"Cold War II"

"Great powers, then, must not only have substantial populations and resources, but must also use them to support a world-class national industrial base in a prolonged and sustainable way. Neither state socialist crash programs that peter out over time nor bubbles and booms inflated by central banks in liberal market economies are adequate. To date in the industrial era, developmental states, both authoritarian like present-day China and democratic like the midcentury United States, have been more successful than communist regimes and free market liberal regimes."

Michael Lind at Tablet argues that we "are in a new era of global conflict."

"Pop, Pop, Pop Music"

"'I didn't know who Nirvana were before that, but they looked wild, and I was so scared, so I didn't want to tour with them at first,' laughs Naoko. 'But by the end of the tour we became friends. Kurt Cobain gave it everything he had every night, screaming and playing guitar so hard, so I respected Nirvana's attitude towards playing music a lot.' The other support band, Captain America, were pelted with cups by the audience at a gig in Kilburn, London. 'But since we were all female and we had come from a faraway country, the audience treated us more politely.'"

Daniel Robson at The Guardian marks forty years of Shonen Knife.

"The Longest Serving Prime Minister in Japan's History"

"Abe saw with greater clarity the gathering storm in Asia than perhaps any of his contemporaries, and he worked to prepare Japan—and the wider world—for it while navigating all the political obstacles before him. Never giving up on diplomacy with China (or Russia), he worked energetically to build a democratic coalition to equip Asia for Chinese belligerence long before the outbreak of the coronavirus accelerated events. Abe made Japan a leader of Asia—and a contender for global leadership."

Kapil Komireddi at The Critic praises Shinzo Abe.

"The Only Decision Truman Made Was Not to Alter the Plan"

"On the first two questions, declassified archival documents are pretty clear: There never was a decision to drop either bomb. Instead, there was a decision to build an atom bomb. Once it was ready, it was used; once the second bomb was ready, it too was used. From the outset, this was the plan—an automatic sequence from building the bomb to testing it to dropping it on the enemy."

Fred Kaplan at Slate argues that "decision to bomb Hiroshima wasn't a decision at all."

And a 2016 Atomic Heritage Foundation article recalls the debate over the Smithsonian's 1995 exhibit.

"Provides Copious Evidence That the United States Sought Russian Entry Up To and Even After the Bombs Were Dropped"

"In the first edition of his path breaking volume, Giangreco demolished the revisionist myth that Truman's depiction of an invasion as a looming catastrophe was a gross exaggeration, a 'postwar creation' designed to cover up the real reasons for using the bombs.  Citing a variety of hitherto untapped sources (including documentation on the production of 500,000 Purple Heart medals for the invasion's dead and wounded), Giangreco showed that Truman's vision was amply borne out by the projected casualty figures military and civilian planners routinely used.  
Now, in the expanded edition of Hell to Pay, his research again involves areas that have received little or no attention."

Robert James Maddox at History News Network reviews D. M. Giangreco's Hell to Pay: Operation Downfall and the Invasion of Japan, 1945-1947.

"The Revolution That Almost Was"

"Much about our modern times can be traced back to a single summer and what changed--or more accurately, what didn't."

Julia Alekseyeva at The Nib provides a cartoon history of May 1968.

"Melville's Bartleby in Unfertilized Yolk Form"

"Cute is more than just a look. It has the power to change us, be the salve to our greatest frustrations and fears, and perhaps show us something in ourselves that we didn't know we needed—especially if your true self is an egg with a butt and a distaste for life."

Alex Abad-Santos at Vox takes a look at the popularity of Japan's Gudetama.

"Overconfident, Not Complacent"

"Ten days before Pearl Harbor, the chiefs ordered an 'appropriate defensive deployment' in a terse cable that dramatically began, 'This dispatch is to be considered a war warning.'  The alarm couldn't have been more clear—or less specific.
"The warning didn't mention Hawaii. And Kimmel could not conceive of a Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor.
"His fleet couldn’t sail all the way to Japan in secret, launch a major attack and get away. If he couldn't do it, he reasoned, neither could the Japanese.
"Thus he took no precautions to guard the fleet at anchor."

Bob Drogin in the Los Angeles Times reviews Steve Twomey's Countdown to Pearl Harbor: The Twelve Days to the Attack.

"A Campaign of Fear against Immigrants"

"What the newsreels didn't show were those same detainees, now with shaved heads, crammed onto trains or trucks bound for the middle of the desert, where they were left 15 miles across the Texas border on the highway. A leader with the largest Mexican labor organization (Confederación de Trabajadores de México) described the transportation of these deportees as being like 'truckloads of cows.' In one instance, near Mexicali, across the California border, 88 deportees died of exposure in the 112-degree heat. Others—about a quarter of those deported—were shipped to Mexico by boats from Port Isabel, Texas. Congressional investigators, historian Mae Ngai has written, likened the boats 'to an "eighteenth century slave ship."' The press coverage also failed to capture the many instances in which immigrants were roughed up, detained, and summarily deported without due process, often with no chance to notify their families that they had been swept up in raids on factories, fields, boarding houses, and even the same movie theaters that showed the newsreels. Mexican Americans had to prove that they belonged. INS agents dismissed the legitimacy of draft cards or Social Security cards, insisting on birth certificates, which few people carried around on their person. Mexican Americans who couldn't produce birth certificates quickly enough were deported."

Louis Hyman and Natasha Iskander in Slate revisit the mass deportations carried out by the Eisenhower administration in the 1950s.

Add Slate republishes Dahlia Lithwick and Laurel Reiman Henneman's 2015 article on Japanese-American internment during World War II.

"Quintessentially American in Its Mash-Up of Identity and Culture"

"The show's curator, Anne Mallek (former curator of the Gamble House), chose from published photos and unpublished prints, prefacing each section with Ishimoto's images of Katusura Imperial Villa in Kyoto taken 20 years before the Greene and Greene commission. Compositions tend to focus on geometry and design details–wooden hinges, fixtures, masonry–but few wide shots incorporating complete structures. Despite the gap in time and place, the resemblance between the 17^th century royal retreat and the Greene and Greene houses of the early 1900s are close enough that one could be mistaken for the other."

In the wake of a new exhibit, Jordan Riefe in The Guardian discusses the architectual photography of Yasuhiro Ishimoto.

"Biden Quietly Asks Obama To Pick Him Up Some Of Those Real Throwing Stars From Japan"

"'Listen, Barry, I need the real deal, so when you're over there next week, snag me a few super sharp ones crafted by a master throwing star maker,' said Biden, adding that he would prefer it if the president could find a few bladed throwing weapons that had 'some cool Japanese shit written on them.'"

From The Onion.

"The Real Story Is Stranger Than the Legend'

"If you've heard a version of the sleng teng story before, it probably went something like this: The rock preset on the Casio MT40 was meant to sound like Eddie Cochran's "Somethin' Else," but whoever programmed it didn't quite get it right. The wonky rhythm was later stumbled upon by reggae artists Noel Davy, King Jammy and Wayne Smith in the mid-'80s. The trio used the preset as the bassline for the 1985 single "Under mi sleng teng" (a patois ode to the perils of drugs) and the rest, as they say, is history.
"Most of this story is true, but it's mixed with folklore."

James Trew at Engadget explains how a Casio keyboard preset changed Jamaican music in the 1980s.

Peter at Axis Chemicals writes, "I don't have contact information for Hiroko Okuda, but I am positive that the track she is referring to is 'Hang Onto Yourself' by David Bowie."

Cafe Pretty Primary Enola Drum

The New York Times reports the deaths of journalist Margot Adler, actor James Shigeta, flight navigator Theodore Van Kirk, film director Noel Black, documentarian Robert L. Drew, and nightclub owner Manny Roth.

Professor Tiffany Family

The Los Angeles Times runs obits for movie producer Dick Shepherd, actor Dave Madden, actor Russell Johnson, and Japanese soldier Hiroo Onoda.

"Drifting In and Out of Focus Like a Dream"

Robin Pogrebin in The New York Times reports that Toyo Ito has won the 2013 Pritzker Prize for architecture.

In the Realm of the Diff'rent Shindig

The Los Angeles Times runs obits for historian Gerda Lerner, disc jockey Jimmy O'Neill, film director Nagisa Oshima, Disney designer Roger Broggie, Jr., actor Conrad Bain, former Orange County treasurer Robert L. Citron, and advice columnist Pauline Friedman Phillips.

"A Potent Alternative"

"Actually, the idea that the state had a vital role to play in economic development and income redistribution has been dominant in most parts of the world for much of the last two centuries. President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal even introduced it into the political mainstream of the U.S., where it lingered for decades thereafter."

Pankaj Mishra at The Washington Monthly chides journalists for misunderstanding the history of state capitalism.

"Don't Remember Pearl Harbor"

"As UC Irvine historian Emily Rosenberg explained it in her book 'A Date Which Will Live,' historical memory is not fixed. Lessons that seem crucial at one point can be ignored at another. Memory, even of the most unforgettable events, is unstable and can be transformed by new circumstances."

Jon Wiener in the Los Angeles Times looks back to 1951 and the tenth anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

"Better to Surrender to Washington than to Moscow"

"President Truman’s decision to go nuclear has long been a source of controversy. Many, of course, have argued that attacking civilians can never be justified. Then, in the 1960s, a 'revisionist school' of historians suggested that Japan was in fact close to surrendering before Hiroshima--that the bombing was not necessary, and that Truman gave the go-ahead primarily to intimidate the Soviet Union with our new power.
"Hasegawa--who was born in Japan and has taught in the United States since 1990, and who reads English, Japanese, and Russian--rejects both the traditional and revisionist positions. According to his close examination of the evidence, Japan was not poised to surrender before Hiroshima, as the revisionists argued, nor was it ready to give in immediately after the atomic bomb, as traditionalists have always seen it. Instead, it took the Soviet declaration of war on Japan, several days after Hiroshima, to bring the capitulation."

Gareth Cook in The Boston Globe discusses historical debates over why Japan surrendered in August 1945.

"Reducing Much of What Remained to Ashes"

"Yet it should also be remembered that pouring money and supplies into a stricken country or region is no guarantor of stability. The 1923 quake kicked off a national effort to rebuild Tokyo into a world-class city. Yet it also whipped up nationalist hysteria, with vigilante bands roving the lawless countryside, murdering thousands of Koreans. Xenophobic newspapers published accusations that American relief teams were trying to humiliate the Japanese, putting a quick end to the era of good feeling. The army declared martial law and began a steady erosion of democracy, culminating in its expansion into China and the outbreak of World War II."

Joshua Hammer at The New York Times recalls Japan's 1923 Great Kantō earthquake.

Also in The New York Times, James Glanz and Norimitsu Onishi credit building codes for saving lives during the recent Japanese quake.