Speaking Out with JAPAN Forward

Listen in as Ed Odeven and Jason Halayko chat with the JAPAN Forward editorial team in a discussion on April’s  trending sports headlines in Japan that have caught the attention of fans around the world.

Ed Odeven is a longtime sports journalist with over 20 years of experience and is the co-founder of JAPAN Forward’s SportsLook. Odeven writes a couple original columns, such as ODDS and EVENS and JAPAN SPORTS NOTEBOOK, and hosts a podcast called, Sports Talk. 

Jason Halayko is a professional photographer who also writes the column [A Photographer’s Notes], retelling his recent photo shoots, great photography tips and equipment reviews. Halayko was the lead photographer at X Games Japan for its inaugural event.

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BASKETBALL | Alvark Tokyo Hold off Pesky Gunma Crane Thunders to Complete Series Sweep

BASEBALL | Marines’ Roki Sasaki Pulled After Eight Perfect Innings in Start After His Perfect Game

EDITORIAL | Sasaki’s Perfect Game a Lesson in Skills, Courage, and Power

[ODDS and EVENS] Roki Sasaki’s Perfect Game Provided Exciting Display Of His Pitching Prowess

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Listen in as Dr. Monika Chansoria chats with the JAPAN Forward editorial team in a discussion on Sri Lanka’s economic crisis, how it accumulated its heavy burden of debt, and what steps can be taken by this geographically strategic island nation as it faces one of the worst economic failures in modern history.

Dr. Monika Chansoria is a senior fellow at The Japan Institute of International Affairs in Tokyo. She specializes in contemporary Asian security and weapons’ proliferation issues, nuclear strategy, and Great Power politics in the Indo-Pacific. A prolific analyst and writer, find her essays and reports here on JAPAN Forward.

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Sri Lanka’s Economic Crisis Leads to Strategic Gains for Beijing

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Success of the U.S. SALPIE Initiative for Smaller Islands Needs Japan’s Help, Too

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Join the conversation live every week. The announcement will be made on our Twitter account and we’re typically hosting the event at 2:00 PM JST either on Thursdays or Fridays. Feel free to share any suggestions in our comment section below.

Listen in as Sheila Cliffe chats with the JAPAN Forward editorial team in a discussion on how kimono are evolving now and as part of Japan’s innovation throughout the times.

Sheila Cliffe is a professor emerita at Jumonji Gakuen Women's University in Japan. A kimono researcher, author and stylist in Tokyo, she has lectured at conferences, museums and events in Japan, England, Hawaii and South Korea, and is one of the first non-native Japanese people to hold an official kimono dressing and teaching license. 

Find her column, “Kimono Style” on JAPAN Forward.

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[Kimono Style] Tokyo Dyers Welcome the Spring

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[Kimono Style] Try Your Own Creative Kimono for Sparkling Holidays

Join the conversation live every week. The announcement will be made on our Twitter account and we’re typically hosting the event at 2:00 PM JST either on Thursdays or Fridays. Feel free to share any suggestions in our comment section below.

Listen in as Dr. Jagannath Panda chats with the JAPAN Forward editorial team in a discussion on Japan’s opportunity to deepen ties with nations of the European Union amidst Russia's war in Ukraine.

Dr. Jagannath Panda is currently the head of Stockholm Centre for South Asian and Indo-Pacific Affairs at the Institute for Security & Development Policy in Sweden. He is deeply focused on Indo-Pacific affairs and relations of the region with Europe, and is the author of the “Asia’s Next Page” column on JAPAN Forward.

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[Asia’s Next Page] In Search of an EU-India-Japan Trilateral

[Asia’s Next Page] The Revitalizing of Japan’s Burgeoning European Connections

[Asia’s Next Page] Why Tokyo Needs a Renewed Outreach in the Nordic Region

[Asia’s Next Page] Consolidating Japan’s Economic Diplomacy with the European Union

Join the conversation live every week. The announcement will be made on our Twitter account and we’re typically hosting the event at 2:00 PM JST either on Thursdays or Fridays. Feel free to share any suggestions in our comment section below.

Listen in as Davide Rossi chats with the JAPAN Forward editorial team sharing insights about transitioning to Japan, and some of the many hurdles prospective international students face.

Davide Rossi is the CEO and co-founder of Go! Go! World, an organization with the objective of helping international students understand the entry rules and support for making their experience in Japan the best possible. They offer services for other countries, including Italy, Spain and South Korea. The organization has accommodated over 8000 students who have come to Japan, including 1500 in 2019 alone.

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[How to Start Life in Japan] on JAPAN Forward

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Prioritizing Students, Japan Increases Daily Immigration from 5,000 to 7,000

Join the conversation live every week. The announcement will be made on our Twitter account and typically hosting the event at 2:00 PM JST either on Thursdays or Fridays. Feel free to share any suggestions in our comment section below.

 

Listen in as the JAPAN Forward editorial team and German journalist Agnes Tandler chat about her career as a seasoned foreign correspondent covering key conflict stories in the Middle East and several parts of Asia before she arrived in Japan, life in Japan, and what’s coming up in her career.

 

 

Recommended Stories by Agnes Tandler for JAPAN Forward:

* In Hokkaido Town of Yoichi, the Best Whisky You Can Never Try

* A Vanishing Culture: Japan’s Ainu People are Finally Getting a National Museum – But will Visitors Come?

* Finding the Rhythm of the Seasons in Sapporo’s Coronavirus Gardens

* ‘Healthy Soul Food’ Hokkaido’s Soup Curry Creates a Frenzy

* Inca Awakening, Shadow Queen, Northern Ruby: Hokkaido Potatoes Get a Fancy Makeover

What Japan should seek three-quarters of a century after World War II is to break away from the Yalta systemーa framework for the postwar international order, including the treatment of Japan, based on a secret agreement reached between the United States, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union at their conference in Yalta on the Crimea Peninsula in February 1945. 

 

The Yalta agreement was a secret pact, and some countries subjected to the system were not represented in the conference. Given that, I would also note that the Yalta system runs counter to international law.

 

 

Mongolia Divided under Yalta

 

Despite its absence from the Yalta conference, Japan was subjected to the post-war system decided there. It was forced to hand over the four northern islands, which are its inherent territories, to the Soviet Union. This was an unreasonable treatment for a defeated country.

 

RELATED ARTICLE: Post-war Remembrance: Russia Stole Japan’s Northern Territories 75 Years Ago

 

Another country subjected to the Yalta system was Mongolia, which was among the victorious countries. The country is geographically divided by the Gobi Desert into southern and northern parts. Although Mongolia became independent from China’s Qing Dynasty in 1911, early on Northern Mongolia was put into the Russian sphere of influence and Southern Mongolia into the Japanese sphere. 

 

Later, Southern Mongolia became part of Manchukuo and the Mongolia autonomous region (or Mengjiang), and followed the Japanese-type modernization path. Northern Mongolia made nation-building efforts with support from the Soviet Union under the Western model. 

 

The two Mongolias shared the vision of a unified Mongolia and struggled to realize the vision.

 

An opportunity to do so came in August 1945. Northern Mongolia, or the Mongolian People’s Republic, cooperated with the Soviet Union in penetrating into Southern Mongolia and Manchuria, liberating Mongolians from the Japanese and Chinese rule. A Mongolian government delegation entered Southern Mongolia along with military forces and launched reconstruction efforts, while leading local people. 

 

Then came the revelation of the secret Yalta agreement to divide Mongolians as at present.

 

Postwar Japan quickly revived itself, becoming an industrial power. Southern Mongolia, for its part, was left as a Chinese colony. It’s people were economically exploited, and its nomadic civilization diminished. Tens of thousands of intellectuals and military officers nurtured under the Japanese rule were cruelly purged for cooperation with Japan.

 

 

Engagement With Former Sphere of Influence Countries

 

Seventy five years after its devastating defeat, Japan has now emerged as a Free World leader. Japan should recognize that the time has come, not only to take back the four northern islands lost under the Yalta Agreement, but also to proactively engage with people in its former colonies and sphere of influence.

 

Colonies should not satisfy themselves with mere independence from their rulers. There are many things to learn through interaction with former colonial masters about how modern nations should be. Taiwan, with which Japan had maintained diplomatic relations over a long time, has become a model nation in Asia. France and Britain have proactively engaged with their former colonies, contributing to the democratization and economic development of those countries.

 

Mongolians, Tibetans and Uighurs have never seen Japan or Western countries as enemies, but rather pursued their respective goals of self determination and independence from the old empire of China. These goals have not been accomplished yet. 

 

Japan and the world are liable to help these people. It is time for Japan to amend its constitution and contribute to building new international order. It should not miss this opportunity.

 

(A version of this article was first published by the Japan Institute for National Fundamentals, Speaking Out #709 (Special Contribution) on August 11, 2020.)  

 

Author: Yang Haiying

Yang Haiying, also known as Akira Ohno, is an author and a professor at Shizuoka University. He is from Southern Mongolia and a naturalized Japanese citizen.

 

What Japan should seek three-quarters of a century after World War II is to break away from the Yalta systemーa framework for the postwar international order, including the treatment of Japan, based on a secret agreement reached between the United States, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union at their conference in Yalta on the Crimea Peninsula in February 1945. 

 

The Yalta agreement was a secret pact, and some countries subjected to the system were not represented in the conference. Given that, I would also note that the Yalta system runs counter to international law.

 

 

Mongolia Divided under Yalta

 

Despite its absence from the Yalta conference, Japan was subjected to the post-war system decided there. It was forced to hand over the four northern islands, which are its inherent territories, to the Soviet Union. This was an unreasonable treatment for a defeated country.

 

RELATED ARTICLE: Post-war Remembrance: Russia Stole Japan’s Northern Territories 75 Years Ago

 

Another country subjected to the Yalta system was Mongolia, which was among the victorious countries. The country is geographically divided by the Gobi Desert into southern and northern parts. Although Mongolia became independent from China’s Qing Dynasty in 1911, early on Northern Mongolia was put into the Russian sphere of influence and Southern Mongolia into the Japanese sphere. 

 

Later, Southern Mongolia became part of Manchukuo and the Mongolia autonomous region (or Mengjiang), and followed the Japanese-type modernization path. Northern Mongolia made nation-building efforts with support from the Soviet Union under the Western model. 

 

The two Mongolias shared the vision of a unified Mongolia and struggled to realize the vision.

 

An opportunity to do so came in August 1945. Northern Mongolia, or the Mongolian People’s Republic, cooperated with the Soviet Union in penetrating into Southern Mongolia and Manchuria, liberating Mongolians from the Japanese and Chinese rule. A Mongolian government delegation entered Southern Mongolia along with military forces and launched reconstruction efforts, while leading local people. 

 

Then came the revelation of the secret Yalta agreement to divide Mongolians as at present.

 

Postwar Japan quickly revived itself, becoming an industrial power. Southern Mongolia, for its part, was left as a Chinese colony. It’s people were economically exploited, and its nomadic civilization diminished. Tens of thousands of intellectuals and military officers nurtured under the Japanese rule were cruelly purged for cooperation with Japan.

 

 

Engagement With Former Sphere of Influence Countries

 

Seventy five years after its devastating defeat, Japan has now emerged as a Free World leader. Japan should recognize that the time has come, not only to take back the four northern islands lost under the Yalta Agreement, but also to proactively engage with people in its former colonies and sphere of influence.

 

Colonies should not satisfy themselves with mere independence from their rulers. There are many things to learn through interaction with former colonial masters about how modern nations should be. Taiwan, with which Japan had maintained diplomatic relations over a long time, has become a model nation in Asia.

In 1853 Commodore Perry visited Japan with a complaint. Japan was not a great power which threatened the U.S. Navy, but as the ranges of sailing ships increased owing to technological advances, isolated Tokugawa Japan either refused assistance to shipwrecked vessels or sometimes killed the crews.

 

Perry delivered a letter from the U.S. president demanding that Japan open itself to vessels in distress. Impressed by the might of Perry’s ships, a new government took power in Japan and the mislabeled Meiji Restoration quickly grew Japan into a powerful nation.

 

Cognizant of the vulnerability of the Japanese islands to an adversary-dominated Korean peninsula, Japan went to war against China in 1894. And when Russian influence in Korea became unacceptable in 1904, Japan went to war again. U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt was so impressed with Japan that he hosted the peace conference in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. From that point on, Roosevelt ordered the U.S. Navy to monitor Japanese military prowess.

 

 

First Comeback Since the Battle of Midway

 

Japan’s great power was destroyed by 1945, but the 75 years since have been mostly stable because the U.S.A’s military strength has not been seriously challenged. The Soviet Union’s power threatened the last three  decades of the Cold War, but fell back owing to the collapse of the Russian economy.

 

The post-Cold War period seemed very stable at the outset owing to the overwhelming capabilities of the United States. But in the last three decades, the U.S. failed to carefully monitor China’s military buildup, and even allowed American companies to sell highly sensitive technology to China. This has resulted in the U.S. finding itself outnumbered, outranged and outgunned by the Chinese military, especially in the East and South China Seas critical to its ownーand Japan’s security. 

 

Finally the Trump administration is reorienting the U.S. military to the Western Pacific, and the Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps has just outlined a ten year plan to do so. Marines will be land-based along parts of the First Island Chain, which includes Okinawa, the Nansei Shoto and Taiwan. 

 

As presently operated, neither Japan nor the United States alone can sufficiently deter China’s threats to the Indo-Pacific region. But integrated Japanese and American land, sea and air power, hopefully in cooperation with Australia and India as well, can prevent China from becoming a dominant military hegemon. 

 

Rather than say Japan needs to support the U.S. I prefer to say that Japan and the U.S. need to jointly implement a grand strategy integrating land, sea and air based forces operated from a combined U.S.-Japan command headquarters. To succeed Japan needs to become more than a junior partner, but must for the first time since the Battle of Midway become a great power to ensure the continuation of peace and security.

 

 

Combined U.S-Japan defense to deter China

 

Japan doesn’t need huge increases in military power or its number of bases, but Japan’s political leaders must empower Japan’s Self Defense Forces to operate powerfully, quickly and reliably. Waiting for Diet notification and severe limitations of operational flexibility will insure failure.

 

A combined Japanese and American defense grand strategy will not compromise Japanese or American sovereignty and will be compatible with Japan’s right of collective self-defense. But a coordinated, flexible, high technology combination of the two great powers can foil China’s attempt to take control of Taiwan and the East and South China Seas.

 

(A version of this article was first published by the Japan Institute for National Fundamentals, Speaking Out #707 (Special Contribution) on August 11, 2020.)  

 

Author: Dr. James E. Auer

James E. Auer is professor emeritus at Vanderbilt University

 

In 1853 Commodore Perry visited Japan with a complaint. Japan was not a great power which threatened the U.S. Navy, but as the ranges of sailing ships increased owing to technological advances, isolated Tokugawa Japan either refused assistance to shipwrecked vessels or sometimes killed the crews.

 

Perry delivered a letter from the U.S. president demanding that Japan open itself to vessels in distress. Impressed by the might of Perry’s ships, a new government took power in Japan and the mislabeled Meiji Restoration quickly grew Japan into a powerful nation.

 

Cognizant of the vulnerability of the Japanese islands to an adversary-dominated Korean peninsula, Japan went to war against China in 1894. And when Russian influence in Korea became unacceptable in 1904, Japan went to war again. U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt was so impressed with Japan that he hosted the peace conference in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. From that point on, Roosevelt ordered the U.S. Navy to monitor Japanese military prowess.

 

 

First Comeback Since the Battle of Midway

 

Japan’s great power was destroyed by 1945, but the 75 years since have been mostly stable because the U.S.A’s military strength has not been seriously challenged. The Soviet Union’s power threatened the last three  decades of the Cold War, but fell back owing to the collapse of the Russian economy.

 

The post-Cold War period seemed very stable at the outset owing to the overwhelming capabilities of the United States. But in the last three decades, the U.S. failed to carefully monitor China’s military buildup, and even allowed American companies to sell highly sensitive technology to China. This has resulted in the U.S. finding itself outnumbered, outranged and outgunned by the Chinese military, especially in the East and South China Seas critical to its ownーand Japan’s security. 

 

Finally the Trump administration is reorienting the U.S. military to the Western Pacific, and the Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps has just outlined a ten year plan to do so. Marines will be land-based along parts of the First Island Chain, which includes Okinawa, the Nansei Shoto and Taiwan. 

 

As presently operated, neither Japan nor the United States alone can sufficiently deter China’s threats to the Indo-Pacific region. But integrated Japanese and American land, sea and air power, hopefully in cooperation with Australia and India as well, can prevent China from becoming a dominant military hegemon. 

 

Rather than say Japan needs to support the U.S. I prefer to say that Japan and the U.S. need to jointly implement a grand strategy integrating land, sea and air based forces operated from a combined U.S.-Japan command headquarters. To succeed Japan needs to become more than a junior partner, but must for the first time since the Battle of Midway become a great power to ensure the continuation of peace and security.

 

 

Combined U.S-Japan defense to deter China

 

Japan doesn’t need huge increases in military power or its number of bases, but Japan’s political leaders must empower Japan’s Self Defense Forces to operate powerfully, quickly and reliably. Waiting for Diet notification and severe limitations of operational flexibility will insure failure.

 

A combined Japanese and American defense grand strategy will not compromise Japanese or American sovereignty and will be compatible with Japan’s right of collective self-defense. But a coordinated, flexible, high technology combination of the two great powers can foil China’s attempt to take control of Taiwan and the East and Sout...