history and memory… Pu Yi as Witness 12 Apr 201512 Apr 2015 In his 1946 testimony at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (the Tokyo Trials), Pu Yi, the former Emperor of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo, proved to be…
history and memory… Keeping Tabs on Revisionist Groups Active on the ‘Comfort Women’ Issue 3 Apr 2015 Gaining even a cursory familiarity with the statements and logic of some right-wing revisionists groups in Japan is a salutary experience. While most Japanese people (judging from polling data) find…
EU-East Asia relations… Angela Merkel and Japan’s Wartime Past 11 Mar 201511 Mar 2015 The German Chancellor was in Tokyo for a couple of eventful days. Although Merkel sees Abe Shinzo regularly, she noted before leaving that she has not been to Japan, the country that…
history and memory… Lisa Yoneyama in Toronto; Readings on the ‘Comfort Women’ System 7 Mar 20157 Mar 2015 Yesterday I had a chance to meet briefly in Toronto with Lisa Yoneyama, who is one of the most prevalent scholars working today on issues of transnational war memory politics…
Japan… On Heartbreak, and Bix on Hirohito 30 Sep 201430 Sep 2014 In our culture of oversharing and social media, there is such an excess of verbiage that the words 'must read' or 'essential' have basically lost their meaning. The same is…
East Asian modernity… Pan-Asianism and the Japanese Wartime Empire 9 Jun 201412 Mar 2016 This past spring, upon the invitation of Peter Anderson, I gave a lecture to all of the first-year History students at Leeds University on the following topic, as part of…
Art… Enemies and Allies in North Korean Art and Archives, 1948-1952 29 Mar 201429 Mar 2014 This is the introduction to a paper which I prepared for an Association of Asian Studies panel on captured wartime documents in Korea, Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting, Philadelphia,…
Korean War… Leaflets from the Sky 26 Mar 2014 The UN Commission of Inquiry’s up-close-and-personal warning to Kim Jong-un may have been bold, but it was hardly unprecedented. In October 1950, US/UN field commander Douglas MacArthur dumped leaflets all…
North Korea… North Korea and China’s Response to the UN Commission of Inquiry Report 25 Mar 2014 North Korea has ever been the subject of journalistic inquiry, but in the past couple of years things seem to have hit a kind of new high point. Likewise, public consciousness in…
China… Hatoyama in Nanking 17 Jan 2013 Hatoyama Yukio [ 鳩山由紀夫] is the former Prime Minister of Japan (2009-2010) and the grandson of Hatoyama Ichiro [鳩山 一郎]. Today, he continues on a somewhat quixotic but surely very necessary…
