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In This Issue
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Yamamoto Yuzo
Tsurumi
Kazuko
Andrew DeWit
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Greetings!
Andrew DeWit assesses the important role of the US Pacific
Command in addressing climate crisis in the Pacific at a time when the US
political system is stymied by political crisis. Decades after the Minamata
mercury poisoning crisis ignited Japan's environmental movement, we present
Tsurumi Kazuko's assessment, and Tom Gill's introduction providing an
overview of the movement's historical and contemporary significance. Zeljko
Cipris translates and introduces Yamamoto Yuzo's 1920 play
"Infanticide", a classic that spoke then and speaks now to
problems of poverty and labor.
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Yamamoto Yuzo
Infanticide
Yamamoto Yuzo (1887 - 1974) was a
playwright and novelist from Tochigi Prefecture who graduated from Tokyo
University. He made his debut as a dramatist with Seimei no kanmuri (1920;
tr. The Crown of Life, 1935). Yamamoto's literary work comprises a critical
examination of the human condition based on the author's humanistic
philosophy and revolutionary sympathies. Infanticide constitutes a poignant
cri de coeur, yet leaves the solution to the underlying problem up to its
audience.
Recommended citation: Yamamoto Yuzo, "Infanticide", translated
and introduced by Zeljko Cipris, The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 11, Issue
34, No. 3, August 25, 2014.
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Tsurumi Kazuko with an
introduction by Tom Gill
New Lives: Some Case Studies of
Minamata
Earlier in 2014, folklore scholar Ron
Morse succeeded in publishing on-line The Adventure of Ideas: A Collection
of papers on Patterns of Creativity and a Theory of Endogenous Development,
a collection of English-language papers by Tsurumi Kazuko* (1918-2006), an
innovative sociologist who was a professor at Sophia University for twenty
years (1969-89). The book is available for free
download.
Tsurumi Kazuko was a member of one of
Japan's premier intellectual dynasties. The granddaughter of Meiji/Taisho
bureaucrat Goto Shinpei, and daughter of prewar liberal politician Tsurumi
Yusuke, she was the sister of postwar philosopher-historian Tsurumi
Shunsuke, and aunt of Tsurumi Taro, a professor of folklore at Waseda
University.
"New Lives: Some Case Studies of Minamata," dating
from 1987, draws on fieldwork conducted in Minamata, Kumamoto
prefecture, between 1976 and 1983. The paper introduces three of the heroes
of the movement to gain redress for the victims of Minamata Disease -
mercury poisoning caused by contamination of the Shiranui Sea by the town's
main employer, Chisso Corporation, a major chemical maker still very much
in business today. The paper contains valuable source material on the
Minamata redress movement, dramatized through three extraordinary
personalities.
Recommended citation: Tsurumi Kazuko with an introduction by
Tom Gill, "New Lives: Some Case Studies of Minamata", The
Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 12, Issue 34, No. 2, August 25, 2014.
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Andrew DeWit
US Pacific Command, Climate Change
and Collaborative Security
While organizers mobilize across the
globe for history's biggest climate march in New York on September 21,
strikingly large numbers of Americans - and an even bigger share of their
political representatives - remain quiet, doubtful or even in denial about
climate change. But the US military, especially in the Pacific, is neither
uncertain nor passive. The US Pacific Command (PACOM) is
"not waiting on politics" in responding to climate change.
Brigadier General Mark McLeod, former head of PACOM's Logistics,
Engineering and Security Cooperation directorate describes why. He points
out that 70 percent of global storms are in the Pacific and that climate
change's impacts are already having military consequences.
The US military is already a leader on climate-change mitigation through
renewable energy and energy efficiency. The military's adaptation efforts
are also instructive for civil society and may help curb climate-related
geopolitical instability. Across the Pacific, PACOM is focused on
building resilience against climate change and creative networks of
cooperation on humanitarian assistance and disaster response, or HADR.
Recommended Citation: Andrew DeWit, "US Pacific Climate Change and
Collaborative Security", The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 12, Issue 34,
No. 1, August 25, 2014.
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