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Tag Archives: Germany

Silent Autumns: Pesticides Push Japan’s Iconic Red Dragonfly to Extinction

The mesmerizing sight of the aki-akane, meaning ‘autumn red’ dragonfly, is a traditional symbol of autumn in Japan’s rice farming landscape. However, the species has been rapidly disappearing in recent years and has now nearly vanished over most of Japan. The reason, according to scientists, is the increased use in rice farming of a class of broad-spectrum insecticides that have been the subject of bans in the European Union and China.

The Campaign to Overwrite the Comfort Women Past

In 1993, Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono made the most full-throated admission and apology acknowledging that Japan had coerced women across Asia into being sex slaves—euphemistically referred to as “Comfort Women”—for the Japanese military during the Pacific War. More recently, however, conservative politicians such as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Osaka Mayor Hirofumi Yoshimura have engaged in a campaign that is less about carving out a path toward reconciliation than to overwrite memories of an unsavory past.