A review essay

Abstract

It was thirty-six years ago, on August 6, 1945, that Colonel Paul W. Tibbets and his crew, military men representing the United States in the Allied War against the Japanese Empire, flew their B29, Enola Gay, from the Tinian Air Base to Hiroshima in order to drop a 12.5 kiloton uranium 235 bomb dubbed “Little Boy” (after Franklin D. Roosevelt) on this enemy city. The hypocenter of the bomb was in the vicinity of Shima Hospital; the time, approximately 8:15 a.m. A few days later, on August 9, 1945, Don Albury and his crew left the Tinian Air Base to drop a 22 kiloton plutonium 239 bomb over Kokura, Kyushu, only to find a heavily clouded sky. “Fat Man” (after Winston Churchill) was thus destined to detonate over Nagasaki. The hypocenter of this bomb was in the vicinity of the main intersection in the township of Matsuyama; the time, approximately 11:02 a.m.     

“Never Again!” Women Hibakusha in Osaka

Abstract

In August 1945, the United States attacked the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the most catastrophic weapon in history: atomic bombs that caused more than 210,000 deaths by the end of 1945 (35 percent of the Hiroshima population and 25 percent in Nagasaki), and severe suffering for a large number of the more than 370,000 survivors.     

The atomic bomb and the citizens of Nagasaki

Abstract

Hiroshima is a universally recognized name today, but Nagasaki, the second city to suffer atomic bombing, is less well known, and in fact its destruction three days after Hiroshima seemed anticlimactic to many observers. The damage to both Japanese cities would be dwarfed in scale by any future nuclear holocaust, but the joint “Hiroshima-Nagasaki” experience, which changed the world forever, still constitutes the indispensable base of knowledge for an understanding of the human and environmental decimation which would be wrought by nuclear war. The way we choose to remember these two bombings will determine whether the human community can assimilate the meaning of these weapons before they are used again, and act decisively to spare our planet from the nuclear nightmare with which it is now threatened. This article is dedicated to helping cultivate the rationality, creative imagination and commitment to human welfare necessary to ensure that Nagasaki will be the last place on earth where nuclear weapons were ever used.     

The Mixed Temporalities of Transnationalism in Dreams of Speaking

This article explores the mixed temporalities inherent in Gail Jones’s treatment of transnational grief in Dreams of Speaking (2006). I examine the novel’s interests in modernity and temporality and show how the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, in the novel, creates grief that is shared across national boundaries. The novel explores the coexistence of the modern and the unmodern, and Jones exemplifies this in the spectral nature of grief; it haunts the two protagonists throughout Dreams of Speaking. This article reads the coexistence of modernity and the unmodern alongside the ways in which Japan unsettles Eurocentric notions of colonial modernity (with its insistence on shared temporalities of progress) by having been a colonial power as well as by undertaking substantial modernisation in the postwar period. I employ Harry Harootunian’s notion of “mixed temporalities” to show the transnational dimensions in the cross-cultural interaction this novel facilitates. I compare the novel’s treatment of the bomb, and of temporality, to Salvador Dalí’s The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory (1954) and highlight the transnational sentiments in Jones’s treatments of the tropes of water and resonance.     

Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) in the twenty-first century

In 1945 two bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki shook the world as something whose explosive power was some 200,000 times a one thousand ton TNT bomb. The extent of damage has been extensively discussed. An exchange of a megaton-range strategic bomb could wipe out the earth and its civilization. It is possible that with the passage of time, the analysis of WMD war has become intellectually less real. It is time to carefully study a possible WMD world war in the 2030s.     

Commonwealth Update

Abstract

There were clashes between protesters and the police after Mohamed Nasheed was replaced as president of the Maldives by his deputy, Mohammed Waheed Hassan, in what Nasheed said was a coup. A film aimed at raising awareness of the atrocities committed by Joseph Kony, leader of the notorious Lord's Resistance Army militia in Uganda, became an internet phenomenon, being seen by close to 100 million people in a month, but also drew fierce criticism. The Boko Haram Islamist uprising in Nigeria claimed hundreds more lives with the rebels rejecting offers to negotiate. Australia's prime minister, Julia Gillard, defeated a challenge to her leadership by her foreign minister, Kevin Rudd. Fears grew for the nascent democracy in Malawi as a prominent human rights lawyer and critic of President Bingu wa Mutharika was jailed. The king of Tonga, who introduced democracy to the south Pacific nation, died.     

Hiroshima poems by Toge Sankichi

Abstract

Extract

Gail Omvedt's piece, ostensibly on the World Bank, is actually an argument for liberalization as opposed to statist regimes. The following lines responding to her piece concern this larger issue. While sharing her critique of the dependency theory as well as some of her negative views on statist regimes, I have basic differences with her on a number of points in her discourse.     

Introduction to “People under feudalism”

Abstract

In June 1947, the Canadian diplomat and historian E. Herbert Norman was invited to address a memorial service for his father sponsored by citizens in Nagano, Japan. Norman's father had been a respected Methodist missionary in Nagano, and he himself had lived there until his late teens. In the context of the recent war and unfolding occupation and “democratization” of Japan, he chose to dwell upon several themes: the nature of feudal society and the feudal legacy in Japan; the plight and potentiality of the lower classes; and the hopes and prospects for a future, less repressive society.     

The limits of agency: Emily Hobhouse’s international activism and the politics of suffering

Abstract

This article pieces together the activism of the British welfare worker and feminist-pacifist Emily Hobhouse (1860–1926) during two largely unrecorded episodes of transnational activism: firstly, her ministry of Cornish miners in Virginia, Minnesota, in the United States; and secondly, her interventions during the period of reconstruction following the South African War (1899–1902). The article endeavors to contextualize Hobhouse’s activism and offer a broader understanding of the limitations and restraints on her actions. Ultimately, her activism required a platform that was in the gift of political actors and establishment figures, and dependent on fluctuations within specific political and bureaucratic situations. Based on close inspection of undocumented material in both South African and British archives, the article investigates Hobhouse’s repertoire of missionary and philanthropic roles within a wider context of humanitarian politics. It demonstrates how women’s activism and their behind-the-scenes politicking informed political decision-making in modern imperial and international affairs.     

Anticipating Future Capital: Regional Caste Contestations,Speculation and Silent Dispossession in Andhra Pradesh

ABSTRACT

In 2014, the state of Andhra Pradesh was bifurcated by the Indian government, leaving the truncated state without a capital city. A period of political uncertainty before bifurcation and the announcement of the new capital city created possibilities for land speculation and for the acceleration of the commodification of real estate in different parts of the state. Concentrating on Guntur-Vijayawada in the Coastal Andhra region and Donakonda town close to the Rayalaseema region, this article explores how speculative investments based on political calculations by members of regional elite castes translated into the emergence of competing regional investment zones as possible future choices of the capital city. Through an extended and largely ethnographic study, this article shows how caste politics and regional processes of land speculation led to land transfers without violent struggles between different groups. Rather, the cultural politics of regional differentiation and the economy of anticipation allowed a pragmatic convergence of interests to emerge, where acquisition of agricultural land was followed by silent dispossession.     

Review

Abstract

Certain subjects go beyond form. They're so big that anything but the most self-denying treatment might seem rude and presumptuous, and therefore our respect for them must express itself as simply and directly as possible. The nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, of course, have that awesome magnitude, as does the holocaust in Europe. When those subjects come up in conversation or in art, they have the power to silence us, to make us try to comprehend the most profound horrors we have created and experienced. Just a few minutes into John Junkerman's film, artist Toshi Maruki says quite directly that we are in hell, and the rest of the film chronicles the attempt that the Marukis, wife and husband artists, have made to get out of it.     

A tribute to Phyllis Andors, 1942–1992

Abstract

Phyllis Andors died at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City on 10 February 1992. In the late sixties Phyllis was one of the founding members of the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars that gave rise to the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars (BCAS), and in 1975 she edited as well as contributed an article and a book review to two BCAS special issues on women in Asia. Most recently, BCAS published her article “Women and Work in Shenzhen” in volume 20, number 3 (July–September 1988). Phyllis was a very active and much appreciated member of the BCAS editorial board since 1987, not only refereeing articles and contributing money but also taking on special projects such as investigating how BCAS might get grants and being the main editor of a proposed BCAS book about women in Asia. We at BCAS are grateful to Phyllis's husband, Steve, for providing us with much of this tribute to Phyllis so that our readers can join us in appreciating who she was and her unique contribution to those around her and the world.     

Introduction to “two languages,two souls”

Abstract

Morisaki Kazue is a poet, essayist, and chronicler of the lives and histories of Japan's minorities. One of her recent books, Karayuki-san (Asahi Shimbun, 1976), an oral history of the lives of the prostitutes who followed the Japanese armed forces during World War II, became a widely praised bestseller. The article that follows describes what must be understood as the central experience in Ms. Morisaki's life: her birth and childhood in Korea and the permanent influence this had on the structure of her life and thought.     

Centre for African renaissance studies,the academy,the state and civil society: Methodological implications of transdisciplinarity and the African perspective

Abstract

The Centre for African Renaissance Studies (CARS) at the University of South Africa was born in a political and social environment in which there is a new groundswell for a rebirth, where there are calls for ownership, accountability, excellence, responsiveness and substantive democracy on new terms. Surrounding the centre are the state, the academy and civil society, each with its limitations as well as possibilities for an institution that is established to foster, nourish and effect change in the context of the African Renaissance. The challenge before CARS is therefore one that involves the creation of new knowledge, analyses and interpretations of social reality on an ongoing basis. In working out its linkages and its strategies for dialogue, engagement and co‐determination around the past, present and future of Africa, with players such as the state, the academy and civil society in general, therefore, the centre needs of necessity to clarify its position, role and vision in the field of knowledge production. It is here that transdisciplinarity signifies a distinct methodology in knowledge generation, development and utilisation. This article argues that the nature of the crisis we face today is definitely no longer that of ‘economics’, ‘politics’ or ‘culture’ per se; neither is it, for that matter, a crisis of the humanities versus the natural sciences; but rather it is one in which there is a peculiar convergence of all these factors and which, together, form an entirety exceeding the sum of its parts.     

Role conflicts in foreign policy: Nigeria’s dilemma over Bakassi Peninsula*

ABSTRACT

Post independence President of Cameroon, Ahmadou Ahidjo, a Fulani, like his kith and kin in Northern Nigeria, was quite supportive of Nigeria in her war with the separatist Biafra. At the end of the war, he laboured to convince Nigeria to a boundary demarcation that would place Bakassi Peninsula firmly on the side of Cameroon. Nigeria as at 1975, ensured to remain grateful to an African country that helped her during the civil war. The show of gratitude from Nigeria triggered eventually, a bellicose relation with Cameroon. Though un-confessed, Nigeria was beset with several role conflicts in her border dispute with Cameroon, since the peninsula had been inhabited by Nigerians from the pre-colonial times. This paper examines the causes and manifestations of these conflicts. To do this, the role theory framework is used. It is revealed that Nigeria’s cognitive assertions were in conflict over her material interests on Bakassi Peninsula.     

“Don’t tell me this isn’t relevant all over again in its brand new same old way”: imagination,agitation, and raging against the machine in Ali Smith’s Spring

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the third novel in Ali Smith’s seasonal quartet, Spring. Using Achille Mbembe’s Necropolitics as a conceptual frame, I analyze Smith’s rendering of a Britain grappling with Brexit in times of transnational populism. As with Autumn and Winter, Smith’s prose is saturated with intertextual borrowings from pop and “high” culture, also interrogating the links between “nanoracism” and the “immunity and community” knot (Dillet). This paper reads Spring alongside Smith’s contribution to and advocacy of the Refugee Tales project regarding the diverse discourses surrounding migration, xenophobia, and indefinite detention. Smith’s writing traces the darkness of our populist present with its rhetorical and material violence, as well as the possibilities for creative response and resistance. I argue that her seasonal quartet to date and her work with Refugee Tales aesthetically and ethically defend the principle that human dignity, both individual and collective, rests on the ability to tell stories.     

“What is it that We Call the Nation”: Cecilia Lillian Tshabalala’s definition,diagnosis, and prognosis of the nation in a segregated South Africa

Abstract

This paper examines the ideology of Cecilia Lillian Tshabalala who spent 18 years in the United States from 1912 to 1930. Within two years of returning to South Africa, she founded the self-help group, the Daughters of Africa in 1932. Tshabalala used the Daughters and the widely read newspapers—Bantu World and Ilanga laseNatal—to define, construct, and diagnose the African nation she found materially and socially wanting upon her return. Tshabalala’s experience abroad and her exposure to African-American women’s clubs and her participation at the annual Chautauqua conferences in upstate New York provided the platform for her to conduct her own social service gospel in segregated South Africa. This essay, which argues that religion served as Tshabalala’s antidote to all the social ills plaguing the African nation, traces the evolution of her ideology by discussing how she was in conversation with African-American and South African male movements, and also women on the African continent.     

Disarmament,with special reference to Asia

On February 20 M. V. dc Korostovetz read a paper on Soviet Russia and her Southern Neighbours. The subject was divided into four parts: (a) The general trend of Russia's foreign policy, which, whether Imperial or Bolshevik, has differed in method rather than aim; (b) the States from Turkey to China, lying to the south of the Soviet block, with special attention to Chinese Turkestan; (c) the Ukrainian attitude to Communism; and (d) an outline of the new canals planned to make the Volga the chief waterway of Russia at the expense of the Don, and, with the refortification of the Straits, to turn the Black Sea into a mare clausum.     

The American-Japanese ‘Co-prosperity sphere’

Abstract

For many years Jane Hamilton-Merritt has carried out a publicity campaign in support of Vang Pao and the so-called “Lao resistance,” while condemning the government of the Lao People's Democratic Republic (Lao PDR) and anyone who challenges her own views. Hamilton-Merritt has demonstrated great effectiveness in marshaling the mainstream media, reputable public figures, and otherwise respected institutions as the channels or even mouthpieces for her campaign. The publication of Tragic Mountains highlights her ongoing efforts to find acceptance for her fanciful vision of the recent history of Laos (and the United States). Her success in this campaign has been possible only because few in her audience know the facts behind her distorted misrepresentations. In this book, Hamilton-Merritt constructs a fantastical account of “the Hmong, the Americans, and the secret wars for Laos” that bears little relation to the truth of the events and personalities she discusses.     

A woman patriot and fighter for Italy's unity and freedom: Antonietta De Pace in Southern Italy

SUMMARY

In the context of the history of Italy's Risorgimento and unification, Maria Sofia Corciulo recounts the adventurous life, the clandestine struggle, and the political significance of Antonietta De Pace (1818–1894), the leading figure among several women patriots in the kingdom of Naples during the period of pre-parliamentary republican struggle. Her trial after capture in 1855 caused an international sensation, and in 1860 she entered Naples with Garibaldi's triumphal army. She devoted her entire life to Italian unification, and her later years to improving the social, economic and cultural position of women. Her career suggests that, in the exceptional circumstances of independent women like her and the political turbulence of the age, nineteenth-century Italian society was prepared to allow a greater degree of equality to women than before.