Conserving the Heritage of Shame: War Remembrance and War-related Sites in Contemporary Japan

Abstract

This paper focuses on the formation of place-based war memories in contemporary Japan by examining the Japanese grassroots movements to preserve war-related sites within the local and national politics of “cultural property,” and the developments in which the Ichigayadai Building No. 1 in Tokyo and the Matsushiro Underground Imperial General Headquarters Complex in Nagano are conserved to recall the memories of the Asia-Pacific War in Japan. Both places embody the war of aggression carried out by Imperial Japan in the twentieth century. The Ichigaya site was home to the Imperial General Headquarters during the war. The Matsushiro site refers to gigantic underground shelters and tunnels built at the end of the war to relocate the Imperial General Headquarters of the Ichigaya site. Both sites gained social and national attention in the 1990s by raising questions of how to convey memories of suffering caused as well as suffering experienced to the next generation. By introducing the struggles to conserve war-related sites, I argue that contemporary Japan's public memory-making and -remaking processes are shaped by contestants to reclaim places.     

战后日本修宪的态势及其背后的美国因素

本文以二战后日本和平宪法为切入点,主要分析日本国内关于修宪与护宪的争议及其历史原因,并揭示日本修宪的态势及其背后的重要外因--美国因素所起的作用.在此基础上,根据美国的全球战略利益考量以及日美同盟的特殊关系来论证日本存在着不可遏制的修宪趋势.     

Public Opinion Surveys and USA Foreign Policy Towards Latin America in the Second World War

In this paper, the roles of public opinion polls and agency in foreign policymaking are examined. Based on documents uncovered from the National Archives and Rockefeller Archive Center, this paper presents a more comprehensive picture of the history of public opinion surveys and the shaping of US bureaucracy in their relation to foreign affairs. Further, the paper contends that policymakers are interested in public views pertaining to foreign policy issues, but that private interests (serving their own interpretations of national interest) shape public views, using new techniques as guiding tools.     

二战前中马贸易关系中的华侨因素

二战以前,马来亚的华侨不仅人口众多、经济实力雄厚,而且其经济活动遍及马来亚的生产领域和分配领域的各个方面,因而在对马来亚的社会经济发展产生重要影响的同时,也对中国与马来亚的贸易关系发展产生了巨大的影响,在沟通和增进中国与马来亚的贸易往来方面具有举足轻重的地位和不可替代的作用.     

20世纪90年代以来日本财政政策失效成因

二战后,日本通过实施凯恩斯的积极财政政策,实现了经济的高速增长。然而,伴随着20世纪90年代经济的长期萧条,传统的财政政策失效。本文通过巴罗模型检验了日本各项财政支出对经济增长的影响。实证分析结果表明：公共投资效果不佳成为日本财政政策失效的主要原因,而优化公共投资结构、提高公共投资乘数、调整财政支出结构,防范财政风险可以提高日本财政政策效应。     

In search of real justice for Africa and Africans,and her/their descendants in a world of justice,injustices and impunity

Abstract

The quest for justice by Africans and peoples of African descent, wherever they may be in the world, is arguably one of the most daunting mental, psychological, moral, legal and material challenges facing humanity in general, and the peoples of Africa in particular. It is a question of whether African peoples demand justice for the wrongs committed against Africa and its peoples over the last 500 years, or whether Africa and African peoples accept complicity in the global impunity enjoyed by the perpetrators of those injustices, and by doing so diminish the significance of contemporary enthusiasm for global justice. Centralising the question of impunity to date for horrendous crimes, gross human and peoples’ rights violations and other injustices against Africa and Africans is not meant to distract Africans in Africa and the diaspora from the quest, in the 21^st century, for a new Africa that we have a historical responsibility to build and, by doing so, to ensure that the past is not repeated. Acknowledging the wrongs of the past and making symbolic reparative actions for those wrongs are essential for ensuring that the pursuit for a better world of justice is not built on top of underlying sinkholes and on the waste dumps of past injustices. Critical breakthroughs, such as the commitment enshrined in the Constitutive Act of the African Union (2000), on crimes against humanity, war crimes, genocide and the prohibition of unconstitutional change of government, must be vigorously pursued to their logical conclusion. To do so requires an understanding of where Africans, in their relationship with peoples in the rest of the world, are coming from. Smaller parts of the world have experienced similar heinous injustices with impunity, and Africa's pursuit of real justice also applies to those states and their peoples. Corrective or reparative justice is needed to clear the path for the meaningful and honest promotion of real global justice in the making of the future. It is imperative that the making of the African Renaissance confront real global justice for the sake of the past, the present and the future.