To celebrate the launch of our latest title, Curing Japan's America Addiction by longtime political pundit Minoru Morita, we're sharing an occasional column from Morita-san, translated here weekly by the galley slaves of Chin Music Press.

The strong survive wars; the weak make sacrifices.

Those who declare wars place themselves in a safe zone, and survive. The average soldier is sacrificed without mercy on the battlefield The average citizen shoulders the unhappiness.

War breeds dictatorship. The dictatorial government mobilizes the mass media to brainwash the citizenry, pushing the populace toward support of the war. The very spirit of many of the citizens is manipulated to the point where they willingly march to their deaths. Even though there is no such thing as an "honorable death" in war, there are more than a few young people who will join the military forces, swayed by the government's brainwashing campaign.

History is repeating itself. Sycophantic politicians, easily manipulated by US military might, are ready to send Self-Defense Force troops to Iraq and Iran. It is not just the members of the Liberal Democratic Party and New Komeito who want to do this; some members of the Democratic Party of Japan want to as well. During World War II, we fought "for the Emperor." Today we fight "for President Bush and the American government." This must stop.

After World War II, Japan was put under American rule. The US has worked at making Japan a front line of defense and at mobilizing the Japanese people to fight for American interests. But Japan has been able to just barely protect its citizens from American advances thanks to Article 9 of the Constitution. Japan's Constitution was made one year after the end of World War II. Article 9 pledged that Japan would not wage war. Because of Article 9, Japan has lived in peace for 61 years.

The major English book distributor in Japan is no more. Yohan declared bankruptcy at the end of July with about 6.5 billion yen in debts. Here's how the distributor explained its demise in a letter to creditors (yep, we're one of those, unfortunately):

To provide a brief background of the circumstances leading to our filing, from around 2006, bookstore sales of books and magazines began to decline because of diminishing individual consumption resulting in increased rates of return. This created a situation whereby we needed to procure funds from financial institutions to cover our purchasing costs. In addition, we made aggressive investments in the acquisition and/or support of a local publisher, overseas subsidiaries in book publishing and book retailing, Aoyama Book Center store openings, overhauling of our logistics center, etc., which led to our carrying a large amount of interest-bearing debt for a company our size. As a result, our interest costs increased, further exacerbating our cash situation. We took steps to reconstruct our business by implementing such restructuring measures as the renewal of our management following the resignation of the former management, selling off stocks of our overseas subsidiaries, and the relocation of our logistics center and scaling down of our head office to reduce costs, but this did not lead to improvements in our cash situation as anticipated, due in part to sales falling below our initial projections. Regrettably, these circumstances ultimately led to our decision to file for bankruptcy as we no longer were able to make payments to our creditors according to our agreements.

I never was a big fan of Yohan — it seemed to care little for the smaller presses and was always full of excuses. So seeing it go doesn't bring tears to this guy's eyes. But this sort of thing does affect publishers, as we wait for months to find out if we're ever going to be paid, and even then, probably receive pennies on the dollar if anything at all. :Let's hope whatever replaces Yohan isn't as monolithic or stodgy and offers more options for small presses in Japan.

On the anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, we bring you this column from Minoru Morita, author of our latest book, Curing Japan's America Addiction.

Minoru Morita Unravels Japan
August 2008: Thinking about Peace and Japan's Proper Path
We must not forget Hiroshima and Nagasaki

At 8:15 in the morning on August 6, an American B29 dropped an atomic bomb from its chute and annihilated Hiroshima. As many as 25,375 died from radiation exposure on that day, according to data in An Integrated Chronology of Modern Japan published by Iwanami Shoten. Add those who died later because of the atomic bomb, and a total of around 200,000 people lost their lives. The news of this new bomb dropping on Hiroshima didn't reach the papers until two or three days later. For those of us in the Kanto area, the news came to us by word of mouth before the newspapers made their reports.

And then the next bomb dropped on Nagasaki. On that day, 13,298 people died, according to Iwanami Shoten's Chronology. In total, about 100,000 people lost their lives because of this bomb. Combined with the fatalities from the Hiroshima bombing, 295,956 people lost their lives.

Because of the strict control exercised by the US Occupation Forces, most of the Japanese people didn't hear any information related to the bombings until after Japan became an independent nation on April 28, 1952. From that day, exhibitions about the effects of the bombings were held throughout Japan.