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This book is a narrative account of the criminal prosecution of three peaceful protesters in Japan during the Iraq War, telling the inside story of their arrests and trial and examines the larger issues raised by the police crackdown on these anti-war protesters. Based on interviews with defendants, lawyers and eyewitnesses, and other Japanese language sources, the book carries rich descriptions of the individuals at the heart of the story, including the charismatic leader of the Tachikawa Tent Village who has been protesting since U.S. military forces were stationed in her hometown in the early post-war era. Authored by an attorney who has researched and written on Japanese legal issues for more than three decades and was the plaintiff in a suit that made constitutional history by opening Japan's courts to free reporting, this book offers expert insights into Japan's evolution as a democratic society. Illustrating the sharp political conflict that has deeply affected Japan's defence policy for decades, this book will be of huge interest to scholars and students of Comparative Law, Peace Studies, Japanese Society and Modern Asian History.
The prewar history of the Japanese intelligence community demonstrates how having power over much, but insight into little can have devastating consequences. Its postwar history—one of limited Japanese power despite growing insight—has also been problematic for national security. In Special Duty Richard J. Samuels dissects the fascinating history of the intelligence community in Japan. Looking at the impact of shifts in the strategic environment, technological change, and past failures, he probes the reasons why Japan has endured such a roller-coaster ride when it comes to intelligence gathering and analysis, and concludes that the ups and downs of the past century—combined with growin...
Nearly forty years ago the US Congress passed the landmark Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) giving the public the right to government documents. This 'right to know' has been used over the past decades to challenge overreaching Presidents and secretive government agencies. The example of transparency in government has served as an example to nations around the world spawning similar statutes in fifty-nine countries. This 2006 book examines the evolution of the move toward openness in government. It looks at how technology has aided the disclosure and dissemination of information. The author tackles the question of whether the drive for transparency has stemmed the desire for government secrecy and discusses how many governments ignore or frustrate the legal requirements for the release of key documents. Blacked Out is an important contribution during a time where profound changes in the structure of government are changing access to government documents.
Environmental disasters or other large-scale disruptive events often trigger the emergence of social movements demanding social and/or political change. This study investigates mobilization processes at the meso level of the Japanese anti-nuclear movement after the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant caused by the Great East Japan Earthquake and subsequent tsunami waves on March 11, 2011. To capture such meso level movement dynamics – which so far have played only a minor role in research on social movement mobilization – the study presents an analytical model based on premises from political process theory, network theory, and relational sociology. This model i...
"A joint publication of the Social Science Research Council and New York University Press."
"Drawing on work in a range of disciplines-including history, anthropology, demography, development, environmental studies, political studies, health, sociology and the arts-this work approaches East Asia from new perspectives.The book looks at contemporary Japan and Korea and focuses on many facets of Chinese culture, artistic production, economic development, digital issues, education and international collaboration" -
Poetics and Justice in America, Japan, and Taiwan shows how entitlements are implicated in all areas of life—human and nonhuman—that poetry reaches. Through a creative adaptation of Badiou’s philosophical framing, this book argues that poetry matters as a form of media particularly suited to integrating diverse fields of knowledge and attention in newspapers, Tweets, and performance as well as volumes of poetry. Recasting intertextuality as more relational than referential, the author argues for the importance of poetry in realizing how social change and ecological justice are bound up in our orientations of affiliation. Each chapter focuses on particular sets of problems engaged by po...
While many transnational histories of the nuclear arms race have been written, Kate Brown provides the first definitive account of the great plutonium disasters of the United States and the Soviet Union. In Plutopia, Brown draws on official records and dozens of interviews to tell the extraordinary stories of Richland, Washington and Ozersk, Russia-the first two cities in the world to produce plutonium. To contain secrets, American and Soviet leaders created plutopias--communities of nuclear families living in highly-subsidized, limited-access atomic cities. Fully employed and medically monitored, the residents of Richland and Ozersk enjoyed all the pleasures of consumer society, while nearb...
This book offers a comprehensive interpretive study of the role of law in contemporary Japan. Haley argues that the weakness of legal controls throughout Japanese history has assured the development and strength of informal community controls based on custom and consensus to maintain order--an order characterized by remarkable stability, with an equally significant degree of autonomy for individuals, communities, and businesses. Haley concludes by showing how Japan's weak legal system has reinforced preexisting patterns of extralegal social control, thus explaining many of the fundamental paradoxes of political and social life in contemporary Japan.
Japan is the world's No. 2 economy, greater in GDP than Britain and France together and almost double that of China. It is also the most durable, generous, and unquestioning ally of the US, attaching priority to its Washington ties over all else. In Client State, Gavan McCormack examines the current transformation of Japan, designed to meet the demands from Washington that Japan become the "Great Britain of the Far East." Exploring postwar Japan's relationship with America, he contends that US pressure has been steadily applied to bring Japan in line with neoliberal principles. The Bush administration's insistence on Japan's thorough subordination has reached new levels, and is an agenda heavily in the American, rather than the Japanese, national interest. It includes comprehensive institutional reform, a thorough revamp of the security and defense relationship with the US, and-alarmingly-vigorous pursuit of Japan's acquisition of nuclear weapons.