In a Reuters article a few weeks back, I got a history lesson on four disputed islands north of Hokkaido.  The article discusses these sparsely populated islands and their history.  A few tidbits:

17,000 Japanese fled or were forced from the islands after the invasion in August, 1945 — just after Russia declared war on Japan and just […]

Timothy Harada, a musician whose music we have played on the Japan Talk pocast, has written something titled “Contrasting US and Japanese steretypes of each other Before, During and After World War II” for the the Sendai Voice.
Before, during and after World War II, the stereotypes Japanese held of United States (US) citizens and […]

The New York Times has a quartet of articles related to Japan.
One article deals with a lawsuit regarding WWII forced suicides. I have not heard much about this issue before and it is quite interesting. The topic of revisionist history is a universal one. In this particular case an author wrote about […]

Slate.com, one of my favorite websites, has an article on Hiroshima which I found disappointing.  It’s long (very long — whatever happened to being concise?), unfocused, and somewhat pointless.  Despite that, it does raise a few thought-provoking questions and makes a couple of interesting observations even while rehashing a lot of old material.  Points […]

A film company is feeling the heat from Japanese extremists over a documentary they are planning to release about Yasukuni Shrine.
“The threats began about two months ago, when we started press screenings of the movie in Japan,” [Chinese-born director Li Ying] told The Hollywood Reporter in Berlin, where “Yasukuni” screened at the Berlin International Film […]

Andy Young who runs Siberian Light - The Russian Blog, writes in to point us to his post about a long forgotten battle fought between Japan and the Soviet Union in the opening days of World War II. Forgotten, but so significant that it literall altered the course of history.
In August 1939, just weeks before […]

A new movie out of Japan named The Truth About Nanjing attempts to claim that the Nanjing Massacre never happened.
According to Satoru Mizushima, the film’s director, “There is one indisputable fact: there was no massacre at Nanjing. We don’t want our children to grow up thinking Japan is a barbarian country.”
A preview of […]

It’s been revealed pressure from the United States got then Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to relent on his contentious claim before a Diet committee in March that there was no proof Japan Imperial forces were directly involved in forcing women into sexual slavery during World War II.
After Abe’s remarks, U.S. Ambassador Thomas Schieffer told […]

Game maker Legendo has come out with a new war game that lets you fight on either side of the first WWII battle between Japan and the United States.

Attack On Pearl Harbor puts you into the cockpit of a fighter, dive bomber, or torpedo bomber from which you can blast and bomb the enemy […]

Despite years of tantrum throwing by Korea, the 9th Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names has ruled that the body of water between the Korean Peninsula and Japan shall continue to be called the Sea of Japan, just as it has been for centuries.
“I encourage the three countries concerned to find a solution acceptable […]

A man who is a member of right-wing group in Japan has been arrested for giving Prime Minister Shinzo Abe the finger. . . Literally. . .
The man was upset that Abe failed to visit Yasukuni Shrine on the anniversay of Japan’s defeat in World War II, and so he cut off his little finger […]

Don’t know if there is any relation to the Japan surrender anniversary or not, but I just noticed that tonight’s nine o’clock TV movie on Tokyo’s chanel 12 is Bridge on the River Kwai.

The above is a photo by Reuters showing a young boy at Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine where people gathered to mark Wednesday’s 62nd anniversary of Japan’s surrender following World War II.

Check out the THE JAPAN TIMES for a gripping account of the War experiences of Masamichi Shida, a man who was accepted into the Japanese Naval Academy at the age of 15 back in 1942, and eventually was slated for a one-way ride as a kamikaze pilot.
In March 1945, Shida himself graduated […]

The government of Korea is set to confiscate more than a million square meters of land that belong to Koreans that are accused of collaborating with the Japanese colonial government.
The Investigative Commission on Pro-Japanese Collaborators’ Property announced on Monday it will seize W25.7 billion (US$1=W929) worth of land from the descendants of 10 alleged […]

The U.S. House of Representative has passed its resolution demanding that Japan issue a formal apology for forcing women into service as comfort women during World War II.
Though largely symbolic, the nonbinding resolution has caused unease in Japan and added tension to an otherwise strong alliance. Officials in Tokyo say their country’s leaders, including […]

A contributor over on the FG BBS reports that the TV screen showing the progress of the Korean Airlines flight carrying him from Seoul back to Japan clearly labeled Dokdo along with Tokyo, Seoul, and Beijing as one of the major points along the route.
Of course, the Sea of Japan was labeled “East Sea.”

I saw the Japanese trailer for akamikaze survivor documentary movie titled Wings of Defeat. The Japanese title is 特攻 (tokko) which literally translates to “special attack”, but in Japan, when speaking about tokko in the context of WWII, most people will imagine the Kamikaze pilots.

The Japanese on the front of the flier translates roughly […]

The Daily Yomiuri ran an editorial Thursday morning stating that though outgoing Defense Minister Fumio Kyuma’s remarks about the U.S. atomic bombings of Japan at the end of WWII were ill-timed and inconsiderate, they are historically accurate.
[O]ne of the major factors in bringing the tragedy of the atomic bombings to Japan was the failure of […]

Bloomberg has an interesting report about how many North Korean residents of Japan are changing their nationalities because they feel they can no longer support Kim Jong Il.
Kim Jong Il no longer supports the government of North Korea.
Kim is a 66-year-old businessman who owns a shoe factory in Kobe, Japan. In 1997, he […]