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Feldman, a specialist on German foreign policy and international reconciliation, remarked that there are two kinds of public diplomacy. The first is carried out by the government and aims at improving the national image. The second concerns activities in which NGOs and other nongovernmental actors play the leading role. These activities might be described as “paradiplomacy,” or “transnationalism” in the case of projects that transcend national borders. She said that for public diplomacy to be successful, a partnership between government and non-government actors was essential.

Earlier this month, a group of Japanese officials came to Glendale, Calif., with an unusual demand: They wanted the city to take down a public monument in the park next to its public library. The bronze statue of a girl in traditional South Korean dress seated next to an empty chair is a memorial to the 70,000 to 200,000 Korean, Filipina, Chinese, Taiwanese, Indonesian and Dutch “comfort women” — a euphemism for sex slaves — conscripted into Japanese military brothels during World War II.

First, there was the abrupt resignation of a president accused by governing party politicians of allowing an overly liberal tone to news coverage. Then, his newly appointed successor immediately drew public ire when he seemed to proclaim that he would loyally toe the line of the current conservative government.

On Sunday, January 19, the small city of Nago in northern Okinawa re-elected their mayor. Americans especially will wonder why a local election in a far-off place should matter. Because by voting for Mayor Susumu Inamine people voted against Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the United States military. Local fishermen and farmers voted yes to their traditional way of life, no to American helicopters polluting the pristine waters of Oura Bay.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said China’s continued economic growth will require building trust, not tensions, with other countries, according to an interview broadcast on Sunday. A steady Chinese military buildup over the last 20 years is a serious concern for countries in the region, Abe said in a CNN interview from Davos, Switzerland, where tensions between Tokyo and Beijing were on display at the World Economic Forum last week.

January 23, 2014

It wasn't a reassuring moment. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Wednesday, Shinzo Abe, the Japanese prime minister, compared recent tensions between China and Japan to the rivalry between the British and German empires at the start of the 20th century.

I first got a glimpse of Hawaiian public diplomacy a few years ago at the Taipei Flora Expo in 2011. Following a stint in Taiwan as a Visiting Fellow at a thinktank researching Taiwanese public diplomacy, I stopped in the Expo, which featured different countries exhibiting and showcasing their unique flora.

Media Works, the film production company founded by Hoyu Yamamoto, specializes in producing Yakuza movies, almost all of which are based on true events. They produce dozens of movies a year, making up 80 percent of all Yakuza films put out each year. Unfortunately for them, gang expulsion laws were passed two years ago in an effort to prevent Japanese entities from working with the Yakuza.

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