, both geopolitically and economically, in the South China Sea, East China sea, and in Africa. Here Andre Vltchek provides a look at another Chinese “export” as virtuoso pianist Yuan Sheng brings his music to the slums of Kenya and poses this question: can Africa follow in the footsteps of Venezuela and Brazil in using music as a way out of poverty for some of its youth? APJ.

Since the Fukushima Daiichi crisis, Tokyo and other major cities have been the sites of anti-nuclear demonstrations on a scale beyond any mass protests seen in mainland Japan since the “season of politics” of the 1960s and 1970s. Specifying “mainland Japan” is necessary, however, as Okinawa Prefecture, the southern islands occupied by the United States as a military colony between 1945 and 1972, and host to 25% of the total US military facilities in Japan despite making up only 0.6% of the country's land area in the decades since, has repeatedly seen huge rallies against this unjust burden. The largest protest movement to date was sparked by the rape and brutalization of a 14 year old girl by three American servicemen in 1995. Today, protests against the deployment of the V-22 Osprey aircraft to Okinawa are beginning to rival the earlier movement in scope.

The Ospreys have arrived. On October 1- 2, 9 of the MV-22 Osprey vertical take-off and landing aircraft were deployed to Futenma. Locals argue that the aircraft, which has a dubious safety record that has earned it the ominous nickname “The Widow Maker”, is an unacceptable crash risk that threatens the civilian population and natural environment.

A new TV documentary reveals the toxic legacy of military defoliants on America's “Keystone of the Pacific”

On May 15 2012, Ryukyu Asahi Broadcasting aired a primetime TV documentary to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Okinawa's reversion to Japanese control. Titled “Defoliated Island - Agent Orange, Okinawa and the Vietnam War,” the program featured 7 U.S. service members who were exposed to military defoliants on the island during the 1960s and early ‘70s. As well as these accounts, it showed interviews with Okinawan civilians worried that they, too, have been affected by these dioxin-tainted herbicides which continue to sicken millions of people in Vietnam today.

I'd like to start with a big question: “can the media overcome nationalism?” I ask this because the words “national interest” have been used both casually and often in communicating everyday information. The Japanese media seemingly lack awareness that these words are used contiguously with the words “conservative swing”. What I'd like to know is the proportion of Japanese who felt angry versus those who remained calm when Korean president Lee Myung-bak visited Takeshima (Dokdo), and how that number changed when people learned that the reason for his visit was to pressure the Japanese government to take responsibility for the comfort women of the former Japanese military. But the Japanese media are uninterested in such things. As I write this, what is on my mind is the capacity (or lack thereof) of Abe Shinzo, who has been re-elected as LDP leader, to make political judgements. In the LDP's draft election pledges, the party proposed to create an official “Takeshima Day” and to continue to object to “unreasonable viewpoints” regarding comfort women issues. Abe is also calling for a revision of the Constitution and proposing the establishment of “national defense forces.” Can such a person provide an answer to such complex territorial issues and historical awareness? The editorial of Chosun Ilbo on 22nd November asked: “How can Abe meet with leaders of South Korea and China as Prime Minister, based on this election pledge?”

Nakazawa Keiji, atomic bomb survivor, peace activist, and creator of the famed Hiroshimathemed manga Barefoot Gen passed away on December 19, 2012 after a long struggle with cancer. He was 73. Asia-Pacific Journal Coordinators Yuki Tanaka and Satoko Norimatsu offer their memories of Nakazawa and thoughts on his life and work.

As someone who cares deeply about many Japanese people and learns from them, I am most concerned by Japanese voters' decision to return Prime Minister Abe Shinzo to office because of his lengthy record of denigrating the histories of those who suffered under Japan's attempts to conquer and control much of Asia during the first half of the twentieth century. Abe has an equally vibrant record of denigrating those who give voice to these histories today. In response to the prime minister's first few weeks in office, Australia's former Foreign Minister Gareth Evans pointedly noted that it was “the responsibility of statesmen, if they are to deserve the name… to take the politically uncomfortable high ground and then bring their publics along.” With Abe we have it the other way around; he drags Japan down.

“While it is crucial to explicitly define and communicate the acts or damage that we would find unacceptable, we should not be too specific about our responses. Because of the value that comes from the ambiguity of what the US might do to an adversary if the acts we seek to deter are carried out, it hurts to portray ourselves as too fully rational and cool – headed. The fact that some elements may appear to be potentially ”out of control“ can be beneficial to creating and reinforcing fears and doubts within the minds of an adversary's decision makers. This essential sense of fear is the working force of deterrence. That the US may become irrational and vindictive if its vital interests are attacked should be a part of the national persona we project to all adversaries.” Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger called this the Madman Strategy. For nuclear weapons to serve as a deterrent, it's not enough simply to possess them. The problem is, it's difficult to believe that a person of ordinary human feeling or rationality would actually use them. A first strike would be a moral abomination, and would also mean abandoning the policy of deterrence; a second strike would mean that deterrence had failed, so that its only motive would be vengeance. For nuclear weapons to be an effective deterrent, it's best for a government to persuade adversaries that its leaders are crazy enough to use them – as the document says, “out of control”, “irrational and vindictive”.

On April 28, a “Ceremony to Commemorate the Anniversary of Japan's Restoration of Sovereignty and Return to the International Community” was held in Tokyo. As the Abe government makes plans to revise the 1947 constitution, this celebration of the anniversary of the end of the American-led occupation of Japan in 1952 took on a special significance. This brainchild of Abe and other far right conservatives is more than just an attempt at a Japanese “Independence Day”. It casts the Constitution as a foreign imposition and frames postwar reforms as an affront to Japan's sovereignty and traditions.

In the last several months, the Abe Shinzo government has favored a rhetoric of economic revival by using nuclear power at home and selling nuclear technology abroad. It appears, however, that only a minority of the Japanese public supports these plans. As the Asahi has reported, polls show that 58% of voters are opposed to Abe's nuclear plans with only 28% responding that the government should go ahead with restarts. Similarly, a poll carried out by Jiji News Service revealed that 58% “do not support” nuclear exports with only 24% in favor. With news of a new leak or system failure at the site of the Fukushima Daiichi cleanup coming every few weeks, it is little wonder that the population is skeptical about the safety and utility of nuclear power.

On July 18, Japan's Softbank announced that it has formed a partnership with US Bloom Energy to enter the Japanese market and proceed from there through Asia. The good news comes at a time when an election victory prompts PM Abe Shinzo to embark on a bold and risky agenda of constitutional revision, military expansion and heightened conflict with China. Back in the early 2000s, Softbank CEO Son Masayoshi blazed a trail that led Japan to having the among the fastest and cheapest internet services in the world. Abe and Son appear to represent polar opposites in their approach to development, independence and power. In this short piece, I argue that while analysts have been dazzled by Abe's electoral triumph, Son's resilient and internationalist road could shape a very different and positive Japanese economic, technological and energy future than that envisaged by the PM.

The September 7 decision by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to award the 2020 games to Tokyo is potentially of monumental importance. That significance is not merely due to the fraught geopolitics of the so-called pivot to the Asia-Pacific or the collective angst of all those analysts waiting for Abenomics arrows.

On September 10, 2013, the Tokyo Shimbun, a Japanese newspaper that has raised its profile considerably through its detailed, critical reporting of the Fukushima nuclear crisis and issues related to nuclear power post-3.11, ran an article which offered a concise and powerful summary of the major issues facing Tokyo and Japan looking forward to 2020 and the hosting of the Tokyo Summer Olympics.

On October 17, 2013, Osaka Hannan University Professor Shimoji Masaki spoke at Berkeley on the efforts of anti-nuclear activists in Osaka to fight against government plans to burn radioactive waste from Fukushima. He also detailed his arrest and detention by Osaka police. Shimoji was arrested in December 2012 and held without charge for 20 days for speaking publically and handing out educational material on the dangers of radiation. He sees the arrest as a sign of the increased use of the police and arbitrary arrest to bully and intimidate anti-nuclear activists into silence. No criminal charges were brought against Shimoji, but this incident and other examples of harassment of activists by the police and other agents of the state are having a chilling effect on public discussion of the health effects of radiation and the state of Japan's nuclear infrastructure.