How has this small island has come to host some of America’s largest and strategically important military facilities? The use of Okinawa by the US began before the end of the Asia Pacific war, when the US military expropriated Japanese Imperial Army bases on the island. Okinawa remained under the control of the US until 1972 despite US occupation of mainland Japan ending in 1951. The island was returned to Japanese administration, but the US continues to use the island as a military base today. However, the long history of military occupation has not been entirely smooth sailing.

Can Australian politics get any ghastlier? Even from a country away the stench from Rudd and Abbott appalls. So much for boundless plains to share. Racism, so much a part of the practice of the elites in Australia and elsewhere, can seem so pervasive we miss its everyday reinforcements and constructions. There’s institutional racism aplenty, to be sure, but identifying it forces us to another question: how did institutions get that way?

I spent a morning at the former ‘comfort women’s’ weekly demonstration outside the Japanese embassy in Seoul one Wednesday during the northern summer of 2008, and have never been sure how to write about the experience.

At the centre of resistance is a tent outside the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry, a reclaiming of public space that has been defying official warnings, police threat, attacks from rightists and the weather for well over a year. It’s quite a sight in Tokyo, where busking, political leafleting or postering are almost impossible.

Pop Idol Minami Minegishi of AKB48, begging forgiveness of her fans and managers, her long hair shaved, her face contorted by grief and shame. The YouTube video of her confession and recantation - viewed more than 3 million times on AKB48’s official channel, but currently private at the time of writing this - makes for horrible viewing. She begs, cries, bows before the camera, distraught and obviously emotionally damaged.

For leftists in this region, there’s good reason to pay closer attention to what’s happening in Japan.

We don’t know yet how serious the nuclear crisis in Japan will be. With luck, the leaks will be contained soon. God knows, the Japanese people have suffered enough. But what’s happened so far highlights the fundamental problem with nuclear energy. The case against atomic power is – and has always been – very straightforward. […]

Neon Pilgrim Lisa Dempster Aduki Independent Press I have never met Lisa Dempster, nor spoken to her. I’ve never written her an email and only recently subscribed to her blog. But I know Lisa Dempster very well because I just traveled 1200 kilometres with her through the mountains of Japan. Such is the intimacy of […]