This
issue mirrors our twin approaches in showing the achievements of the
Asia-Pacific while highlighting ongoing historical and contemporary
problems.Following up on his recent article,
Andrew
DeWit reports on the initiatives towards building "smart
communities" throughout Japan. Inspired by German
Stadtwerke
in the energy industry, the movement hopes to surpass the German model by
creating "sustainable economic growth" development that is
remarkably not driven by large corporations but by local governments.
Last
week, the
Historical
Science Society of Japan [!] issued a public statement in
English on the recent wartime comfort women controversy centered o the
Asahi Shinbun. While the testimony of Yoshida Seiji has long been
discredited, the revelation that Asahi had cited him in the 1990s has led
to dangerous attacks on the 1993 Kono Statement and the historical facts of
the abuses of the Japanese military. The statement criticizes the Abe
administration's blatant efforts to revise wartime history, clarifying the
points of contention and pointing out flaws in the arguments made by the
administration and its neonationalist allies.
Joshua Oppenheimer's recent award-winning film
The Act of Killing
presents the genocide in Indonesia forty years ago in the words of many of
its perpetrators, but it does not address the pivotal role of the
United States in the killings and aftermath.
Peter
Dale Scott examines how the "deeply flawed authoritarian
development model" of American social-scientific modernization theory
paved the way for the atrocities, calling for academics to reflect on
university culture then and now.
"'I died at that moment,' he said. He went under the knives, scalpels,
forceps, scissors, and needles. A foot-long cut was carved on his right
side." Writer and filmmaker
Rey
Ventura presents the dramatic story of how Filipino man came to
"donate" one of his kidneys to a Japanese man in 1996, from his
collection of nonfiction stories,
Cherry Blossoms in the Time of
Earthquakes and Tsunami.
