New
Articles Posted
Jon Mitchell, 281_Anti Nuke: The Japanese street
artist taking on Tokyo, TEPCO and the nation's right-wing
extremists
More
than two years after the triple disasters that included the meltdowns at TEPCO's
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, between 160,000 and 300,000 Tohoku residents
remain displaced, the power station teeters on the brink of further disaster,
and large swathes of northern Japan are so irradiated they may be uninhabitable
for generations to come. But today in Tokyo, it is as though March 11, 2011
never happened. The streets are packed with tourists and banners herald the
city's 2020 Olympic bid; the neon lights are back on and all memories of
post-meltdown power savings seem long forgotten.
Given
this mood of collective amnesia, the large poster on a wall near Shibuya Station
comes as a surprise. It shows a little girl wearing a long red dress stenciled
with the words "3.11 is not over" - nearby another poster depicts a Rising Sun
flag seeping blood and the message "Japan kills Japanese." These posters - and
dozens of others pasted around Tokyo - are the work of Japanese artist, 281_Anti
Nuke. While the origins of his chosen name are murky, the way in which his
subversively simple images force passersby to stop - and think - has led to
comparisons with street artist, Banksy.
Jon
Mitchell is a Welsh-born writer based in Japan and an Asia-Pacific Journal
associate. In November 2012, "Defoliated Island", a TV documentary based upon
his research into the U.S. military's usage of Agent Orange on Okinawa was
awarded a commendation for excellence by Japan's National Association of
Commercial Broadcasters. The English version can be watched here. This is an
expanded version of an article that first appeared in The Japan Times on 28 May,
2013.
Recommended
citation: Jon Mitchell, "281_Anti Nuke: The Japanese street artist taking on
Tokyo, TEPCO and the nation's right-wing extremists," The Asia-Pacific Journal,
Vol 11, Issue 24, No. 5, June 17, 2013.
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Peter Dale
Scott, Washington's Battle Over Syrian Foreign Policy: Will Hawks Or
Doves Prevail?
Like
Putin's policy in Russia, Obama's Syrian policy is being tugged strenuously in
Washington, both by hawks and by doves. On June 13, Obama handed two limited but
ominous victories to the hawks: a finding of fact that the troops of Syria's
president Bashar al-Assad "have used chemical weapons [i.e. sarin] against rebel
forces," and a consequent decision "to begin supplying the rebels for the first
time with small arms and ammunition."
Both
announcements sound very strange, if not dishonest, to anyone who has been
following the Syrian crisis. Deputy National Security Adviser Benjamin Rhodes,
one of Obama's top foreign policy advisers, was quoted by the New York Times as
saying that "there was no reason to think that the resistance has access to
chemical weapons." Thus, like most of the mainstream U.S. media, Rhodes simply
ignored the reports last May in the British media that "U.N. human rights
investigators have gathered testimony from casualties of Syria's civil war and
medical staff indicating that rebel forces have used the nerve agent sarin."
Three weeks later there were additional disputed reports that a 2kg cylinder
with sarin gas had been seized from Syrian rebel forces in Turkey. We thus see
another U.S. case, as a decade ago in Iraq, of policy steering intelligence,
rather than vice versa.
The
second announcement, that the U.S. would "begin supplying the rebels," is also
hard to reconcile with reality. As the Times itself revealed three months ago,
the CIA since early 2012 has helped facilitate an airlift of 3500 tons or more
of arms to the rebels from Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
Peter Dale Scott, a former Canadian diplomat and English
Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, is the author of Drugs Oil
and War, The Road to 9/11, and The War Conspiracy: JFK, 9/11, and the Deep
Politics of War. His most recent book is American War Machine: Deep Politics,
the CIA Global Drug Connection and the Road to Afghanistan. His website, which
contains a wealth of his writings, is here. Recommended citation: Peter Dale
Scott, "Washington's Battle Over Syrian Foreign Policy: Will Hawks Or Doves
Prevail?" The Asia-Pacific Journal, Volume 11, Issue 24, No. 1, June 17,
2013.
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Dong WANG, U.S.-China Trade,
1971-2012: Insights into the U.S.-China Relationship
In
the twenty-first century, American-Chinese relations offers both a challenge and
an opportunity for the United States, China, and the entire world. Since both
countries re-opened their doors to each other in 1971, their economic and
financial ties have been widely viewed as the "ballast" of an uneasy
relationship. A comparison between their embedded commercial relations now and
pre-rapprochement affirms the U.S.-centered interdependency between the two
giants. Their trading volume in 2012 reached an all-time high of $536.2 billion
on U.S. books and $484.7 billion in Chinese calculation.
In
1972, it stood at a mere US$4.7 million. At present, with a population five
times larger than America's, China boasts an economy that is less than half the
size of the U.S. economy. But forty years ago China's Gross National Product was
only about 7 percent of that of the United States. In 2012 China exceeded the
United States as the largest trading nation in the world, and the United States
became China's largest export market. Is China's economic ascendancy a
fundamental threat to American power and influence? Evolving trade patterns and
institutions in the bilateral economic sphere during the last four decades
suggest that China has neither the interest nor the wherewithal to remake or
unmake the entire world economic system that the United States designed and
dominated since World War II.
Dong
WANG is the author of China's Unequal Treaties: Narrating National History
(2005), and The United States and China: A History from the Eighteenth Century
to the Present (January 2013). She is director and professor of
contemporary Chinese history at the University of Turku in Finland, and is
affiliated with Harvard University and the University of Duisburg-Essen in
Germany.
Recommended
citation: Dong WANG, "U.S.-China Trade, 1971-2012: Insights into the U.S.-China
Relationship," The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol 11, Issue 24, No. 5, June 17,
2013.
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Joanna Elfving-Hwang, Cosmetic Surgery and
Embodying the Moral Self in South Korean Popular Makeover Culture
You
only have to spend a day in Seoul to realize that appearances do matter in
contemporary South Korean society. Advertisements for various cosmetic surgeries
are conspicuous everywhere-from taxis to public transport and underground
stations, all evidence that the industry is booming.
In
their worldwide survey of cosmetic procedures performed in 2011 by board
certified cosmetic surgeons, the International Society for Aesthetic Plastic
Surgery (ISAPS) placed Korea in seventh place in terms of numbers of surgical
procedures. That said, Korea's 250,000 recorded surgeries were easily
outstripped by US and Brazil which topped the list with numbers close to the 1
million mark. Nevertheless, Korea tops the list in the number of procedures per
capita.
Jo
Elfving-Hwang (PhD, Sheffield University) is an Associate Professor of Korean
Studies at the University of Western Australia. Her current research and
teaching interests include cultural representations of cosmetic cultures in
South Korea, masculinities in South Korean popular culture, and South Korean
cultural diplomacy and models of overseas development in Africa. Recent
publications include a monograph titled
Representations of Femininity in Contemporary South Korean Women's
Literature; 'Gender, Globalization and Aesthetic
Surgery in South Korea' (with Ruth Holliday), Body and Society 18(2) (2012):
58-81; and a book chapter 'Cross-border representations in North
and South Korean Cold War Literatures', in Global Cold War Literatures: Western,
Eastern and Postcolonial Perspectives,ed. Andrew Hammond (London and New York:
Routledge, 2011), 44-57.
Recommended
Citation: Joanna Elfcing-Hwang, "Cosmetic Surgery and Embodying the Moral Self
in South Korean Popular Makeover Culture," The Asia-Pacific
Journal,
Vol
11, Issue 24, No. 2, June 17, 2013.
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Peter
Lee,
India Places Its Asian Bet on
Japan
In a dismaying week for the PRC, India turned away
from China...and gave further signals that it is ready to move beyond the
narrative of Japanese World War II aggression that has informed China's Asian
diplomacy and anchored the US presence in Asia for over half a century in favor
of a view of Japan as a leading and laudable security actor in East Asia. I
don't know if there is a term in the diplomatic lexicon for "deep tongue kiss
accompanied by groans of mutual fulfillment", but if there is, it seems it would
be illustrated by the encounter between Indian President Manmohan Singh and
Japanese PM Abe Shinzo in Tokyo on May 27-29, 2013.
Speaking to an assembly of Japanese
government and corporate worthies in Tokyo, Singh said: Asia's resurgence began
over a century ago on this island of the Rising Sun. Ever since, Japan has shown
us the way forward. India and Japan have a shared vision of a rising Asia. Over
the past decade, therefore, our two countries have established a new
relationship based on shared values and shared interests. ... Our relationship
with Japan has been at the heart of our Look East Policy. Japan inspired Asia's
surge to prosperity and it remains integral to Asia's future. The world has a
huge stake in Japan's success in restoring the momentum of its growth.
Peter Lee writes on East and South Asian affairs and their
intersection with US global policy. He is the moving force behind the Asian
affairs website China Matters which provides continuing critical updates on
China and Asia-Pacific policies. His work frequently appears at Asia
Times.
Recommended citation: Peter Lee, "India Places Its Asian
Bet on Japan," The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol 11, Issue 24, No. 3, June 17, 2013.
Read more . . .
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In This Issue
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Jon
Mitchell
Peter
Dale Scott
Dong
WANG
Peter
Lee
Joanna
Elfving-Hwang
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japanfocus.org |
