Commentary by Jeff Kingston, director of Asian Studies, Temple University Japan. “Next month Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will attend the 60th commemoration of the 1955 Bandung Conference of Asian and African leaders in Jakarta… There are other reasons why Abe’s participation…
Presumably democratic governments have at times used states of emergency or “states of exception” (see Giorgio Agamben’s work) in order to ramp up militarily assertive rhetoric, and to claim the right or necessity to suspend or modify existing legal boundaries in order to increase their power.…
“The German chancellor and a retired American lawmaker are the latest to call on Tokyo to formally apologize to the now elderly women who were forced into Japanese military brothels during World War II.”
“A Japanese vice foreign minister told a U.N. meeting on the status of women on Tuesday that Japan is taking a sincere approach to the issue of “comfort women,” referring to violence against females involving the Japanese military during World…
“U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed his hope of seeing “a forward-looking, future-oriented vision” in a statement Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will issue this summer to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II.”
“German Chancellor Angela Merkel will skip a Moscow military parade in May commemorating the 70th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany but hold a separate ceremony at the Kremlin the next day, a balancing act showing the complexities of…
“China will welcome all national leaders to a military parade marking the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, the foreign minister has announced, the strongest sign yet that it could invite wartime enemy Japan.”
Kayoko Kimura: “Why do so few people in Japan make the link between the wider issue of sexual violence in conflict and the comfort women?… As the 70th anniversary of the end of the war approaches, Japan needs to be reminded that…
“China will hold a military parade to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of World War Two this year and invite the leaders of major countries involved in the war to attend, the foreign ministry said, events probably aimed at…