2015: Urgent Okinawan Appeal for Help
Okinawa. Henoko. Camp Schwab.
The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 13, Issue. 41, October 19, 2015
Please, see also former appeals from Okinawa/Henoko
Read this article as pdf.
In-depth critical analysis of the forces shaping the Asia-Pacific...and the world.
Urgent Okinawan Appeal for Help
Oct. 17, 2015
Ashitomi Hiroshi
[Henoko] Council against the Helicopter Base
Introduced by Gavan McCormack and translated by Doug Lummis
Introduction
To Japan and to the world Japan is a democratic country, in which popular sovereignty, the rule of law, and the division of powers (executive, legislative, judicial) are assured. Prime Minister Abe Shinzo has repeatedly told international fora – including the US Congress and the UN General Assembly – that such is the case. But what is evolving now in the course of confrontation between the Abe government and the people of Okinawa, led by their Governor, suggests otherwise.
Okinawa’s travail, in its present, intense form, owes to the determination of the Abe government to overrule the overwhelming Okinawan consensus it confronted on taking office (for the second time) in December 2012 that no new base should be constructed in the prefecture. Such a view first surfaced in 1996, as soon as the Henoko plan was announced. Under the government design, a major military facility would be constructed on Oura Bay (Henoko district) for the US Marine Corps, to which the existing, obsolescent and inconvenient Futenma Marine Base, currently set in the middle of Ginowan City, could be transferred. By 2012 the Okinawan consensus of opposition to that design was overwhelming, shared even by the Okinawan members of Abe’s ruling LDP, the Governor, and the heads of almost all Okinawan towns and cities. Never in Japan’s modern history had any prefecture so unanimously opposed the central government on a matter of such moment.
2015: Naraha
Fukushima - 4 Jahre danach: 11.03.2015
The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 13, Issue. 41, No. 1, October 19, 2015
Inside Fukushima's Potemkin Village: Naraha
David McNeill, Androniki Christodoulou
Twice a year, journalists are taken on guided tours of the ruined Daiichi nuclear plant, operated by Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO). The drive there from the southern outskirts of the 20-kilometer exclusion zone imposed in 2011 took them through the nearly empty towns of Hirono, Naraha, Tomioka, Okuma and Futaba. The state of neglect could be measured by the encroachment of weeds and wild animals, and the slow decrepitude of housing and infrastructure.
Despite the decline and the still urgent beeping of Geiger counters nearer the plant, there has never been any official talk of abandoning the area. Instead, it was divided up into three zones with awkward euphemisms to suggest just the opposite: communities with radiation of 20 millisieverts (mSv) or less (the typical worldwide limit for workers in nuclear plants) are “being prepared for lifting of evacuation order;” 20-50 mSv are “no-residence zones;” the most heavily contaminated (50mSv) are “difficult-to-return.”
A vast public-works project was started three years ago to decontaminate an area roughly half the size of Rhode Island, at an estimated cost of $50 billion. Compensation by TEPCO was explicitly linked to the possibility that many of the 160,000 nuclear refugees would return,
2015: Supreme Court Rules on Hibakusha
2015 - 70 Jahre nach den Atombomben auf Hiroshima und Nagasaki
und 4 Jahre nach Fukushima
Quelle: 09.09.2015, http://wp.me/pp3Fm-1hp
Japans oberstes Gericht spricht koreanischen Atombombenopfern Hilfeleistungen zu
by Reinhard Zöllner
09.09.2015, http://wp.me/pp3Fm-1hp
70 Jahre nach dem Abwurf der Atombomben auf Hiroshima und Nagasaki haben nun auch deren nicht-japanischen Opfer das Recht erstritten, ihre dabei erlittenen Leiden in Japan kostenlos medizinisch behandeln zu lassen. Dieses Recht steht gesetzlich allen Atombombenopfern (hibakusha 被爆者) zu -- gleich, wo sie leben und welche Staatsangehörigkeit sie besitzen, stellte am 8.9.2015 Japans Oberster Gerichtshof fest. Bislang hatten Japans Regierung und die zuständigen Präfekturen den betroffenen Ausländern -- von denen die meisten Koreaner sind -- diese Leistungen versagt. In vielen Fällen wurden bisher lediglich bis zu 300.000 Yen im Jahr (ca. 2.250 Euro) als Ersatzleistung gezahlt,
Hundreds of Legal Experts Unite
The State Secrets Protection Bill (2013)
The Asahi Shimbun, August 27, 2015
Hundreds of legal experts unite to attack Abe’s ‘unconstitutional’ security bills
by RYOTA GOTO/ Staff Writer
Three hundred or so legal experts gathered for a huge protest meeting to call on the Abe administration to withdraw security legislation that they say is unconstitutional. Former Supreme Court justices, previous director-generals of the Cabinet Legislation Bureau and other constitutional scholars and legal experts held the meeting Aug. 26 to protest the government’s efforts
2015: "Abe Doctrine"
Security in Northeast Asia - JAPAN & KOREA & CHINA
An ‘Abe Doctrine’ as Japan’s Grand Strategy: New Dynamism or Dead-End?
Jul. 21, 2015
Christopher W. Hughes
Prime Minister Abe Shinzō’s stunning return to power in the December 2012 landslide election victory, and the consolidation of his leadership in a repeat victory in December 2014, has heralded the resurgence for Japan of a more assertive, high-profile, and high-risk, foreign and security policy.[i] However, as Japan’s Foreign and Security Policy Under the ‘Abe Doctrine’ suggests, Abe’s status as an arch-‘revisionist’ ideologue, combined with the track record of his first administration in 2006-2007, made clear that he would move aggressively to shift Japan towards a more radical external agenda—characterized by a defense posture less fettered by past anti-militaristic constraints, a more fully integrated US-Japan alliance, and an emphasis on ‘value-oriented’ diplomacy with East Asian states and beyond.[ii] Indeed, Abe’s diplomatic agenda has been so distinctive and forcefully articulated in past years that it might be labeled as a doctrine capable of rivaling, and even of displacing, the doctrine of Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru that has famously charted Japan’s entire post-war international trajectory. In contrast to Abe’s more muscular international agenda, the so-called ‘Yoshida Doctrine’, forged in the aftermath of total defeat in the Pacific War, has long emphasized for Japan the need for a pragmatic and low-profile foreign policy, a highly constrained defense posture, reliance but not over-dependence on the US-Japan security treaty, and the expedient rebuilding of economic and diplomatic ties with East Asian neighbors.[iii]
UNESCO and the Framing of Japan's Meiji Era
UNESCO World Heritage Committee
June 28 - July 8, 2015, Bonn, Germany
The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 13, Issue. 26, No. 1, June 29, 2015
Hier die pdf-Version (mit allen Links)
History in a Box: UNESCO and the Framing of Japan’s Meiji Era
William Underwood
Japan has a great deal to be proud of regarding its rapid modernization and industrialization beginning in the mid-1800s, which launched the nation on the path to becoming the world’s second-largest economy scarcely one generation after a devastating war and the third-largest economy today.
But is it possible to tell this impressive, even inspirational, story while skipping over the deplorable middle chapters involving Japan’s massive use of forced labor during the Asia Pacific War?
That question is the crux of the controversy involving “Sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution,” a Japan-sponsored nomination now before the UNESCO World Heritage Committee that would grant World Heritage status to two dozen mines, ports, factories and shipyards located mainly in the nation’s southwest. In May 2015 an advisory body recommended that the UNESCO committee approve the Japanese proposal when it meets in Germany from June 28 to July 8.
2015: Stop the Revision
Security in Northeast Asia - JAPAN
Hier die pdf-Version zum Download
Siehe unten auch die englische und koreanische Version
Annulliert die Revision der Verteidigungsleitlinien für amerikanisch-japanische militärische Kooperation, die eine Bedrohung für die koreanische Halbinsel und den Weltfrieden darstellen!
„Er wird unter großen Völkern richten und viele Heiden zurechtweisen in fernen Landen. Sie werden ihre Schwerter zu Pflugscharen und ihre Spieße zu Sicheln machen. Es wird kein Volk wider das andere das Schwert erheben, und sie werden hinfort nicht mehr lernen, Krieg zu führen.“ (Micha 4:3)
Am 29. April 2015 hielten US-Präsident Obama und der japanische Premierminister Abe ein Spitzentreffen im Weißen Haus ab, bei dem sie sich auf eine Revision der ‚Verteidigungsleitlinien für amerikanisch-japanische militärische Kooperation‘ einigten. Dies betrifft insbesondere den Abbau geografischer Beschränkungen für die Bewegung japanischer Streitkräfte weltweit, einschließlich der koreanischen Halbinsel. Diese Revision verleiht der Erweiterung der Militärstärke Japans, das sich im Zweiten Weltkrieg als Kriegsverbrecher schuldig gemacht hat, Flügel, und wir können unser Entsetzen darüber, dass die USA dies zur Verstärkung ihrer militärischen Vormacht ausnutzen wollen, nicht verbergen.