On 30 July, 2007, social and political critic, novelist and political activist Oda Makoto died in Japan at the age of 75. Throughout his life, he published numerous essays and more than 100 books including some thirty novels. Two of his novels, Hiroshima and Gyokusai (The Breaking Jewel), have been translated into English and dramatized for a BBC radio program and broadcast worldwide. In Japan, however, he is remembered above all as the political activist who founded and led Beheiren (Japan Peace-for-Vietnam Citizen's Alliance), a major grassroots movement against the Vietnam War, which gained extraordinary popular support in the 1960s and 1970s.

Lee Hak Rae was a Korean youth who went to work at age fifteen supervising prisoners of the Japanese mobilized to build the Burma-Thailand Railway. Hintok, where he served, was the most dangerous place along the railway. Prisoners called it “Hellfire Pass.” Of approximately 700 Australians, 100 died there, mainly from overwork and diseases such as dysentery and cholera. Lee was indicted by an Australian court in Singapore on September 25, 1946, but on October 24 his case was dismissed. In Hong Kong, en route to Japan, he was again forced to return to Singapore. On March 10, 1947 he was indicted for a second time.

One of the few Americans to see action during the Bug Wars of the nineteen-nineties was Robert J. Lang, a lanky Californian who was on the front lines throughout, from the battle of the Kabutomushi Beetle to the battle of the Menacing Mantis and the battle of the Long-Legged Wasp. Most combatants in the Bug Wars—which were, in fact, origami contests—were members of the Origami Detectives, a group of artists in Japan who liked to try outdoing one another with extreme designs of assigned subjects. They engaged in the Bug Wars after one of the Detectives displayed what the group's Web site calls “an incredible secret weapon”—a horned beetle with outspread wings, which he had folded from a single sheet of paper. “Then the origami insect war got full-scale,” the English translation of the Web site continues. “They compared their confident models with others at their monthly meetings, and losers left with chagrin.” During the Bug Wars, Lang was not yet a professional origami artist; he was a research scientist at Spectra Diode Labs, in San Jose, who did some paper folding on the side. He was busy at work—in 1993, the year of the Menacing Mantis, for instance, he patented a self-collimated resonator laser and worked on fibre-optic networks for space satellites—so he usually wasn't able to travel to Japan to hand-deliver his bug of the month. Instead, he would e-mail his design to an ally in Tokyo, who would fold it and present it to the Detectives on Lang's behalf.

In the first week of May 2007, the Kingdom of Tonga was getting ready for a lavish wedding. Seventh in line for the royal throne, Fanetupouvava'u Tuita, 29, was to marry Kiu Kaho, an army lieutenant whose father is a noble, Tu'ivakano, and is a cousin of the royal family. Tuita is the second daughter of the controversial millionaire princess Pilolevu Tuita who runs Tongasat, a satellite communications company out of Hong Kong.

Text of testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 18 January 2007.

Good afternoon, Senator Biden, and members of the committee. It is a grave responsibility to testify before you today because the issue, the war in Iraq, is of such monumental importance.

In the last decade, numerous film and print media treatments of the Second World War have focused on the “soldier's perspective.” Because the wartime generation is now rapidly disappearing, postwar generations have become especially eager to know the war. In particular, there is a hunger to learn how it was experienced by ordinary servicemen—a focus popularized most effectively by historian John Keegan (and film directors such as Clint Eastwood, Oliver Stone, and Francis Ford Coppola). Scholars and war history buffs alike seek “reliable” accounts of the war; presumably, the best histories of the war are those that rest on a firm foundation of the most “reliable” sources. Certainly, the larger historical narrative of the war is incomplete without adequate attention to the personal records that servicemen kept at the time, such as diaries and letters. Nevertheless, like any document, it is essential to pay close attention to the assumptions shared by the authors of these documents and their audiences today, especially regarding the “truth” such texts putatively contain.

After nearly five fat years, the global economy is headed for trouble. This will come as a surprise to policy makers and investors, alike -most of whom were counting on boom times to continue.

At work is yet another post-bubble adjustment in the world's largest economy - this time, the bursting of America's massive property bubble. The subprime fiasco is the tip of a much larger iceberg - an asset-dependent American consumer who has gone on the biggest spending binge in the modern history of the global economy. Seven years ago, the bursting of the dot-com bubble triggered a collapse in business capital spending that took the US and global economy into a mild recession. This time, post-bubble adjustments seem likely to hit US consumption, which at 72% of GDP, is more than five times the share the capital spending sector was seven years ago. This is a much bigger problem - one that could have grave consequences for the US and the rest of the world.

“How we defend our sovereignty, our citizens and our interests – and our success in doing so – shapes the future of our nation.”

The opening words of Brendan Nelson's Preface to the 2007 Defence Update are the most accurate of all those in this seriously flawed document - though quite likely not as Nelson had in mind when he wrote them. The Defence Update 2007 comes after a decade of constant and still unfinished increases in defence spending, a tripling of domestic security spending, huge weapons systems orders, Australian defence Forces deployments from Lebanon to the Solomon Islands, three large and extremely demanding deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan and East Timor, and world politics turning on the hinge of a massive strategic miscalculation by Australia's closest ally. The Defence Update is a deeply flawed policy document, shaped by double standards and selective learning, shortsightedness and botched use of realism, the aggressive demands of alliance maintenance, and an almost complete failure to consider the real and salient threats to Australian security - both the state- and human- versions – of global problems such as climate change, health and poverty.

Inside the Iwakuni marine base, a slice of Americana: a mess canteen adorned with solemn portraits of former presidents and tributes to fallen US troops in battlefields around the world. TVs mounted on the walls flicker with US sports programming as beefy marines tuck into pasta, tacos and cheesecake.

When I got off the train, a sign on the platform informed me that Seoul lies 56 kilometers to the south and Pyongyang 205 km to the north.

This is Dorasan Station, close to the demilitarized zone (DMZ) demarcating the two Koreas. It is the northernmost station in South Korea on the Gyeongui Line. It connects North Korea's Sinuiju, near the border with China, and South Korea's capital, Seoul. The station is located in an area in which the South Korean military controls civilian traffic. Only three trains come this far each day. Passengers must provide ID and allow their belongings to be searched by military police.

This was Yoshiko and Masumi's first trip from Japan to Mexico's remote San Ignacio Lagoon to encounter what scientists call “The Friendly Whale Syndrome.” At last our plane descended toward the dirt landing strip bordering the lagoon's turquoise waters and gentle pink salt mountains. Excitedly, this mother and daughter scanned below for the heart-shaped blows of the many mother-calf pairs of gray whales.

On October 2007 I peered from a window of a Boeing 737 approaching Kwajalein Atoll in the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI), pulled out my professional camera and began snapping photos of the enormous bay which serves as a missile range for the US star wars program. Kwaj island is rimmed by rotting metal pieces (whatever they are), dotted with huge radar installations, missile interceptors and who the hell knows what else?

After landing, I was taken to the military checkpoint. My hand luggage had to be left on the floor; a dog sniffed at it; a policewoman explained security regulations; outrageous military propaganda posters decorated the walls. The small and humble immigration checkpoint of the Marshall Islands was humbly stuck in a corner of the room. I had a hard time explaining that I was actually traveling to Ebeye, a small island 4 miles away, a place that provides cheap labor to the US military base, a place of misery - an over-populated and desperate byway of the Marshall Islands.

On Saturday 25 August 2007, NHK broadcast a programme called Seishonen no jisatsu o kangaeyo [Let's reflect on youth suicide]. The programme was prompted by the National police agency's publication of new statistics on the problem of youth suicide. In 2006, 886 Japanese youths took their own lives, invariably in response to bullying. ‘Youth’ as defined by the NPA refers to primary, middle, secondary school as well as university students. The 2006 figure was the highest since records began. It comes hard on the heels of other statistics demonstrating that Japan's annual suicide figures have hit 30,000 for the 9th year in succession.

The Kaesong Industrial Complex is a veritable Rorschach test for those who follow developments on the Korean peninsula. Everyone who looks at the special economic zone located in North Korea just north of the DMZ sees something very different. And these interpretations often reveal more about the viewer than the viewed.

Unification advocates in the South see Kaesong as a concrete example of north-south cooperation. Their hopes for a rapid improvement in inter-Korean relations have transformed a rather modest initiative into the pivot of radical transformation. South Korean businesses, particularly small and medium-sized firms, look to Kaesong as a way to compete against Chinese or Southeast Asian production. Their desire to escape South Korean unions and take advantage of cheap North Korean labor has short-circuited the risk analysis and demand for large profits that would ordinarily militate against such investments. American neoconservatives (and their newly emerging South Korean counterparts) have lambasted Kaesong as a method of transferring funds to the North Korean elite and strengthening a despised system.

[Abe Shinzo, Japan's nationalist prime minister, surprised many observers with a strong start abroad. Now he's in trouble at home. Caryl and Kashiwage show how distant the Abe Junzo regime's ideologically-driven obsessions with constitutional revision and patriotic education are from the pocketbook issues that concern most Japanese voters. Their findings were backed up recently with empirical proof. A Yomiuri newspaper opinion poll released on February 20th shows that Abe's pet issue, constitutional revision, is listed as a priority by only 6.2% of respondents. This marginal level of support contrasts sharply with the 61.7% ranking for reforms to social security, 52% for economic and employment initiatives, and 34% for child-care and other policies dealing with the dwindling birthrate, issues on which the Abe administration has been virtually silent. Even the “North Korea problem” - which poll respondents presumably associated with the abductee issue - only weighs in at 32.8% after years of pounding by the media under both Koizumi and Abe regimes. The poll results, in Japanese, can be viewed here.

In the same issue of Newsweek, commentator Yoichi Funabashi points to Japan's international isolation in the wake of the recent Beijing agreement projecting North Korea nuclear rollback in exchange for energy assistance and an end to international isolation. Contrasting the deal with the 1994 arrangement when Japan was among the largest financial contributors to provide light water reactors, he notes that the Abe regime's insistence on prioritizing the abduction issue above strategic concerns has relegated it to the sidelines. The result is to weaken Japan's influence in East Asia as well as its relations with the United States. (Andrew DeWit)]

TOKYO - It's not the fictional Super X project, designed to defend Tokyo, in the Godzilla movie series. It's a real project designed to shield Japan - the capital first and other parts of the country later - from a real threat.

The U.S. government has filed a protest over Defense Minister Kyuma Fumio's remarks last week criticizing President George W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq, diplomatic sources said Saturday.

The Muslim community in Japan has a history of about 100 years. For example, an Islamic mosque in Kobe dates from 1935.

But the number of Muslims was relatively small before the 1980's. The number of Muslims in Japan grew rapidly in the mid-1980 during the bubble economy. At that time young men from Muslim countries including Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Iran came to Japan and worked in small businesses or factories which experienced labor shortages. But when the controversy over illegal foreign workers began, the Japanese government halted entry on short term visits without a visa for citizens of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Iran. Following the collapse of the bubble economy in 1990, a number of Muslims acquired resident status and some obtained legal residence in Japan by marrying Japanese women. There is no accurate record of the religious affiliation of foreign residents in Japan, but we can estimate the approximate number of Muslims from the native countries of foreigners. Keiko Sakurai calculated the number of Muslims in Japan in 2000 to be 63,552 (Nihon no Muslim Shakai (Muslim society in Japan) Chikuma shinsho, 2003). Now many of them have families. They live and work with Japanese and send their children to Japanese schools. With the passage of time, they began to construct their lives as Muslims. Japanese can see the ‘real Muslims lives’ before their eyes in Japan today. Against the world-wide negative media campaign against Muslims and Islam, it is useful for Japanese to take the opportunity to understand the Muslims in their midst. Morita Toyoko, Kobe University.

Mount Paekdu (Korean), meaning “White-Topped Mountain”, or Changbai (Chinese), meaning “Forever White Mountain” straddles the border between North Korea and China. It has long flared as a hot spot in claiming national history, identity and territory involving China, Korea and earlier kingdoms in the region. It has also emerged as a source of contention between China and the two Koreas, North and South. China has recently moved aggressively to develop the Changbai area in Jilin Province on the Chinese side of the border. Plans include economic and infrastructural development including the Mt. Changbai Airport and the Mt. Changbai Eastern Railroad, both under construction. The railroad is a key to linking China's largest nature preserve to Changchun and to the promotion of domestic and international tourism. China has also filed a claim to make the mountain a UNESCO World Heritage Site. There is even momentum behind a Chinese proposal to hold the Winter Olympic Games there in 2018. In addition, Chinese actions like the torch-lighting ceremony for the 2007 Asian Winter Games atop Mt. Changbai, the naming of schools after the mountain, and military operations in the area have exacerbated tensions between China and the two Koreas. The Asia Winter Games' official song includes a paean to Changbai. The pressroom for the Games at Changchun in February 2007 provided pamphlets on Changbai Mount. All these activities lay foundations for claims that the landmark is Chinese.