Fwd: Japan Focus Newsletter

[Aaron Gerow]

Note a new article at Japan Focus regarding the spate of films coming  
out about the Nanking Massacre:

http://www.japanfocus.org

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Mark Selden <ms44 at cornell.edu>
> Date: December 10, 2007 5:00:26 AM EST
> To: aaron.gerow at yale.edu
> Subject: Japan Focus Newsletter
> Reply-To: ms44 at cornell.edu
>
>
>  An Asia Pacific Newsletter
>  New Articles Posted December 10, 2007
>  in this issue
> David McNeill, Look Back in Anger. Filming the Nanjing Massacre
> Takashi YOSHIDA, Revising the Past, Complicating the Future:
> Toru Uno, C. Douglas Lummis, Ruth Benedict's Obituary for Japanese  
> Culture: an exchange
> Dai Qing, Thirsty Dragon Prepares for the Olympics
> Malcolm Cook, Recasting Japan-Australia Relations in the 21st Century
> Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan Must Prepare for War Between U.S. and North  
> Korea. North Korea's Nuclear Threat
>
> Greetings!
> See the top ten articles at Japan Focus in the menu bar on the left.
>
> Japan Focus is a peer-reviewed e-journal and archive on the Asia  
> Pacific. Its fully indexed site contains more than nine hundred  
> articles. In addition to Japan Focus exclusives, it provides  
> translations from Japanese and other languages as well as reprints  
> of important articles. The coordinators of Japan Focus are Andrew  
> DeWit, Laura Hein, Gavan McCormack, David McNeill, Mark Selden,  
> Yuki Tanaka and William Underwood. Contact Japan Focus by email at  
> info at japanfocus.org
>
> David McNeill, Look Back in Anger. Filming the Nanjing Massacre
>
> A crop of new movies released to commemorate the 70th anniversary  
> of the Nanjing Massacre is set to again dredge up the controversy  
> about one of the 20th Century's most notorious events. How will  
> Japan react? One way to learn what happened in one of history's  
> most noxious but disputed episodes is to ask Mizushima Satoru.  
> After what he calls "exhaustive research" on the seizure of the  
> then Chinese capital by Japanese troops in 1937, estimated to have  
> cost anywhere from 20,000 to 300,000 lives, Mizushima offers a very  
> precise figure for the number of illegal deaths: zero. "The  
> evidence for a massacre is faked," explains the president of right- 
> wing webcaster Channel Sakura. "It is Chinese communist propaganda."
>
> David McNeill writes regularly for a number of publications  
> including the Irish Times and the Chronicle of Higher Education. He  
> is a Japan Focus coordinator. This is a substantially expanded  
> version of an article that appeared at The Japan Times on December  
> 6, 2007. Posted at Japan Focus on December 6, 2007.
>
> Read More...
>
>
> Takashi YOSHIDA, Revising the Past, Complicating the Future:
>
> In this three part series, we introduce historical museums in Japan  
> and their role in public education. Following this introduction to  
> peace museums, Ms. Nishino Rumiko, a founder of the Women's Active  
> Museum on War and Peace (WAM), introduces WAM's activities and the  
> 2000 Citizens Tribunal on the 'comfort women'. The final article is  
> by Mr. Kim Yeonghwan, the former associate director of Grassroots  
> House Peace Museum who describes the peace and reconciliation  
> programs that the Museum sponsors. Both museums are privately  
> funded and modest in size. One may perhaps call them micro museums,  
> as their exhibition spaces are limited. What is noteworthy,  
> however, is that both museums display artifacts that preserve  
> memories of the victims of Japan's colonialism and devastating  
> atrocities during the Asia-Pacific War; that is, the war that began  
> in 1931 when Imperial Japan invaded Manchuria, and ended with  
> Japan's defeat in 1945. The Women's Active Museum is dedicated to  
> the women forced into sexual slavery. The displays of the  
> Grassroots House Peace Museum relate not only to the so-called  
> comfort women, but also to Japanese atrocities in China, such as  
> the Nanjing Massacre. Both museums often organize public forums to  
> educate the public about the atrocities committed by the Japanese  
> state during the war.
> According to one study, more than 220 museums in Japan deal, in  
> whole or in part, with the wars that Japan fought between 1868 and  
> 1945.[1] The majority of these museums concern the Asia-Pacific  
> War. The impressive number of diverse museums devoted to the Asia- 
> Pacific War suggests that Japanese society has yet to achieve a  
> consensus on the history and memory of the war.
>
> Takashi Yoshida is assistant professor of history at Western  
> Michigan University and author of The Making of the "Rape of  
> Nanking": History and Memory in Japan, China, and the United  
> States. This article was written for Japan Focus. Posted on  
> December 2, 2007.
>
> Read more . . . »
>
>
> Toru Uno, C. Douglas Lummis, Ruth Benedict's Obituary for Japanese  
> Culture: an exchange
>
> What is the nature of Japanese Culture? Japan Focus published  
> Douglas Lummis's critique of Ruth Benedict's Chrysanthemum and the  
> Sword, arguably the most influential work ever written on Japanese  
> culture. Below find a response from Toru Uno and Lummis's  
> rejoinder. Japan Focus welcomes further contributions to this  
> debate. Find the original article here: http://japanfocus.org/ 
> products/details/2474
> This exchange between Uno Toru and C. Douglas Lummis was posted at  
> Japan Focus on December 4, 2007.
>
> Read more . . . »
>
>
> Dai Qing, Thirsty Dragon Prepares for the Olympics
>
> The picture on this page was taken by a People's Pictorial  
> photographer in 1953. The sixty-year-old Mao Zedong had just  
> finished writing a calligraphic inscription that read "Celebrate  
> the successful completion of the Guanting Reservoir Project." The  
> man sitting next to him was my father-in-law, Wang Sen, the project  
> manager for the dam. Mao and Wang Sen in 1953 The photograph was  
> probably published in some newspaper or other around that time.  
> Even if I'd seen it, I wouldn't have paid any attention to it. I  
> certainly never imagined that fifteen years later I'd marry the  
> project manager's son, Wang Dejia, thereby becoming the daughter-in- 
> law of a man once shown relaxing on the bank of the dam, chatting  
> and laughing with the "Great Leader."
> One of China's leading critics of the Three Gorge mega-dam, Dai  
> Qing, offers an assessment of the dam and its consequences.
>
> Dai Qing is a writer and an activist who has long fought the Three  
> Gorge dam project. This letter appeared in The New York Review of  
> Books. Volume 54, Number 19 · December 6, 2007. Posted at Japan  
> Focus on December 3, 2007.
>
> Read more . . . »
>
>
> Malcolm Cook, Recasting Japan-Australia Relations in the 21st Century
>
> On 12 October the Lowy Institute hosted a conference to analyse the  
> recent decision by the Australian and Japanese governments to  
> launch free trade agreement negotiations and to sign the joint  
> declaration on security cooperation.
> Malcolm Cook's summary of the discussion addresses the important  
> and neglected subject of the Japan-Australia relationship. Gavan  
> McCormack comments.
>
> Malcolm Cook is program director of the Asia Pacific Region at the  
> Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney. Posted at Japan  
> Focus on December 4, 2007.
>
> Read more... »
>
>
> Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan Must Prepare for War Between U.S. and North  
> Korea. North Korea's Nuclear Threat
>
> Once the closest U.S. ally on North Korean issues, Japan is now  
> feeling alone and isolated. The Bush administration has reversed  
> its stance toward Pyongyang and appears to be on the verge of  
> removing the country from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list.  
> China and South Korea are racing to invest money into North Korea.  
> Russia backs both inter-Korean engagement and North Korea's  
> integration into the global economy. Still Japan holds back. Tokyo  
> has expressed considerable displeasure over Washington's decision  
> on the terrorism list, as the abduction issue continues to cast a  
> heavy shadow over policymaking in Japan. Tokyo went so far as to  
> send a delegation to Washington to plead its case in November
> This article appeared in The Yomiuri Shimbun on Nov. 18, 2007. It  
> is the sixth and final installment in a series focusing on North  
> Korea's threat to Japan and future tasks for the nation's security  
> policy. Posted at Japan Focus on December 7, 2007.
>
> Read more . . . »
>
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