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Keywords: Japanese

  • AUSTRALIA

    What was left behind

    • Catherine Marshall
    • 09 September 2011
    2 Comments

    A soft toy. A restaurant menu. A business card. An agony so great it swamped the world. While America was busy hunting down Osama bin Laden, my son and his contemporaries, who were children at the time of the attack, grew up and inherited a world irrevocably changed. 

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  • MEDIA

    Reality trumps Japanese horror stories

    • Stephen Alomes
    • 23 August 2011
    7 Comments

    All too often anxiety trumps reality. In Melbourne in recent years, we received emails from friends overseas worried that we might be affected by the Queensland floods or NSW bushfires, hundreds of kilometres away. Japan has problems, but Japan it is not a disaster zone.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Myths of wartime good and evil

    • Zac Alstin
    • 15 August 2011
    22 Comments

    It is a weakness of human nature that we forgive in our friends what we despise in our enemies. If Germany or Japan had achieved a nuclear weapon and launched it on an Allied city, our condemnation would be unrelenting.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Forgiving Japan

    • Zac Alstin
    • 23 June 2011
    27 Comments

    The disasters in Japan early this year left scenes of destruction reminiscent of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Australian experiences of Japanese wartime cruelty have never been forgotten or forgiven. But the problems are not all on the Japanese side.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The moral challenge of accepting an apology

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 26 May 2011
    6 Comments

    Often the reconciliation debate is framed around matters of the perpetrator's reaction, rather than that of the victim, who holds a superior moral currency. Could it be ever feasible for Australia's Indigenous community to countenance unconditional forgiveness?

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Anzac revelations

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 20 April 2011
    9 Comments

    My father was just 23 when he saw action. He is now nearly 90, and his recent description of the Borneo beach landing, which he had never mentioned to his offspring before, made my brother's blood run cold.

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  • RELIGION

    Japan's gods of nature

    • Catherine Marshall
    • 21 March 2011
    5 Comments

    In Japan's relief centres and obliterated streets, there is no news of looting or violence, no shouts of blame, no demands for immediate evacuation and coronial inquests. 'Shinto is a nature religion,' says my guide Yoshiko. 'We give thanks to everything we have.'

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  • INFORMATION

    Refugee persecution is stupid

    • June Factor
    • 18 March 2011
    8 Comments

    A Sydney Morning Herald editorial 71 years ago declared that to persecute refugees 'is stupid from the purely practical point of view'. The practical and humanitarian reasons it outlines for welcoming refugees remain relevant today.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Invisible Indonesia

    • Ruby J. Murray
    • 15 March 2011
    34 Comments

    You'd never know it, but just above Darwin and sort of to the left, there are 17,000 islands with roughly 240 million people living on them. There's more to this 'Indonesia' place than Bali, Balibo, Bintangs, and bombings. We forget Indonesia at our peril.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Japan's nuclear distortion

    • Brian Vale
    • 15 March 2011
    7 Comments

    Many Japanese don't trust officials connected to the nuclear power industry because previous radiation leaks were denied or downplayed. It is difficult for those caught in the current disaster to know how to interpret statements from officials using phrases such as 'acceptable levels of radiation' and 'no immediate threat'.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Swimming in ink

    • Vin Maskell
    • 17 November 2010
    7 Comments

    He is out there, a fellow water man, in the real dark, in the blue-black ink. I am just here in the shallows, for I am not a swimmer. I can neither see him nor hear him but know he is there because his bike and his clothes are in their usual spot by the footpath.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Subterranean interrogation

    • Vin Maskell
    • 13 October 2010
    7 Comments

    'Excuse me,' the young man says. I meet his brown eyes. Pondering how many coins I have in my pocket I note his tidy hair, olive T-shirt, well-fitting jeans, coloured sneakers. Maybe he just wants to ask about the next train. He is perspiring a little. 'Can I talk to you?' he asks.

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