http://www.japanfocus.org India-Japan Ties Poised for Advance as Both Nations Eye China Rajeev Sharma India and Japan are poised for a rapid advance in their bilateral relations with rich economic and strategic overtones. Straws in the wind suggest that India-Japan ties could reach a historic high by the year’s end, well before Tokyo and New Delhi celebrate 60 years of their diplomatic relations. Though Japan and India have been in touch with each other for the last 1500 years, modern diplomatic relations were established on April 28, 1952. The two countries are engaged in deepening of bilateral ties in such diverse areas as defense, business, high technology trade, science and technology and culture and the process has gained momentum over the last decade. However, the two powers will be crossing the Rubicon if and when they sign the civilian nuclear cooperation agreement they are currently negotiating. The first round of negotiations on the nuclear deal was held on June 28-29, 2010 in Tokyo w... http://www.japanfocus.org/-Rajeev-Sharma/3406 The Failure of Imagination: From Pearl Harbor to 9-11, Afghanistan and Iraq John W. Dower with an introduction by Laura Hein Introduction The Asia Pacific Journal is proud to offer its readers a preview of John W. Dower’s new book, Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor/ Hiroshima/ 9-11/ Iraq (New York: Norton 2010). In the first days after the Al Qaeda attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, prominent American news sources reacted by invoking the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s description of the event as an act of “infamy.” That analogy caught the attention of many people, but Dower has thought more deeply than most about the underlying issues.  The resonances between the past and the present are profound and disturbing. Dower attends to what people do and also how they justify their actions, because he wants to know why smart people—and smart societies—do such stupid thin... http://www.japanfocus.org/-John_W_-Dower/3405 A New Paradigm for Trust-Building on the Korean Peninsula: Turning Korea’s DMZ into a UNESCO World Heritage Site Seung-ho Lee Can an effort to make peace between humans and nature help bring peace among humans? For nearly two decades, the Six-Party states—the two Koreas, the United States, China, Russia, and Japan—either bilaterally or multilaterally have attempted to denuclearize North Korea and make peace on the Korean peninsula.1 Many options considered by the US and its allies, including a preemptive military strike and coercive economic sanctions against North Korea, have proven ineffectual or ethically unsupportable. Political and diplomatic negotiations have lacked both mutual regard among the parties and faith in the process and have thus far proven to be useless.2 Today it seems apparent that the United States and its allies cannot accomplish what they want under the current negotiating scheme. A new paradigm is needed for building trust and for moving f... http://www.japanfocus.org/-Seung_ho-Lee/3404 Cultural Flows Beneath Death Note: Catching the Wave of Popular Japanese Culture in China Peter Goderie and Brian Yecies Key words: China film policy, Death Note (2006), horror films in China, foreign exhibition in China, film piracy, internet piracy Abstract The government of the People’s Republic of China has often been criticized for its policies regarding freedom of expression. Cinema in China has been central to this criticism, particularly with respect to the distribution of foreign films. This article uses a case study of the Japanese film Death Note (Kaneko ShÅ«suke, 2006) to advance current understanding of Chinese cinema found in important studies such as Chu (2002), Zhang (2004) and Berry and Farquhar (2006). To better understand the controversy surrounding Death Note in the Chinese context, this article explores the historical precursors to the Chinese Communist Party’s ban on horror films, and examines the attitudes of Chinese students at an Australian universi... http://www.japanfocus.org/-Brian-Yecies/3403 What was left unsaid about the atomic bombings: silence and the politics of commemoration WAKAMIYA YOSHIBUMI When Hiroshima commemorated the 65th anniversary of its atomic bombing on Aug. 6, representatives of the United States, Britain and France joined the memorial service for the first time. Their attendance made headlines. As it happens, in 1948, three years after the bombing, the Hiroshima peace festival, as the ceremony was then known, was attended by a representative of the Allied Forces. I learned this from former Hiroshima Mayor Hiraoka Takashi a few years ago. Wanting to find out more, I leafed through the archives of Yukan Hiroshima, an evening daily that is no longer in existence which was published by a Chugoku Shimbun affiliate, and found an article reporting the event. According to the article, Horace Robertson, commander-in-chief of the British Commonwealth Occupation Force, took part in the ceremony and gave a speech. While praising Hiroshima's efforts to rebuild as a ... http://www.japanfocus.org/-Wakamiya-Yoshibumi/3402 How Long Will US Forces Continue to Occupy Japan and Korea? China, the US and the New Division of Power in the Asia-Pacific Tanaka Sakai Translation by Kyoko Selden Japanese original text is available here [PDF]. Introduction In a May 7, 2010 report that was among the first-and most controversial-anywhere to dissect the South Korea-US verdict on the sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan, Tanaka Sakai posed compelling questions about the official claims. The present article looks forward rather than back to assess possible regional and global ramifications of the Cheonan Incident for emerging power relations in the Asia-Pacific. Tanaka argues that, together with the failure to resolve the issue of the transfer of the Futenma base that is at the heart of the impasse in the US-Japan-Okinawa relationship, the stalemate over the Cheonan Incident illustrates the multipolarization of power that is part of the decline of American power and a redefinition of power relations in the Pacific... http://www.japanfocus.org/-Tanaka-Sakai/3401 Toward Reconciliation: The Nishimatsu Settlements for Chinese Forced Labor in World War Two  Ivy Lee with an Introduction by William Underwood This is Part Two of a two-part series. Part One is available here. Introduction As a recently retired sociology professor in the United States, Ivy Lee became actively involved with global efforts to redress Japanese war crimes a few years before Kajima Co.'s controversial settlement in 2000 with Chinese forced laborers from the notorious Hanaoka worksite. Kajima's approach to resolving the Hanaoka injustice raised serious doubts about its corporate sincerity, but the professional honesty and good faith of Japanese lawyers who provided pro bono representation for the Chinese victims were also called into question by some critics in ways that suggested the need for careful investigation. Lee's article below is motivated by a desire to advance the best interests of the aging survivors of forced labor in wartime Japan and their heirs, and to... http://www.japanfocus.org/-Ivy-Lee/3400 Rejected by All Plaintiffs: Failure of the Nishimatsu-Shinanogawa "Settlement" with Chinese Forced Laborers in Wartime Japan   Kang Jian[1] with an Introduction by William Underwood This is Part One of a two-part series. Part Two is available here. A Chinese version of this article is also available. IntroductionJapanese lawyers and activists supporting compensation lawsuits for Chinese forced labor in wartime Japan once called Chinese attorney Kang Jian the “window.” The term acknowledged Kang’s pivotal role in coordinating between plaintiffs typically located in the Chinese countryside and Japanese legal teams pressing claims on their behalf in a dozen courtrooms across Japan over the past decade. However, the close cooperation between Kang and the Japanese Lawyers Group for Chinese War Victims' Compensation Claims broke down in April 2010, at least temporarily, following the out-of-court compensation agreement by Nishimatsu Construction Co. with forced labo... http://www.japanfocus.org/-Kang-Jian/3399 The US-Japan Alliance Must Evolve: The Futenma Flip-Flop, the Hatoyama Failure, and the Future Terashima Jitsuro Translation by John Junkerman After meandering through the course of some eight months, the administration of Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio collapsed. It was as if, true to his "alien" nickname, Hatoyama disappeared into space with his plans for a game-changing paradigm shift, wearing that expression of sublime pleasure far removed from the fetters and hardship of earthlings, and taking with him the man who performed as the true authority, Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) secretary general Ozawa Ichiro. But history is harsh. Hatoyama left the stage, with the problem of the US marine base at Futenma unresolved and having failed to set a course for Japanese diplomacy after his party's defeat of the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). I have been friends with Hatoyama for many years and, until the launch of his administration, often shared thoughts with him about the for... http://www.japanfocus.org/-Terashima-Jitsuro/3398 Historiography and Japanese War Nationalism: Testimony in SensÅ�ron, SensÅ�ron as Testimony Philip Seaton This essay looks at the use of testimony by manga artist Kobayashi Yoshinori, a prominent neonationalist voice on war issues. It focuses on three themes to assess his 1998 manga SensÅ�ron (On War): Kobayashi’s stated position on the validity of testimony as evidence, how testimony is used within Kobayashi’s arguments, and the inherently autobiographical nature of Kobayashi’s writings. It reveals a key nationalist hypocrisy: while the rejection of personal testimony by victims of Japanese war actions as evidence on historiographical grounds remains central to nationalist denial strategies, testimony is used freely and uncritically to support nationalist agendas. This essay is part of a three-essay series Testimony and War Memories in Japan. The other essays are ‘Introduction’ and ‘War Responsibility and the Family in Japan: Excerpts from Kura... http://www.japanfocus.org/-Philip-Seaton/3397