In the context of the japanese colonial empire, debates about colonial identity have tended to focus on the relationship between Japanese rulers and non-Japanese colonial subjects. The main problems for analysis have been the development of assimilationist and/or discriminatory policies toward colonized peoples, and the way in which the colonized—Koreans, Taiwanese, Micronesians, and others—resisted or adapted to the pressures of those policies. It is perhaps for this reason that rather little scholarly work has been published, in Japanese or in English, about the history of the Japanese colony of Karafuto, which was, after all, overwhelmingly a settler colony. By the mid-1930s, the colony had just over three hundred thousand inhabitants, of whom the vast majority were recent migrants from Japan, though official statistics also record the presence of some two hundred Russians, around two thousand indigenous people—mostly Ainu, Uilta and Nivkh—and almost six thousand Koreans, a group whose numbers were to grow very rapidly from the late 1930s to the mid-1940s. Very recently, however, increasing attention has begun to be directed to the complex, contested, and paradoxical process of identity formation amongst various groups of Japanese colonizers, especially amongst those Japanese who were born or brought up in the colonies (Kawamura 1994; 2000; Tomiyama 1997; Young 1998; Tamanoi 2000). In this context, Karafuto—as a predominantly settler colony—has a particularly interesting story to tell.

The japanese assault on the city of nanking in December 1937 was one of many incidents that the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE, 1946–48) examined in the course of judging the wartime leaders of Japan. What was referred to at the time as the “Rape of Nanking” has in the last several decades become a controversial marker of Chinese identity as well as a source of potent disagreement among Japanese over their nation's history as a colonial power in East Asia. Within this controversy, the IMTFE trial in Tokyo has been used as a touchstone to confirm and deny all manner of claims concerning the incident. Those who feel aggrieved over Japan's conduct toward China cite the evidence produced at the trial to authenticate the scale and brutality of the massacre (Eykholt 2000, 19–23). Those who feel that Japan and the emperor system have been unfairly blamed for the war in East Asia scour the trial proceedings for failures of logic and evidence that demonstrate to their satisfaction that the “Tokyo trial view of history” is nothing but anti-Japanese distortion and fabrication (Yoshida 2000, 111–14). For both sides, the Tokyo judgment is fuel for ideological fire.

Like other parts of the muslim world, Indonesia has experienced an Islamic revival since the 1970s (cf. Hefner 1997; Jones 1980; Liddle 1996, 622–25; Muzaffar 1986; Schwarz 1994, 173–76; Tessler and Jesse 1996). To date, representations of Indonesia's Islamic revival have featured forms of religious practice and political activity concerned with what in the Sufi tradition is called the “outer” (lahir) expression of Islam: support for and observance of religious law (I. syariah, A. syari'at), including the practice of obligatory rituals. Thus commonly mentioned as evidence of a revival in Indonesia are such things as the growing numbers of mosques and prayer houses, the increasing popularity of head coverings (kerudung, jilbab) among Muslim women and school girls, the increasing usage of Islamic greetings, the more common sight of Muslims excusing themselves for daily prayers and attending services at their workplaces, the appearance of new forms of Islamic student activity on university campuses, strong popular agitation against government actions seen as prejudicial to the Muslim community, and the establishment in 1991 of an Islamic bank.

The economic relationship between East Asia and the European Union (EU) has been the subject of increasing academic attention. This has been heightened by politico-institutional endeavors to strengthen the weak link in the “Triad” (Europe, East Asia, North America—the world's dominant economic regions) since the early 1990s, including various bilateral initiatives such as the 1991 Japan–EU Declaration and the 1996 Korea–EU Trade and Co-operation Agreement, as well as the new interregional “dialogue framework” provided by the Asia–Europe Meetings (ASEM). The ASEM has wider geoeconomic significance in that it constitutes the last interregional Triadic arrangement to fall into place, the others being the Asia–Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) forum (augmenting the transpacific axis) and the New Transatlantic Agenda (transatlantic axis).

How have national and state governments the world over come to “own” huge expanses of territory under the rubric of “national forest,” “national parks,” or “wastelands”? The two contradictory statements in the above epigraph illustrate that not all colonial administrators agreed that forests should be taken away from local people and “protected” by the state. The assumption of state authority over forests is based on a relatively recent convergence of historical circumstances. These circumstances have enabled certain state authorities to supersede the rights, claims, and practices of people resident in what the world now calls “forests.”