Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has been honored, together with South Korean President Yoon Suk-Yeol, with a John F. Kennedy “Profile in Courage Award,” despite the fact that he personally has been unwilling to take any political risks to improve Japan-South Korea relations.
This SNA Speakeasy features Satoko Norimatsu on the theme of “Japan’s War Memory and the Hiroshima A-Bomb.”
Ryuichi Hirokawa has covered war, AIDS from contaminated blood products, nuclear power plant accidents, and other societal problems on the front lines for half a century as a photojournalist advocating human rights. The weekly magazine Shukan Bunshun published an article in its issue that went on sale on December 26 (January 3-10, 2019 issue) revealing that Hirokawa abused his superior position to engage in non-consensual sexual activities with, take nude photographs of, and otherwise sexually exploit aspiring female photojournalists under his tutelage.
In mid-2018, Okinawa’s anti-base movement faces a crisis. The struggle to resist construction of a US military base in Nago City’s Henoko district has never been easy. It confronts two governments, Japan and the United States, that deploy all instruments of state power–police, propaganda, intervening in local elections—to get their way.
