The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus Newsletter
Newsletter No. 23. 2014     June 9, 2014     New Articles Posted
Quick Links Home About Japan Focus Top 10 Articles RSS Feeds In This Issue   Gavan McCormack  Okinawa Facing a Hot Summer: Introduction and Four Texts translated from Japanese    Jeff Kingston      After 3.11: Imposing Nuclear Energy on a Skeptical Japanese Public Komori Yoichi    Japan's Article 9 and Economic Justice: The Work of Shinagawa Masaji Michael Rank   Orwell in China: Big Brother in every bookshop	Greetings!     On the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre of June 4, 1989, we reveal the surprising fact that George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four is alive and well in China, in translation. Along with Animal Farm. Find out about it in Michael Rank's report on Big Brother's availability in Chinese bookshops even as internet censorship tightens. But are we past the time when Orwell can be read sanctimoniously as a critique of the totalitarian other, or does he speak to the post-Snowden global condition? Jeff Kingston provides a major overview of the Abe administration's attempts to impose nuclear power on Japan in the face of continued popular opposition, noting that the long anticipated energy shortfall has not materialized while the massive problems of the Fukushima plants continue unabated. Literary critic Komori Yoichi offers surprising insight into Japan's protracted movement to defend Article 9, linking the issues to the movement for economic justice which has been largely invisible outside Japan. New insight into the determined US-Japan plan to impose the new Henoko base on a recalcitrant Okinawa is presented in four new translations by Gavan McCormack on the current struggle. We invite you to follow APJ on Facebook or Twitter by clicking on the highlighted links above. Have you used the APJ search engine? The best results may be obtained by going to the left home page and typing in key words such as Okinawa, 3.11, energy, or Vietnam War under Title. Please try the new pdf feature at the top of each article, particularly if you wish to print it. It can also be copied and pasted into a Word file to adjust type size and font. Let us know if you encounter problems. info.japanfocus@gmail.com. Thanks to  the generous support of our readers, we succeeded in raising more than $12,000 to fund the Journal for 2014. The Journal will remain free. You can still support the journal at our home page with your 501 (C) tax-deductible gift payable to Paypal or a credit card.    Quick Links Register Now Last Month's Newsletter More About Us Our Sponsors Subscription Information The Asia-Pacific Journal is freely available to all. Your 501 (C) tax-deductible gift will help to make technical upgrades, defray technical, mailing and maintenance fees, and  enable us to expand our output. Payment by Paypal and credit card at our home page. Recommended support level: $25 and up ($10 for students and residents of developing countries); $40 for institutions including libraries, research centers, government offices. If you experience difficulty in subscribing, write to us with the error message at info@japanfocus.org  Subscribe
Gavan McCormack        Introduction and Four Texts translated from Japanese    Tension in and around Okinawa rises. The Abe Shinzo government repeatedly assures Washington that the base it promises to construct for the US Marine Corps at Henoko in Northern Okinawa will proceed, come what may. The process of construction of a massive new military facility on a region that is at Okinawan law reserved for the very highest level of protection for its rich biodiversity is described in joint US-Japan communiques as "commitment to reducing the base hosting impact on Okinawa." Henoko construction has been made a condition for the return of the existing Futenma Marine Air Station in Ginowan City, upon whom, as a result, the "burden" would be lessened. Yet from 1996 to today, Okinawa has consistently and effectively resisted all such attempts to build a new base. Here, the author expands APJ's ongoing coverage of the crisis by presenting four English language translations of recent related writings: two editorials from Okinawan daily newspapers, an impassioned plea from Nago City author Urashima Etsuko, and a short report on the discovery of significant numbers of the endangered dugong in the Henoko Bay vicinity. Through their writings and protests Okinawans continue to assert their rights as citizens in whom, under the constitution, sovereignty resides.     Gavan McCormack is an emeritus professor of Australian National University and coordinator of The Asia-Pacific Journal. He is co-author with John Dower of the recently published Tenkanki no Nihon e - Pax Americana ka Pax Asia ka (NHK Bukkusu, 2014). Read more . . .  Jeff Kingston  After 3.11: Imposing Nuclear Energy on a Skeptical Japanese Public  In April 2014 Prime Minister Abe unveiled Japan's new national energy strategy, reinstating nuclear energy as a key source of energy even as the shambolic cleanup and decommissioning at  Fukushima Daiichi lurches from one blunder to the next malfunction, and radiation-contaminated groundwater flows into the ocean. This is a major milestone in the comeback of nuclear energy despite a seemingly endless cascade of damning revelations about lax safety practices and perfunctory oversight since the three reactor meltdowns in March 2011. 2014 may be Japan's last nuclear free summer for the next few decades as pressure is mounting to restart some of Japan's 48 idled reactors. Why has Fukushima not been a game changing event? In this article, the author articulates the considerable policymaking advantages enjoyed by the institutions of Japan's nuclear village (principally the utilities, big business, the bureaucracy and the Diet). Kingston argues that Abe's nuclear renaissance is possible because the nuclear village has been relatively successful in damage control while also working the corridors of power and backrooms where energy policy is decided. The reinstatement of nuclear energy in the 2014 national energy policy marks a victory for the nuclear village, a remarkable example of institutional resilience in the face of extremely adverse developments since the massive earthquake and tsunami struck.  Jeff Kingston is the Director of Asian Studies, Temple University Japan. He is the editor of Natural Disaster and Nuclear Crisis in Japan: Response and Recovery after Japan's 3/11, Routledge 2012 and the author of Contemporary Japan, London: Wiley 2013. Read more . . . Komori Yoichi  Japan's Article 9 and Economic Justice: The Work of Shinagawa Masaji Introduced by Norma Field Translated by Miho MATSUGU Shinagawa Masaji, the dean of Japan's progressive financial leaders of the postwar era, is the subject of this memorial tribute. The author elaborates on Shinagawa's commitment to the "no-war clause," as well as his years of union activism and espousal of "revisionist capitalism." Shinagawa's example prompts wide-ranging comparison, whether to Nordic models (see the intriguing comparison recently published by APJ on Sweden and Japan's policies in the face of financial crisis), or in another era of US capitalism, Henry Ford's brand of investment in anti-union employee well-being and espousal of pacifism. The author, who also serves as executive secretary of the Article 9 Association, emphasizes Shinagawa's impassioned commitment to both the antiwar and economic justice causes, at a time when popular understanding  tends to separate advocates of the two causes.  Komori Yoichi is a scholar of modern Japanese literature at the University of Tokyo. His numerous books include The Voices of the Dead, the Words of the Living: In Pursuit of Nuclear Japan through Literature (Shinnihon Shuppansha, 2014).      Miho Matsugu has taught Japanese language and literature at Grinnell College in Iowa and DePaul University in Chicago.     Norma Field is Robert S. Ingersoll Distinguished Service Professor Emerita, University of Chicago and a Japan Focus Associate.   Read more . . . Michael Rank Orwell in China: Big Brother in every bookshop     In this article, Michael Rank explores dystopian author George Orwell's intellectual and political interest in China during the 1930s and 1940s. Orwell voiced his anger over Japan's invasion of China and spoke about Chinese resistance in several BBC scripts. He was appalled at the eye-witness stories of extreme Japanese cruelty that came to his attention at the BBC. With unusual insight, he dated the beginning of World War II not to the German invasion of Poland in 1939 but to the Japanese invasion of northeast China in 1931. The author also considers China's interest in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-four and Animal Farm through a close examination of the history of translation and publication of the two works in the PRC. Michael Rank is a British journalist and translator. He was a Reuters correspondent in China from 1980 to 1984, followed by two years in east and southern Africa. He has written about Tibet in the 1920s for the Bulletin of Tibetology as well as news reports. Read more . . .

International Week of Pali Studies in Paris

A very significative and truly international event for Pali (and at least a fortiori Buddhist) Studies will take place in Paris on June 16-20, 2014, a week at École pratique des hautes études (EPHE) dedicated to the first Semaine internationale d’études palies, organized by Profs Nalini Balbir and Peter Skilling, and including some of the best scholars worldwide. For the program and some abstracts, please visit:

http://www.ephe.sorbonne.fr/images/stories/docs_ephe/Actu/ProgrammeSemaineInternationaleEtudesPalies.pdf

with every god wish,

-- 
Dr E. Ciurtin 
Secretary of the Romanian Association for the History of Religions 

Publications Officer of the European Association for the Study of Religions
www.easr.eu 

Lecturer & Secretary of the Scientific Council 
Institute for the History of Religions, Romanian Academy 
Calea 13 Septembrie no. 13 sect. 5, Bucharest 050711 
Phone: 00 40 733 951 953

ANTIGUO ORIENTE Vol. 11

ANTIGUO ORIENTE Vol. 11

TABLA DE CONTENIDOS

11 In Memoriam Gabriel Nápole (1959-2013)

COLABORACIONES

13 Advertising Secrecy, Creating Power in Ancient Mesopotamia: How Scholars Used Secrecy in Scribal Education to Bolster and Perpetuate Their Social Prestige
Alan LENZI

43 Los vínculos interregionales de la iconografía Ghassuliense
Pablo JARUF

75 Biblical Evidence from Obadiah and Psalm 137 for an Edomite Treaty Betrayal of Judah in the Sixth Century B.C.E.
Jason DYKEHOUSE

129 Covenant and International Relations in the Ancient Near East: A Preliminary Exploration
Lucas G. FREIRE

155 El león y las aves: Isaías 31:4–5 a la luz de nuevas inscripciones neo-asirias
Hayim TAWIL

ARTÍCULOS DE RESEÑA

167 ¿Todo tiempo pasado fue mejor?: Tres estudios sobre comercio y desarrollo y su impacto en la historia económica de la Antigüedad
Juan Manuel TEBES

RESEÑAS BIBLIOGRÁFICAS

183 Amnon Altman, Tracing the Earliest Recorded Concepts of International Law: The Ancient Near East (2500–330 BCE), 2012
Emanuel PFOH

188 Hayim Tawil, An Akkadian Lexical Companion for Biblical Hebrew: Etymological-Semantic and Idiomatic Equivalents with Supplement on Biblical Aramaic, 2009
Santiago ROSTOM MADERNA

192 Juan Manuel Tebes, Nómadas en la encrucijada: Sociedad, ideología  y poder en los márgenes áridos del Levante meridional durante el primer milenio a.C., 2013
Delia del C. MORENO


ANTIGUO ORIENTE es la publicación periodica anual del Centro de Estudios de Historia del Antiguo Oriente, Universidad Catolica Argentina. La revista considera para publicacion trabajos relacionados con la historia de las sociedades del Cercano Oriente Antiguo y del Mediterraneo Oriental desde el Paleolitico hasta la epoca romano-helenistica inclusive. Su Director es Juan Manuel Tebes; su Secretaria es Romina Della Casa.
Para la Tabla de Contenidos y volumenes previos, URL: www.uca.edu.ar/antiguo-oriente

COMITE EDITORIAL
Pablo Andiñach (Instituto Universitario ISEDET, Argentina), John Baines (University of Oxford, Reino Unido), Alejandro F. Botta (Boston University, EE.UU.), José Virgilio García Trabazo (Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, España), Ann E. Killebrew (Pennsylvania State University, EE.UU.), Philip Kohl (Wellesley College, EE.UU.), Stefano de Martino (Università degli Studi di Torino, Italia), Michel Mouton (Centre Français d’Archéologie et de Sciences Sociales de Sanaa, Djedda, Arabia Saudita), Robert Mullins (Azusa Pacific University, EE.UU.), Daniel T. Potts (New York University,EE.UU.), Émile Puech (École Biblique et Archéologique Française de Jérusalem), Joachim F. Quack (Universität Heidelberg, Alemania), Gonzalo Rubio (Pennsylvania State University, EE.UU.), Marcel Sigrist (École Biblique et Archéologique Française de Jérusalem)

Saludos cordiales, 

Romina Della Casa.

Secretary, CEHAO
Centro de Estudios de Historia del Antiguo Oriente
Pontificia Universidad Católica Argentina
Av. Alicia Moreau de Justo 1500, Buenos Aires C1107AFD Argentina

http://uca-ar.academia.edu/RDellaCasa

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: Annual Student/Member Art Show June 18 - July 28 | Opening reception June 28, 5-8 pm Bring your art to The Jung Center This Thursday, June 12, 11 am – 6 pm or Friday, June 13, 9 am – 4 pm.   Once a year, The Jung Center showcases the artwork of its students and members. The artists work in a variety of media to explore their own inner journeys and find meaning in everyday life. To learn more, visit our website at junghouston.org/call-for-submissions/. Featured image by Lanie Anderson

Observatorio América Latina - Asia Pacífico

El Observatorio América Latina - Asia Pacífico invita al seminario: “India: un socio para América Latina”.

La actividad se desarrollará el 11 de junio de 2014, a las 09:30 hs en la Sala Pinacoteca, en la sede de la ALADI.

Acceda a la información en el siguiente link: http://www.observatorioasiapacifico.com/OBSExternalUI/pages/public/eventForm.jsf?ni=1418&ci=1


Saludos cordiales,

Ignacio Bartesaghi
Coordinador Observatorio América Latina - Asia Pacífico.
Asociación Latinoamericana de Integración - ALADI
Tel.: +598 2 410.1121 Int.: 2231
Fax: +598 2 419.0649
Cebollatí 1461  
Código Postal 11200
Montevideo - Uruguay
www.observatorioasiapacifico.org

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